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0:00:07 - Helen
Hi everyone and welcome to the HR Edit, the podcast from Southeast employers looking at those common and often tricky HR questions. Today I have a full team of HR and data experts with me Michelle, our People Insight Manager, rita, our HR Insight Analyst, and Chelsea, our HR Business Partner. Hi everyone, hi Ellen, hi. Today we're going to be discussing recruitment and retention, but before we dive into that, we would like to welcome Rita to the podcast. Rita joined the SCE team earlier in the year as our HR insight analyst and has already been working hard with Michelle on the data from the region. Rita welcome, hi Helen. Thank you, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your role within SCE? 

0:00:47 - Rita
I'm happy to be part of the team and it has been really wonderful working with Michelle on the data side of things. So what I currently do with South East Employers is to help gather insights that will be very helpful to the councils councils so all types of data from sickness absences, from general pay data and from other HR metrics that councils find relevant. 

0:01:12 - Helen
Rita, can you tell us a little bit about your life before SCE? 

0:01:15 - Rita
My background priority now is in human resources. I've worked with you know I've worked as a HR manager, you know doing recruitment, performance management and exit management. I've not really done much on employee relations and prior to that I also worked with a recruitment consulting firm where I was responsible for managing the recruitment needs of clients. You know, sourcing for them, interviewing them and sending them to, to client or roles that were the best fit for them, and then also managing payroll as well. So that's really my background. So when managing all of this payroll of over, you know, 150 staff, I had to learn a couple of tools that would help to gather as much data as possible and analyze as much data as possible. Also, when doing performance management as well, you're trying to present the performance of your employees to management. You'd have to come up with all kinds of tools to present, you know, what the company is currently, how the company's currently performing. So that's where my background in analysis came about. And yeah, that's that's about me really. 

0:02:23 - Helen
Thank you, Rita. That's brilliant and it's really great to have you part of the SEE team. So today's topic is recruitment and retention and, for a change, I understand both of those terms. So can we start with? What are the foundations of good recruitment practice? 

0:02:37 - Michelle
Absolutely so. In reality, the foundations of recruitment start long before you get to the job and interviewing candidates. It goes right back to really the point at which the previous post holder resigns and you're actually starting off with that sort of leave as exit interview, understanding why they're leaving and what could be causing that, whether that is, you know, conflict at work, whether they're leaving for better career prospects, progression, or is it just money. Because all of that information helps you as an organization to really sort of tailor your strategic approach to recruitment and retention. Once you've sort of got that, that lever information, the sort of next stage really is looking at the job that they have left. Is it still fit for purpose? Is it what the organisation needs from that post holder? You know what's changed since the job description was last updated. 

So really bringing that job description up to date, making sure it is fit for the team needs and the organization needs, and then making sure that the person specification sets out exactly what skills knowledge are required from that individual and which of those are essential criteria that they absolutely must have and which of the criteria are the nice to have bits. The ideal candidate would have them, but it's not a deal breaker if they don't. Making sure that those documents are worded in a way to encourage inclusion. And there's been plenty of studies recently where you know the language of all recruitment documentation has been studied and it's really clear that there are certain words in the English language that conjure up a sort of more male dominated role or, you know, more female dominated characteristics. So quite often when we say leadership skills, that tends to be a more male oriented word, whereas collaboration tends to be a bit more feminine dominated. So it's understanding the language you are using and making sure that that is as inclusive as possible, even at that stage of writing the job description and person specification. 

0:04:56 - Chelsea
For me, Michelle, that first sort of stage of stop and review the vacancy is really important, because I think often because managers are maybe concerned that they're going to have a gap because if the person goes and they haven't got somebody else in place and they might just rush to recruit another one of the same, but actually it's a really valuable opportunity to sit back and say does this actually now deliver what we need or have things changed and do we want to slightly adjust this or do we want to use this, potentially this pot of money, to do something else really quite different? And because, particularly where people have been in jobs maybe a long time, there can be a tendency for you to end up with the person-shaped job rather than a job-shaped person and obviously, with recruitment, you're looking, you're looking for a job-shaped person rather than the other way around. 

