There is no shortage of gloomy reports and statistics to highlight the staffing challenges that face the residential care sector due to the demographic pressures of an ageing population, abundant employment opportunities and all the uncertainties of Brexit that combine to create a competitive and volatile hiring environment.
Every week we see new reports of care home closures and operators struggling to survive. A recent study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPRR) has predicted a staffing shortfall in England of about 400,000 by 2028.1It is this type of pressure that is forcing care service providers to re-evaluate their hiring strategies and has helped to highlight one element of the process that may previously have been overlooked onboarding.
Onboarding covers all of the human resources (HR) processes that are required to bring new staff members into an organisation. It begins when a successful candidate is selected and covers everything that is