Recruitment and Retention in the Post-16 Learning and Skills Sector

Table 5.7: What could your organisation do to minimise recruitment difficulties?%Better pay/rises 25Better/earlier advertisement/search more widely 10Improve the terms and conditions 4Better training/offer more training to develop more staff 4Need to retain staff better 2Reduce the workload 2Offer more full-time positions 2Hire/employ more staff 2Value staff more/the work they do 2Better communication/more face to face contact 2More incentives/rewards 2Improved funding 1Should be more support offered 1Better/reduced working hours/more flexibility with hours 1Reduce amount of paperwork/bureaucracy 1Improve working environment 1Keep staff happy/improve staff morale 1Better/more forward planning 1Better promotion opportunities/prospects 1Lack of qualified staff on the market 1Improve management 1Be more pro-active 1Should have bank/database of people 1Other 6Don’t know 37None/nothing/no difficulties in recruiting 6Base: All 5492 respondentsSource: YCL/MORI quantitative survey of teaching/training staff, 20055.31 Qualitative responses from face to face interviews confirmed some clearfactors and also highlighted others, including:• low pay – salaries are perceived to be higher in schools with manyfurther education staff feeling underpaid, “all of us in FE feel thatwe are certainly undervalued financially, and that comes acrosswhen we look at recruitment” [Further Education];• job insecurity – the issue of job insecurity was particularly evidentacross the adult and community learning sub-sector. Issueshighlighted included: casual hours, lack of permanent contracts andpay dependency on courses having sufficient numbers of learnersenrolled in order to start. This is highlighted by the response fromone individual, “the recruitment problems are because we are incommunity education and individuals only get paid for the hoursthat they deliver” [Adult and Community Learning];46