0:05:57 - Rita
So I think that's that's a really key opportunity to review everything and and it's often missed, I think yeah, I would agree with that yeah, and also the best and the best way to also know what the job needs actually is is to always do a review of the current roles in the organisation. So when you know the limitations of the past employee of that role or the limitations of a particular department, it also helps you to craft a better job description for what you actually need to achieve or what skills you need to achieve that which you need to achieve for that role. So it all boils down to actually doing a periodic review of what your organisation needs and whether they're actually being met and, if they're not being met, what you need to actually meet it. So that helps you to also design it better a really good job description and person specification for the role as well. 

0:06:50 - Michelle
And I think you've touched on it very well there. 

This is a small drop in that big workforce planning piece of work that organisations should be undertaking. 

You know we need to make sure that our organisations are fit for purpose now, but also, to a certain extent, future proof them, and so undertaking those periodic reviews of what do we need now, where do we see the future of this team's work going, is absolutely critical, and I'm going to lightly touch on it now, but you know we've got a future podcast on this past and future podcast. 

Actually, the impact of AI in the workplace and the changes that that could actually have within the skills demands on teams within the workplace is quite significant, and what we're sort of talking about at the moment is AI being able to do 80% of the grunt work to enable the post holders to do the 20% of added value work, and that takes a different set of skills and you know we need to be kind of thinking about up-skilling in that way and that's that sort of horizon scanning what's coming along. What are the future needs of this team and have we got those skills in the team already and how does that impact on what we're looking for in this new recruit, so that huge. 

0:08:08 - Chelsea
You know that that big piece of workforce planning is absolutely critical and you know that one job might just be a drop in the ocean but that one job is critical within that team and you touched on the idea of exit interviews as well and that that's important I from an individual point of view for to find out if there are any particular concerns or problems with that job or that team that might be causing people to move on. But actually the totality of exit interview data is really interesting to look at for the trends. But you need to ask the right questions. I've found so. Asking somebody why they're leaving, they will say something like oh, I've got a better paid job. But the question you need to be asking is what is it that made you look for another job in the first place? 

0:09:01 - Michelle
Yeah, and that can actually happen even before someone is offering their resignation. 

And it's one of the things that I'm very keen on is, in the annual appraisal cycle, or however you do that before you know, the performance management piece, setting out time in those conversations to say, is there anything that we're doing that might make you consider looking for another job? 

And managers are really scared to kind of touch on that because it's oh, I'm putting the idea in their head that they should be looking for another job. But reverse that kind of thought process and going, actually what you're doing is trying to prevent people from looking. So if there's something that you as an organisation, you as a manager, can be doing to retain your staff, surely you want to know about that before the individual starts looking for another job, so that you can address those concerns, address those issues and stop them from even looking for another job. So having those conversations early on in that annual appraisal cycle or performance review cycle, understanding what's keeping that person in the job, what's keeping them in that organisation, is key to kind of almost solving that, that the retention issue and actually not all recruitment is a bad thing. 

0:10:24 - Chelsea
We need to remember that as well, because sometimes it's really helpful to be able to bring in some fresh ideas and a new approach and things like that. So it's not always the case that somebody moving on is necessarily bad, because it does give the organisation an opportunity to bring in some different thinking, particularly where you've got very, very long serving employees, because the perspective on how things are done in another organization or even another industry might be helpful to bring in a different perspective yeah, absolutely, and what I would say is, as a line manager, one of the things that I'm very conscious of is today's recruitment market. 

