The 10 features of a good VBR campaign are drawn from the practice and innovative ideas adopted by the councils featured in the case studies. A common thread across all of the councils was the importance of taking a targeted place-based approach. The approach builds on the strengths of, and responds to, the local context, and seeks to overcome the barriers to employment experienced by local communities.
A publication by IMPACT (2023) highlighted that VBR has implications beyond recruitment, on how organisations and employers operate as a whole. Our research also drew this conclusion. Therefore, underpinning the 10 features of a good VBR campaign is a recognition that this work must be more than just a campaign – it should involve wider work to co-design and make explicit your values, ensure workers feel valued and appreciated, and reflect back your values to the community as part of every interaction.
1. Define your values
Put time aside to discuss, agree and make explicit your values. The values should reflect the beliefs that are important to you in the way that you work, both with colleagues and people receiving care. Examples could include kindness, compassion, respect or empowerment of people to live their best life.
Exercises like Clone the Care Worker can translate these values into the characteristics you are looking for in candidates, and inform your campaign materials.
Make your values explicit in job advertisements, person specifications, and appraisal documents, which can help to create a more positive narrative around a career in social care.
2. Engage your stakeholders
Work closely with employers and people in your services, for instance, by running an engagement event to understand the specific challenges they face. This can foster closer relationships, and create a pool of teams ready to work alongside you to test new VBR approaches.
Speak to your care workers to understand their motivations and why they love their job, using these insights to create positive, ‘strengths-based’ messaging in your campaign.
Engage with your local communities to understand the barriers they face to employment, such as support with childcare costs and transport.
3. Make it personal
Involve staff in creating carer profiles to bring the roles to life, using film, photography and personal testimony, and publicising on social media.
Feature care workers from backgrounds or demographic profiles that you wish to target, such as younger workers, male workers, or people seeking a career change.
Use your employees as ‘Ambassadors’ at engagement events, to give a ‘real world’ perspective on working in the care sector.
4. Make it local
Build relationships in your local community, understand the key barriers to recruitment, and tailor your approach and messaging to your identified target audience.
Run local recruitment events, as experience shows people who face barriers to employment can feel more comfortable in their own locality.
Visit areas with the highest vacancy rates, and use venues that will appeal to your target demographic, such as religious venues.
Run drop-in days in care settings that are particularly hard to recruit to, so that jobseekers can meet people first-hand and dispel any preconceptions about the role.
5. Widen the talent pool
Offer support to people who may face barriers to employment, or have not previously considered a career in care – such as people with learning disabilities, those who may be anxious about interviews, and people lacking minimum qualifications.
Ideas include Introduction to Care programmes, sending interview questions in advance, working in partnership with colleges and job centres, and adopting inclusive approaches to recruitment.
6. ‘Upend’ the process
View the process from the candidates perspective, to bring the best out of them and reduce the barriers to employment.
Use simple ‘contact us’ forms, compatible with smart phones, so people can hear more about the roles available.
Have an initial conversation as the first step in the process, so candidates can learn whether a career in care is right for them, and to better match their interests and aspirations to roles and care settings.
Only request key information from candidates at the beginning, such as why they are interested, what they will bring to the role, and in what area they wish to work.
7. Assess for values
Draw on people’s informal caring experience such as with family and friends, and transferable skills from other service industries such as retail or hospitality.
Online situational judgement tests, such as Curious about Care, identify people’s values by using scenarios, regardless of their past experience.
Assessments and interviews can involve other team members, and people with lived experience, to reflect back the values you are recruiting for.
Interviews should focus on probing for people’s motivations, and what is important to them, rather than their past achievements.
8. Take a system view
Work collaboratively with partners across the health and care system.
Consider setting up and participating in consortiums with neighbouring councils to share good ideas and learning from past recruitment.
Other ideas include workforce hubs to collectively address workforce gaps, and developing locality strategies and joint recruitment campaigns to adopt a more unified approach to recruitment.
Work closely with in-house teams and external employers to better understand the workforce challenge being faced.
9. Live your values
Embed VBR within all workforce activities, including management, appraisal and professional development.
Introduce wellbeing and other incentives to overcome some of the practical barriers to employment, such as childcare costs or transport.
Embedding wellbeing and other incentives ensures that employees feel valued and appreciated and improves staff retention.
10. Capture the impact
Collect data on website and social media engagement to understand the initial impact of your campaigns compared to previous approaches.
Capture data on retention, job satisfaction and performance to understand the success of appointments.
Personal stories, from care workers and people being cared for, can be highly effective for future marketing campaigns and to showcase impact.