Identifying The Biggest Recruitment Barriers In Councils
Are you tired of struggling to find suitable candidates for your council’s open positions? You’re not alone. Recruitment for councils can be daunting, with many obstacles in finding the perfect fit.
The barriers to successful recruitment are many, from budget constraints and lack of resources to the overwhelming number of applicants and the struggle to attract diverse candidates. But don’t give up hope just yet! In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the biggest barriers in council recruitment and explore how the right recruitment solution can help you overcome them.
Barrier 1: Leadership
The rise of digital economies and technological advances has posed a new set of challenges and opportunities for 21st-century leaders and managers. Managing and developing internal talent, especially those with leadership potential at all levels and from all backgrounds, requires a renewed focus with particular emphasis on encouraging diversity.
In order to improve leadership and ultimately reduce staff turnover as staff progress through an organisation, it is essential to introduce cross-organisational processes that identify staff with potential at all levels and from all backgrounds and provide them with developmental opportunities.
The development of a common set of values and behavior expectations among senior officers in partnership, as well as regular appraisals, facilitate the expression of concerns and positive feedback by colleagues.
Barrier 2: Skills Development
In recent years budget reductions have forced many councils to focus skills spending on statutory training at the expense of continuing professional development. Although councils are still doing their best to focus on the main skill shortages, new technological launches or new business, there are still gaps in commercial and digital skills.
Employers risk reaching the full potential of their workforce if all staff have access to development opportunities. Councils can improve the national skill shortage by maximizing the use of apprenticeships at all levels and developing new pathways.
Also, it is possible to contribute to the development of much-needed skills by developing a multi-year apprenticeship plan that considers medium-term workforce planning, public sector targets, available levy contributions, projected spending, and possible upskilling or recruitment opportunities.
Barrier 3: Hiring and Retention
There has been some emphasis on recruitment, specifically in recent national programmes and campaigns led by Government, however, attention is still required on retention as poor service delivery can suffer if experienced staff leave.
Councils need to examine incentives and career opportunities, as well as flexible working and the quality of job design to support and nurture employees. The key is to involve people closely in identifying their needs, find realistic ways to address them and create a frame of learning opportunities for employees to develop and follow their passion.
Tackling these problems requires a coordinated evaluation of supply issues in education and training, recruitment policies, job design, career structures, rewards, quality of management and leadership. Looking at the views of potential recruits when designing jobs paired the continuing to review their recruitment policies and systems against wider practice can also go a long way in improving hiring and retention.
The Solution
What is the perfect solution to these barriers you may ask?
A one-stop recruitment solution that helps you hire, retain, and attract the right candidates!
Combining your applicant tracking software with your careers website/jobs board can help create the perfect recruitment hub, filled with all the tools you need to make the best decisions during any stage of your hiring process. With applicant tracking software, you can track all your past, present, and future job candidates, as well as manage everything from candidate sourcing, talent pooling, shortlisting, to job vacancies, video interviews, and onboarding.
Your careers website or jobs board can be designed to reflect your organisation’s branding and to be connected to your ATS system to allow quick job advertising & application management functionality. Finally, with more intuitive features such as a training directory, careers hub, user-friendly navigation, mobile optimisation, GDPR compliance and security this solution provides managers with the necessary equipment to effectively handle all recruitment duties.
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