0:11:11 - Michelle
I would not expect someone who was career orientated and at the start of their career and wanting to progress through their career. I wouldn't expect anyone to stay more than two years and actually I've held that view for quite some time. When I first started at South East Employers and you're talking about long service employees, I've been here 15. When I first started at South East Employers, I had a business support officer who came in from a training background, really interested in HR, really wanted to progress with an HR career. So, although she was the right fit for the job when she came in as a support assistant you know making sure that I was in the right place at the right time doing the right things actually she wanted a career in HR. So I made sure that actually part of my work with her was giving her the opportunity to experience HR and develop those skills, to experience HR and develop those skills. After I think it was about two years, she managed to get a job as an HR advisor in one of our councils and for me, I'd done my job correctly. That was a job well done. She came in wanting to do something different. I gave her the experience and the skills and knowledge to be able to do that. So seeing her leave the organisation, yes, it was a bit of a you know, a challenge because she was fantastic at her job and we struggled to find anyone anywhere near as good as her. But I knew that I'd done my job correctly because she was where she wanted to be and that's something you know. That's, again, that's something you know. 

It's a different mindset for managers to get into sometimes that when you've got people coming in at the beginning of their career, if you're not able to support their development internally, that's not a bad thing Because actually, if you keep that relationship in a positive way, yes, they may go to your name, a neighbouring council or another organisation you know private sector of NHS but as long as that relationship is kept positive, when they've done the next step, they may come back to you with more skills, more knowledge and, you know, another step up for them and they're bringing that information back into your organisation. So you're right, absolutely you know, bringing new ideas, new ways of doing things and expecting people to move on with their career. It is a shift for the mind in the mindset, but it is the right mindset to have and particularly, I think, in local government. 

0:13:38 - Chelsea
Retaining somebody within the sector is really valuable. So, even though they may have left a particular council, if they've gone to another council for an opportunity which takes their career to the next step, then that's a win for the sector as a whole yeah absolutely yeah. 

0:13:57 - Rita
So under retention, also in regards career development, it's also mean, from what Michelle said, so other ways to do that with internal recruitment, because obviously when you're trying to recruit, you can either look outside or you do some internal recruitment through either job shadowing or job rotation or, as well, succession planning. It's possible that we probably didn't have a role for the lady. That's why she had to look outside, but it's also good to know that. I mean she left, you know, feeling helped by the organisation and feeling like her career plans were actually taken into consideration and that helped her to actually leap forward, which is good. But, generally speaking, another thing that helps with retention employee retention is the company culture, and employees can see this fromjust a mile away. They can, they can sense it. They know whether or not you're digitally inclined. They know whether or not you're open to change as a company. They know whether or not you value their perspective, whether you value their, their ideas. They know whether or not you are waiting for them to fail or you're looking at looking to help them to improve. 

So basically, it's basically trying to create a good employer brand that employees are very, very happy with and employees are happy to actually align with. You know there are some companies you work with and you're not you're not really proud to say that outside that you work with them. It happens, but on you know the other hand, there are companies you'd be so proud. It puts it everywhere that this is where I work. It puts on your LinkedIn very bold right. So it's the task of the employer as well to make sure that the employees are happy and proud of them. It also helps with employee referrals as well, where they can happily recommend their friends. I was when I was at a different job where I was trying to interview some candidates and the person said that he would never recommend his brother to that organisation that he worked with. So it's the task of the organisation to actually make sure that they are, that people are happy to come into the organisation and people feel welcome and feel valued to actually want to stay there. 

0:15:53 - Chelsea
And going back to that data piece again, analysing your turnover rates and breaking them down by perhaps length of service, seniority, maybe even department or team, might help you to understand if there is some kind of issue somewhere in the culture, either at an organisation level, or if one particular team has a very high turnover of people with very short service. There might be some indicators in there that there might be some indicators in there that there might be some other work that you need to do, that it's actually not necessarily about the job content or even pay, but actually there might be cultural factors that are driving people to move on from your organisation quite quickly yeah, there's a meme, I think, out there that says you people don't leave an organisation, they leave a manager. 

0:16:50 - Michelle
Not always true, but actually if you are seeing in the data, you know high levels of turnover, high levels of grievances or capability issues or you know any of that conflict in the workplace sort of data it's worth looking at it and sort of delving in and understanding what's going on within that team. Too often we kind of collect all this data and don't actually do anything with it. We know that there is a high level of grievances in a particular team or there's a high level of turnover, but we don't actually do anything about it. We don't do the research to understand what's going on and why people are leaving and why they're not happy. It's really important to kind of look at that data and understand what it's telling you. 

