Recruitment and Retention of Staff

A safer recruitment policy outlines your company's commitment to ensure that all potential and current employees, regardless of role within your organisation, are suitable to work with children, as the safety and welfare of children is paramount. This information should also be applied to support volunteers and work experience opportunities within the setting.

It outlines your commitment to keeping children safe by ensuring everyone is aware that safeguarding children is at the heart of your practice and sits alongside all your other organisation’s policies and procedures to form a robust recruitment process.

Additional information can be found on the NSPCC's safer recruitment page.

Identifying who you need to recruit starts with looking at the skills and the gaps in your existing workforce. You can use a skills assessment to help you do this.

Think about:

• whether you’ll assess your entire operation or just a particular team
• how you will conduct the assessment
• how often you’ll perform the assessment
• how you’ll use the results

By conducting a skills assessment, you'll be able to identify the strengths in your team, and which areas you might need more skills in – these are the areas you should focus on when recruiting new team members.

Once you identify in detail the skills that you already have available in your team, you can focus on the kinds of skills, you want to attract. This means you can target your recruitment and hire people into the right roles. This increases the chances of them staying with you for the long term.

An opportunity to promote your provision and attract candidates to compliment your ethos and skills of your existing workforce.

What should be in a job description and person specification?

• role title
• hours and contractual details
• pay and benefits
• expected start date
• detailed overview of the responsibilities and tasks involved (this needs to be a true representation of the role)
• qualifications and skills required / training required for the role

These templates have been created as an aide and should be personalised to your settings specific requirements:

A targeted job advertisement helps to attract good people to your organisation. Your job adverts should have state clear expectations in regard to the role and requirements, specifically stating the tasks and responsibilities in a clear and concise format which includes the full range and scope of the role.

Good practice is to avoid using big chunks of text and jargon. The structure should include headings, sub-headings and bullet points to allow the advert to flow and for potential employees to easily scan and review the post to generate interest and confidence in the role and company advertising.

Remember if you are looking for a specific role with specific requirements – tailor the language and content to include this within the advert. A well written job advert, should include:

• job title
• introduction - begin by clearly explaining what the role is and how important it is to supporting families in your local community
• job description - provide a detailed overview of the responsibilities and tasks involved in the role, such as: supervising children, teaching them sport or other activities, preparing food, cleaning, paperwork, administrative tasks such as maintaining children’s records, attendance logs, supporting children with SEND
• qualification and skills
• hours and contractual details
• pay and benefits

• LCC ‘Submit a childcare job vacancy’ website
• DWP ‘Find a job vacancy’
• job centres
• recruitment sites such as Indeed, Monster, E-teach
• recruit through skills bootcamp
• community centres
• local Facebook pages / groups
• libraries
• local family groups
• nearby colleges and universities

An application pack should be created before advertising.

You can include information about your setting, your commitment to safeguarding children and provide guidance around the role available to ensure that those who apply are suitable to do so. This should be available to anyone who applies for the role, and be available in different formats, e.g. paper, download from website or electronic via email.

A pack could include

• an introductory letter with:
  • the job role
  • how to apply and who to contact
  • closing date for vacancy
  • information about your setting which could include photos, employee testimonials and parents' feedback.
• application form – including the selection process, reference proforma and timescales for shortlisting
• job description and personal specification
• self-disclosure form

You may find it helpful to share the following with potential candidates to give them an insight into your setting:

• ofsted report
• safeguarding statement
• newsletter
• aims and mission statement of the setting.
• sample introduction letter to accompany an application pack

Shortlisting is the process for identifying the candidates that meet the criteria listed in your job description and person specification. This should be a scoring system with names not recorded but identified as candidate A, B etc.... 

Successful candidates must receive a written appointment letter once a verbal offer has been accepted.

It should contain:

• confirmation of the information shared in the job advertisement.
• provisional start date
• working hours
• location
• benefits

It should be a conditional offer on the basis of a clear enhanced DBS check, Right to work checks and two good references.

Disclosure and Barring Service - DBS and right to work DBS

Employers must check the criminal record of someone you’ve offered a role to or who will be volunteering at the childcare setting. This is known as getting a DBS check.

GOV.UK offer a free disclosure and barring service tool to support employers to decide whether their potential employee is a suitable person to work for them.

An enhanced with barred lists check shows:

• spent and unspent convictions and criminal cautions
• any information held by local police that’s considered relevant to the role
• whether the applicant is on the list of people barred from doing the role

It is recommended that once a DBS has been completed and a certificate is issued, that employees to register with the DBS Update Service to keep DBS checks live and up to date as without the update service, the wait can be long and potential employees may accept other suitable offers during this time.

Right to work in the UK

You must check that an applicant is allowed to work for you in the UK before you employ them.

You can be fined up to £20,000 if you cannot show evidence that you checked an employee’s right to work in the UK.

You can:

• check the applicants right to work if they’ve given you their code
• check the applicant’s legal right to work in the UK 

See the guidance on GOV.UK about checking a job applicant's right to work.

For more information please view this useful document : Wraparound childcare: Recruiting and retaining your workforce.