South Tyneside Council looks to avoid workforce crisis

An attraction, recruitment and retention review is taking place within the local authority in a bid to mitigate against a “workforce crisis” happening within the sector.

South Tyneside Council officers highlighted how recruitment pressures exist across many services, with areas such as social work and digital and ICT the most significantly impacted areas.

Meanwhile the council is having to deal with an ageing workforce, with the latest figures from April showing 33% of staff are aged 55 or over, and only 8% are aged 25 and under.

A report from Claire McLaren, council head of human resources and organisational development, stressed a critical part of the review will be to develop a firm understanding of where workforce planning pressures exist and build strategies to respond.

It said: “The sector faces the very real possibility that in the future, critical functions cannot be delivered due to the lack of suitably qualified skilled and experienced employees.

“An ageing workforce, a destabilising recruitment market for hard to fill roles, tough competition with the private sector and difficulties in attracting young people and career returners/changers into local government are all national issues

“There is a workforce crisis, which must be addressed before it becomes a workforce emergency.”

However it added in South Tyneside “strong progress” has been made which will be built on and form a part of the developing people and culture strategy and service design project.

These include recruitment and retention proposals for children’s social work employees, the development of the Social Care Academy and the embedding of the fully flexible hybrid working policy.

The review will look to build on this with a view to supporting the workforce to become “more digitally focused and modernised in use of digital approaches”.

Key themes of the overall process will include the attraction of South Tyneside as a potential employer, managing performance, wellbeing services and workforce planning.

The final two themes involve looking at recruitment and retention in detail along with why people leave the organisation.

The report, which went before the latest meeting of the organisational development committee, added the review will enable the council “to be in the best position possible to meet current and future workforce needs”.

The review will take place until January 2024 with task and finish groups in place to focus on each theme.