0:17:33 - Chelsea
Interesting what you were just saying about employee referrals, Rita, because younger people are underrepresented in the local government workforce at the moment. But a lot of the younger people who are in the local government workforce at the moment but a lot of the younger people who are in the local government workforce are there because often a parent already works in local government. So they both understand what local government does and what opportunities there are there and they also know that the terms and conditions are broadly quite favourable and things like that. So they know more about the organisation than just the job content and the headline pay, which is what you're picking up when you're looking at a job advert cold. 

0:18:16 - Michelle
Yeah, and I think that's that's really key. Coming back to the recruitment side of what we're talking about today is actually we do need to start thinking about how we sell local government as an employer, not just a specific council, but that sort of big. What do councils do? Why should you come and work for us? And actually the pandemic has done us some favours in some respects because the work that councils do became really public and the public became much more aware of what councils are there to do. They understood, you know, all of a sudden you know you've got your waste management teams and that's a council resource. The community centres where you know food banks were set up and and covid testing stations and all the public health side of things. It all became much more in the the public eye. People started to understand a little bit more about what we do in local government versus central government and the NHS. 

But if you think about the advert, you know the recruitment campaigns that we've seen. You know on a national scale. The NHS have a national scale presence. The military, the police, all have national scale presence on that recruitment campaign. Personally, I think local government has lagged behind on that, but you know that there has been a feeling in councils that we do need that national presence and that national awareness raising piece in terms of what local government has to offer as an employer, as a sector, and you know the fact that in local government we have over 400 different jobs that people can can do much like any of the military services. We have the front facing and we have the this kind of corporate services side of stuff and I think that quite often gets lost. 

0:20:09 - Chelsea
Also the the fact that in some careers there is work that is only done in local government. So my understanding is that planning and some aspects of legal and some aspects of things like development control and building surveying, you can only do certain things if you work for a local authority. So it can be a way to really broaden your career, but unfortunately there's not necessarily a lot of visibility of that and the opportunities to develop or follow a particular professional career absolutely. 

0:20:47 - Michelle
It's interesting because I have a friend who works for a private sector company doing town planning. She is currently seconded to one of our councils in their their planning team and I was talking to her the other day and she is very keen to make the move over to becoming employed by the local government sector Because there are things that she's able to do in local government that she has never been able to do working for a private sector employer. So you're absolutely right, there are things that should attract people into local government. We've just got to work to get that message out, and it starts from getting into the schools and talking to, I suppose, GCSE age students who are considering what their future careers might be and where they might like to go, saying well, this is an option because actually, if you come in and do an apprenticeship with us instead of going to do A-levels, you know you do an apprenticeship, you come in at 16 an apprenticeship with us. Instead of going to do A-levels, you know you do an apprenticeship, you come in at 16. Here's your career path, you know, mapping out how far they can progress within your organisation using your apprenticeship levy up through the organisation. So you've got that level three, which is the equivalent of the A-levels. Level three, which is the equivalent of the A-levels. Then you can progress up to the degree-level apprenticeships and postgraduate-level apprenticeships, mapping out that pathway for them within your organisation and not just the straight line for the career progression, but actually having that zigzag and saying, actually you start here, you have three options as to where you go next. These are all possible routes and it doesn't matter which way one you take. You can come back into this, you know, straight line. You can stay out on that branch, you can, you know, branch out even further. 

Actually giving that sort of information to, to school-aged individuals is absolutely critical to making them aware of what the possibilities are and why they should come and work for local government. And one of the things that we are hearing from the younger members of society is they're really keen to find a job where they make a difference. Well, what better way than becoming a public servant? Whether you're in HR or finance, or a social worker, or in town planning or occupational therapy, every single one of those careers within a local government organisation enables that council to deliver services to the public. You know, without the HR, without the accountant, without the IT professional in a council services can't be delivered as effectively as they are, so you know it's, and it's getting that message out instead of saying effectively the local government world is your oyster, make of it what you want. 

