Research view: Why flexibility is your friend in recruiting and keeping staff

Local government can compete for technology staff by allowing flexible and hybrid working, collaborating on recruitment, and making it easier to apply

Most organisations find it challenging to recruit and retain technology and digital specialists. However, the public sector has particular problems. All sectors require technologists but some of the most profitable such as financial services are particularly dependent on them to operate and have the ability to pay what is required to secure the people they need. The ability to carry out many such roles remotely means that specialists can increasingly take work anywhere in the world, meaning that – for example – a local authority may increasingly have to compete with global technology companies for staff, including in areas with relatively few high-paying private sector employers.

A report published by the House of Lords Public Services Committee in July 2022 described the public service workforce as “facing a crisis” as a result of significant staff shortages and low morale, with employers not doing enough to make careers attractive, and experiencing “considerable difficulty” in recruiting. In technology roles and other specialisms, the committee heard from witnesses that the public sector cannot compete with some parts of private sector on pay, so should look more creatively on other benefits including pensions and flexible working.

Perhaps the area where individual public sector employers have greatest control is on flexible working, both in terms of location and in other aspects. The First Division Association, the trade union for senior civil servants, told the House of Lords committee that “if the public sector is to compete with the private sector it must offer flexibility and a form of hybrid working”. Other witnesses said that flexible working can lead to significant increases in applications from women and disabled people, helping to broaden the pool of potential applications.

The most obvious type of flexible working is remote working, normally from home. Millions of employees were forced to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, but in many cases found they prefer working this way either some or all the time, despite bosses’ reservations. In general, employees seem to be keener on home working than employers.

As well as location, flexible working can include compressed hours, four-day weeks, overtime for those willing to work extra hours or job-share arrangements. ‘Flexible retirement’, allowing older people to work part-time, may have particular benefits in keeping experienced staff in the E

F workforce and attracting those from other sectors. Private sector employers may be less willing, or in some cases less able, to provide as wide a range of flexibility as the public sector, providing a competitive edge.

Hybrid working in hubs

Central government departments are increasingly offering flexibility in digital-related jobs, although usually in relatively limited ways. A February 2023 search of the government’s Civil Service Jobs website for roles whose titles included the word ‘digital’ found that 602, 84 per cent of the 720 total, were tagged with ‘flexible working’, up from 77 per cent when the same query was carried out in October 2022. ‘Job share’ appeared as a tag for 432 (60 per cent), although just 74 were tagged ‘compressed hours’, 36 with ‘homeworking’, three with ‘term time working’ and none with ‘contracted home worker’.

Common ways to offer flexible working include letting successful candidates chose a base location from a list of corporate offices, such as the seven digital hubs run by the Department for Work and Pensions in Birmingham, Blackpool, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield, along with hybrid working with staff working remotely for part of each week. While not quite allowing staff to live a digital nomad lifestyle, this approach does open access to people who are not willing or cannot afford to move to within commuting distance of a single office location.

Money: the main problem, not the only one

Sam Hall, until November 2022 the chief digital officer for Welsh local government before moving to Digital Health and Care Wales, says that local government IT and digital services currently have huge recruitment problems at all levels, including the most junior in some roles. Money is the main problem: “We want 10 years’ experience, but we are offering graduate pay,” she says. Overall, she thinks that local authorities will need to reconsider what they pay technologists and data specialists. “It is hard, but you’ve got to challenge the pay structure and acknowledge that the world has gone digital and that costs more up front, but can deliver savings and efficiencies longer term,” she says.

Matt Lewis, chief operating officer of collaborative ICT service SRS Wales and a Socitm vice-president, says that those who leave the organisation are typically mid-career staff aged 35 to 45 who are paid between £35,000 to £50,000 – but then increase this by £15,000 to

£20,000 by moving jobs. He says that it is not too difficult to recruit people at lower grades and develop them, but that SRS Wales loses senior staff as fast as it can recruit them.

Through exit interviews, SRS Wales has found that higher pay is not the only reason that people move – and although Matt says it is an important one, local authorities do not have the financial resources to match what is on offer elsewhere. One major reason is that at present anyone who wants to earn more than around £50,000 will have to start line managing people, and some technologists do not want to do this.

Matt believes that local authorities should collaborate to recruit mid-career staff. Councils typically advertise vacancies on their own websites; Matt says that a technology jobs portal for all of Wales’ 22 local authorities would make them easier to find. Similarly, local authorities could run sector-wide job fairs (either faceto-face or online) like those held by major employers including the ONS and use a standard career path framework to describe jobs, making it easier for candidates to understand roles.

Authorities should also make the application process easier, he adds. SRS Wales has to ask applicants to fill in a standard form with 22 questions and 12 pages when blank, while other employers can use online services such as Indeed that allow those who have uploaded a CV to apply for roles with a few keystrokes. L

This is an edited version of the overview and two of the viewpoints from ‘Transforming recruitment and retention’, a report published in March 2023 and available to Socitm members and partners.

Listen to the Socitm Says podcast on the report https://youtu.be/T6Eua4intwY

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