New Research Highlights Providers’ Positive Experience and Future Plans for International Recruitment
The results of recent research conducted by BA Healthcare and the National Care Forum shows that despite major changes to the Immigration Rules this year, positive experiences mean providers continue to look overseas.
The Research
The research conducted in July of this year included both a survey, which went out to all NCF members and follow-up interviews. The survey asked members whether they had recruited overseas workers in the last two years, the origin of those workers, their experience of the process, whether recruitment continued to be a challenge and whether they would recruit overseas workers in the future.
The follow up interviews explored providers’ experiences and future plans in more detail to understand what providers had found particularly challenging to date and what would influence their strategy in the future.
Key Findings
90% of participants had recruited overseas workers in the last 2 years. This is no surprise given over 73,000 health and care workers were issued Certificates of Sponsorship in 2022, and international student numbers hit record highs. Half of respondents said they were now close to being fully staffed and recruitment was not a challenge.
Many providers looked to overseas recruitment for the first time or did a lot more of it in light of the challenging post-Covid labour market.
Over 60% of providers who recruited overseas workers only recruited workers who were already in the UK. This group includes skilled worker visa holders and their dependants and students and post-study work visa holders and their dependants. The latter is a group now shrinking rapidly, with student dependants largely banned and 60,000 fewer overseas students likely to join UK universities this academic year (source: HEPI).
A minority of providers brought overseas workers into the UK, despite this route having the highest levels of retention and a similar cost profile to recruitment of a skilled worker from within the country.
Over 60% of respondents rated their overall experience of international recruitment as at least a 7/10.
Despite positive experiences and significant improvements to recruitment and retention, fewer providers (55%) planned to recruit overseas in the next 12 months citing a range of reasons for this:
Unacceptable UKVI processing times.
Growing administrative burden from UKVI.
Minimum salary for skilled workers exceeding NMW and local market rates.
UKVI pay rates being set out of step with local authority fee negotiations.
Localised improvements in the local market in some areas and some people returning to the care sector from retail and hospitality.
Analysis
Our research highlights the importance and value of international recruitment. That almost 10% of jobs in the care sector remain unfilled, despite hundreds of thousands of new people coming to work in the UK, shows just how much of a debt we owe to the people who have made the UK their home. It also shows that we will need more people willing to come to the UK to meet current and future demand, especially in the absence of a strategy to train and attract more UK workers.
What the numbers alone do not fully show is what a success international recruitment has been. All but one interviewee commented on the dedication and quality of the overseas workers they had hired and the effect of this across the entire organisation: improving retention, reducing sickness absence, improving continuity of care and outcomes, and raising morale. Almost everyone we spoke to said that this experience would make them want to hire more overseas workers.
International recruitment works. And it works incredibly well. So why are only 55% planning to do it in the next 12 months? No responses to our survey cited the direct costs of the process. A small number felt they weren’t big enough to do it. In our experience it works just as well for small organisations as larger ones. For some, the higher rates of pay for overseas workers made it unviable but for most, there was a single issue – the increasing challenge of navigating UKVI processes and the speed at which their requests are dealt with.
In the absence of a long awaited but endlessly delayed strategy to staff and fund social care more sustainably, these blockages need to be addressed. Government has inherited a politicised immigration system that is not meeting the needs of health and care providers.
We’re working hard to ensure UKVI is listening to the sector’s concerns and government understands the need for skilled, experienced people and a responsive, predictable immigration system that allows for providers to make long-term decisions.