0:23:41 - Chelsea
Yeah, and it's an opportunity to serve your community as well, because it is very local, so you can literally work for the council in the area you live in or the next you know, the next town, or something like that. So it is an opportunity really to serve your community. 

0:23:58 - Helen
Chelsea. On that note, I know you've been working on a national recruitment campaign. Could you tell us a little bit about that? 

0:24:04 - Chelsea
Yes, this is something that South East employers are working on together with the local government association, who have had some funding recently to develop a campaign that talks about the values of local government as a sector and the benefits of working for your local council as a sector and the benefits of working for your local council, which is a really interesting approach. It's a slightly different approach to what we've typically had in the past. Councils have maybe tended to focus on a specific job vacancy at a specific time and really we need to innovate a bit more and move away from that rigidity and work in our recruitment activity on getting people interested in working for the council generally or councils generally, even where there may not be immediately now a specific job that is vacant that they want to do, a specific job that is vacant that they want to do, but we can engage people and interest them in working for the sector, tell them a little bit about what what happens in councils, help them identify and want to be part of that and then move to the specific vacancy levels. So this is something that the local government Association have been working on and piloted with our colleagues in the North East region. They had a very successful pilot, which not only resulted in more people going to look at job websites and vacancies for their local councils, but also actually just generally raised the profile of councils and what they do in their communities. So people really remembered seeing these adverts and learning about local government and what it is and what it does, even if there wasn't a specific job that was of interest to them at that particular point in time. 

So, having had such a successful pilot, this is now going to be rolled out nationally in conjunction with a creative agency and with the Local Government Association, the LGA, and we, in fact, will be hosting, together with the LGA, a workshop GA workshop in mid-July with all of our councils in the region to understand what the specific recruitment and retention challenges are in this region and how the messaging and the resources about local government as a sector, how it can benefit your career and how it can fit with your personal values to work for local government and how there's an opportunity for you to make a difference in your community. 

And taking all those resources that have been developed and just bespoking them in order that they hit the specific things that we need to tackle in this region, because there's likely to be slightly different approaches and slightly different issues and problems in this region to the ones that they were experiencing in in the pilot region up in the northeast. So it's a real, really positive opportunity for all of our councils to get engaged and to contribute to building this campaign. That's going to be very specific for the southeast and then so that's a half-day workshop and then in the afternoon for our member councils we're running an additional workshop where they'll have the opportunity to hear about some innovative approaches to recruitment and things like apprenticeships kind of opportunities to grow your own and councils that have very successfully had schemes to broaden the reach of their recruitment to groups that they perhaps weren't otherwise reaching and to get more people in and a more diverse range of people interested in working for them and working for councils. 

0:28:11 - Michelle
That's fantastic. I'm so pleased that the LGA have been able to support this national project and we're getting the opportunity to really shape the southeast version of that recruitment campaign. I think it's going to make a huge difference to people's awareness and, as I said, it's the education piece, isn't it? What does county councils do? What do borough councils do? What do unitary councils do? It's really just getting people aware of the variety of roles that we have within the sector. 

0:28:42 - Rita
And also, I think it also gives our awareness here to the students you know what, what's out there for them? Because I know that at that, at that point, a few of them are probably thinking, oh, what's what next? They're probably thinking, what am I going to do now after school, right? So, knowing that they have the opportunity to actually come in, you know, into the local council to start up a career if they're interested in it, but yes, so that's another way to, that's another part of recruitment. Apart from putting out on job boards and recruited internally, we can also go into schools and make them aware that the opportunities for them and they actually have the luxury to select from a variety of roles that they're interested in. 

