Recruitment of experienced social workers remains an ongoing challenge, with no easy solution.

Throughout 2022 we supported a record number of local authorities in attracting and retaining experienced social workers.

Our learnings taught us the best practice in talent acquisition, which helped councils secure the talent they need to fill vacancies and retain employees, and is a strategy we can carry forward into 2023.

The current, most-effective practices in talent attraction and retention are:

• Creating distinctive branding and messaging to cut through the noise in the marketplace. To get noticed we have been bolder in creating a point of difference for clients. There's a lot of similar messaging throughout the public sector, with phrases like "making a difference" becoming common in recruitment and therefore less effective.
• Identifying social worker's motivations for moving on and what they want from their next career move. In 2022 the top three motivators were a better work/life balance, increased salaries and less stress.
• Developing research-led channel strategies that target social workers passively. For example, using social and digital channels to increase engagement among underrepresented groups.
• Having an ‘always-on' approach and consistent brand awareness by using both paid and organic advertising to ensure our client's brands remain top when social workers look for their next role.
• Ensuring first-class candidate experience when client resources have been limited and require ‘high-touch' candidate management to secure talent quickly.

If you need to review your current attraction strategy or employer brand proposition to ensure that your messaging resonates with what social workers currently want, we're happy to share our experience.

Sonia Tanda is director of business development at Penna

Sonia.Tanda@penna.com