Orkney Islands Council launches recruitment incentive schemes

Orkney Islands Council has launched two recruitment incentive schemes to encourage more people to join its social care workforce.

There is a shortage of carers joining the profession across the country and, over recent years, the Council has faced unprecedented challenges in recruiting to its health and social care workforce. 

This has led to an increasing and significant reliance on agency staff – with which comes increased costs and impacts on the continuity of care provided to people who rely on services.

There is also currently a high number of long-term unfilled vacancies across care at home and care home/supported living establishments, compounded by increasing demands for services and a reduced working age population. 

The ‘Golden Hello’ scheme will be a one-off financial payment of £2000 and will be offered to those taking on social care roles in specific settings, who are either new to care work or returning to care work after time away.  

The ‘Refer a Friend’ scheme is an initiative to encourage existing employees of the Council to recommend a career in social care within specific settings to friends, family, or former colleagues. If that person then successfully applies for, takes on a role and remains in the role for three months, then the referrer will receive a £750 payment. 

The specific roles which will qualify for the payments are Care at Home Assistants, Care Organisers, Mobile Community Responders and Social Care Assistants in adult residential units and supported living accommodation 

Both schemes will run as a pilot for one year.  

A project team was established this year to look at challenges within Orkney Health and Care and the reliance on agency staff. - with the pilot incentive schemes being a key outcome of this.  

A “Working in Care” survey was launched earlier this year to ascertain the views and attitudes of those currently working in care, those who would consider a career in social care and those who had never considered a career in social care. The survey received   341 responses and highlighted key themes which will also be taken forward by the project team. 

Stephen Brown is the Chief Officer for the Orkney Health and Social Care Partnership. He said: “With our budgets reducing - and demand on our services increasing – we have been looking in much more detail at some of the issues we are facing, with a particular focus on how we might recruit more people in Orkney into the social care workforce. 

“Given the scale of the challenge we are facing, we have had to be bold and brave – and take a bit of a leap into the unknown with these two schemes.

“Whilst offering financial incentives at a time when we are needing to reduce costs might seem counter-intuitive, the simple fact is that the cost of bringing in agency staff to Orkney continues to be our biggest financial challenge. We are grateful to the agency staff who have worked and continue to work with us however if we can build and sustain a workforce locally instead – by whatever means - then we can tackle that challenge head on.  

More information on the two schemes is available at www.orkney.gov.uk/wecare