It would also be very important to also help them to prepare for the job market or to prepare for the selection process for these roles that are available to them. So, you know, let them know things like learning about the council values, knowing what's important to the council, knowing what's important to the council, knowing what's important to the role, to the particular roles, what they would be doing and how to prepare for the interview selection process. Basically mentoring them and coaching them to do well into the interviews to and to also do well in the job itself. So because at the initial stage, when they're still very fresh, most people don't really have an understanding of what recruiters are looking, looking for or what, how they should behave or what they, what they should say, what's important to the recruiter. So during these sessions, you, you let them know what's important to them and what they need to know and what they need to say and what and what the job is about as well, to help them prepare for the interviews. 

0:30:22 - Helen
Really, we've talked a lot about students, but what about people who are potentially in one career and are looking for a change? 

0:30:28 - Chelsea
Yeah, things like second careers. People who've maybe retired early from one career may have transferable skills that are very useful to councils, but they're not necessarily an obvious choice for a job. I met somebody last year who'd recently retired as a vet an absolute vet burnout, had enough of, could not carry on being a vet but was only 50 odd but wanted to do a job where they were frontline, sort of out and about, you know, helping people in some way, and obviously had very good people skills and very good organisational skills and things like that. And I was suggesting. But they said I just want a job that's um, like less responsibility. And they said something like a receptionist or something like that. And I said, well, look at your, look at your local councils, because there are lots of jobs like that, or work in a country park or something like that. And they were like, oh, that's a good idea, but they wouldn't have thought of it otherwise and I think I think that's really critical. 

0:31:42 - Michelle
There are so many people who goes goes back to the pandemic, I think. In some respects, so many people sort of re-evaluated their lives and decided they wanted to do something different midway through their career and that's going to continue and it's capturing those individuals as well and bringing them into the local government sector. As you say. There's so many transferable skills that you know you gain from any career that you know would map across anywhere and if there's, you know retraining, re-qualifications, that kind of stuff. That's what the effectively, that's what the employers apprenticeship levy is for enabling people to retrain into a different career path. You know, as we were saying earlier about recruiting the right person to the role, but actually it's not just well, have they worked in this field for the last 10 years, which is never going to be an absolutely brilliant assessment criteria, because it depends what they've been doing for those 10 years. They could have been spent 10 years doing exactly the same thing and it's only one tenth of what you need them to be doing in the current role. But looking at the skill set that someone has and moving away from knowledge which can be taught as a, as a basic criteria and moving towards it. Do they have the same values? Do they have the right skills to be able to learn and deliver the the requirements of the role, rather than do they know how to put a balance sheet together in terms of a finance role? So you're absolutely right. 

I mean, I've got a friend who used to work in finance in the car industry, started life as a panel beater in a garage, moved into the corporate finance world and was just miserable in the job. He came into the government sector. He uh, works as a green spaces individual riding the big mowers around um, chopping back hedges and all that kind of stuff. So and he is so much happier now that he that that that he's got that kind of stuff. So and he is so much happier now that he that that that he's got that kind of responsibility. So yeah, you know it's. It's really about capturing and making people aware that the sector is here not to catch them if they fall, but to give them the opportunities that they're looking for, to to kind of get the work-life balance, to to kind of follow their dream career. 

0:34:08 - Chelsea
Almost, you know not, you know not get stuck in a in a pigeonhole yeah, so yeah, for example, apprentices don't have to be 18 to 21, absolutely not. Apprentices could be 50 something plus. Yeah, yeah, um, and I think that's a. That's a sort of a bit of a shift in terms of mindset and thinking about it. 

But the other issue, of course, employment in local government, then it particularly from groups that might be disadvantaged or underrepresented in the workplace or in employment generally, then the more that will have a direct impact on the actual inclusion and economic prosperity in our own areas. 

So, and I know there have been some very successful projects in councils around the country to offer just even just a one-year work placement for certain groups, such as employees with disabilities, just to get them in and give them some experience of work so that they've then got something on their CV, they've got something to build on, they've learnt the skills around how to be in a workplace, what it's like, all of those sorts of things. And I know that where those projects have been most successful it's because they've had wraparound support as well for things like developing qualifications in basic literacy, being able to pass exams so that they've got their basic English and maths, gcses, things like that, and of course those can catch people at any age or stage of life as well. There there's been some very successful examples of that which councils could definitely learn from and mimic and use themselves. 

0:36:14 - Rita
And also for people who wanted to switch careers. The most important thing is to identify what skills are relevant to certain careers or to your preferred careers. I was speaking with someone the other day and he had gone for an interview and he thought, oh my God, the employer or the recruiter doesn't like me. And I'm thinking if they offer you the job, it's because your skills match what they actually need for that role, and if they do not offer you, it means that at that time your skills are not of priority to them. But eventually you'd find an employer that values the skills that you have. So it really has nothing to do with you as a person. As long as you have the required skills, you can communicate well and you have certain skills relevant to that particular role. So, even if you wanted to switch careers, it's just a matter of identifying what skills are relevant to that particular sector, to that particular career, and deciding that you're going to learn those skills. 

And personally I feel like, as a person, you have to be as valuable as possible to the labour market. What's important? Communication skills, being able to work as a team, setting technical skills as well, and then being very particular about those skills and going ahead to learn whatever is relevant to the employer. And as long as you have that, you would always be employable to as many employers as possible and you'd always be valuable to the labour market. So for people who wanted to switch careers, that's what they should do. They need to, you know, skill up, basically. 

0:37:38 - Helen
We've talked a lot about workforce retention and getting your job advert seen, but what are the basics you need to consider when you move on to the next step, about getting your job advert ready and considering a candidate? 

0:37:48 - Chelsea
You need your job description and your person specification to be correct, because they're the tools you're then going to use to assess in the selection process. So they're your criteria for shortlisting and scoring and your criteria for interview assessment, and using those as the basis enables you to consistently and fairly assess each candidate against all the other candidates and determine which one is the best fit for that specific job. 

0:38:23 - Michelle
In terms of the selection process. In the podcast from this season about neurodiversity, ben and I explored some options around making that selection process more inclusive and available to a wider section of society. 

0:38:39 - Helen
So what are the pitfalls when writing a person specification? What do councils need to look out for? 

0:38:46 - Michelle
So I would say the number one thing is do not use X number of years experience, because that gives you no indication whatsoever of a person's ability to do the job you're asking them to do. To be doing is being really specific about demonstrable skills of doing x, demonstrable skills of doing y, proven ability to communicate at a senior level, for example, rather than saying five years post-qualification experience. There are some professions where that is still relevant, but for the majority of jobs in local government, specifying a specific level of post qualification experience will not guarantee you a good quality candidate and also in terms of qualifications, thinking a bit more flexibly about those. 

0:39:42 - Chelsea
Sometimes I've seen managers who will write a person specification and say you have to have this very specific qualification and essentially it's because the person who's just left had that. But you need to think about whether you can actually do the job without that or could you get the knowledge and the experience that that qualification gives you in another way, because that's about being inclusive and opening the job up to people who have gone through different routes. So, for example, do you actually need a graduate? So, yes, somebody who holds a degree may be likely to be able to think at that level that you want them. But if you say must have a degree, you're going to exclude everybody who hasn't gone down that academic route, and there might be some very competent and capable. So you need to find ways to indicate alternatives or to make things a bit more generic in terms of what the actual thing from the degree that you're looking for is. And that comes back to what you were saying about this particular skill or experience of this particular activity or something like that. 

0:41:01 - Michelle
Absolutely and as a point of evidence, really, our colleague who has now retired, David, he was not CIPD qualified. I am CIPD qualified. We both did exactly the same job for a very long time. We obviously branched off in different directions but actually we were equally capable of undertaking the role that we delivered for Southeast employers, from very different perspectives. He had the experience, I had the formal qualification, yeah. 

0:41:32 - Chelsea
I mean. That said, there are some professions where a particular qualification is necessary, you know where there's regulatory requirements and things like that, but certainly by no means for all, and probably not even a majority of local government jobs would require a sort of regulatory specified qualification absolutely. 

0:41:54 - Michelle
It comes back to whether what you are asking for is is justifiable given the circumstances. So you know we always put in our efforts. CIPD qualification or equivalent experience. Finance would be a very similar thing, you know. But social workers, they have to have a specific qualification to be able to practice. But does that mean they have to come in the door with that qualification, or can they come in at a and this goes back to the growing your own at a lower level, go through the apprenticeship route and get qualified while they're working for you. 

0:42:25 - Rita
So you are moulding them into the social worker that you need them to be for your organisation what you're saying is basically being as inclusive as possible and avoiding things like, can you say, female preferably or male preferably, you know, and avoiding things that would limit the number of eligible candidates that you could have for that role. And being as lenient or as flexible as possible when writing it out, because most people would see a job description and if they do not tick all of those boxes, they probably wouldn't apply or they'll be worried about applying. So it's basically basically making it clear that you highlight the, the details that are very, very relevant to the role, but then for all the other ones that you you desire to have, you could now put it as desirable or not, you know not, but not not compulsory, and things like that. 

0:43:15 - Chelsea
It's basically been as as inclusive as possible the way you write your job description and person specification is going to either include or exclude certain candidates. So if you have been very specific about something like a qualification or must have experience of working in a specific industry or something like that, some people will look at that and will immediately think I don't have that, so this job is not for me. But actually, if you are able to be a bit more generic and you can really open it up and therefore you're opening up the field of candidates available to you. So one way that I've found is helpful to ask managers to think about that is to flip it from what do I need for this job to the question of the person I'm looking for for this job where are they likely to be now? Because then you can think, oh well, they could be in that, they could be in that, they could be in that and you could check that the language you've used doesn't exclude somebody in one of those yeah, I think you're right. 

0:44:24 - Michelle
You know it's, we all know not to say female or male preferred or whatever protected characteristic it is. We know that we can't do that, but actually the language we use when we are developing a recruitment documentation is absolutely critical. We know from studies that a man and a woman can read exactly the same advert, the exact same job description and person specification and they can be equally qualified with exactly the same experience. The man will read it and go well, I don't have that. I don't have that. I don't have that. But I'm going to apply for it anyway because I know that I can do what they're asking me to do, whereas the female candidate is more likely to go. I don't tick all the boxes, therefore I'm not going to put myself forward. 

So again, it's that what is essential, what is desirable, what is absolutely critical for that individual to be able to do the role versus it's a nice to have, and trying to make sure that you're making it very clear that and we do on our personal specifications, we put in essential and desirable criteria. 

We make it very clear that these are the things you must have. Anything else is an added bonus and keeping that these are the things you must have to as few points as possible really will open up that field for recruitment purposes. So, to summarise, the key aspects of recruitment and retention are preemptively understanding what might lead your employees to leave. Making sure you're capturing any exit data to understand what's causing that turnover, whether that is a genuine issue within the workplace or whether it is natural labour turnover. Reviewing the job and whether it is needed in its current state or whether that needs updating. Writing the job description, person specification, recruitment, advertisement and selection process in the most inclusive way. Trying new things in terms of your recruitment processes to broaden out the pool of applicants that you have and mapping out what an individual's career path could be and showing them the breadth of opportunities that they have within the workforce of local government. 

0:46:49 - Chelsea
And maybe also Michelle, something about enthusing the person about the organisation as a whole or the sector as a whole, rather than just about that specific job. 

0:47:01 - Helen
Thank you to all the team for joining me today and to everyone for listening. Thank you for joining me today and to everyone for listening. If you are in the process of recruiting and looking to get your job listing out there, visit the SEE job website at sejobscouk to list your vacancies. More details about the National Recruitment Campaign event Chelsea mentioned are available on the SEE website under events, and the link to the campaign will also be in the episode show notes. And if you visit the podcast page on our website, wwwseempcouk forward slash the HR edit or visit wherever you subscribe to the podcast, you will find the previous episodes Michelle mentioned, including our first AI discussion in season one and our previous episode from last week when Michelle and Ben discussed inclusive recruitment. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast, as next week Michelle and Sarah will be revisiting their discussion on AI and exploring the difference it can make in local government. Thank you for listening. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page