public sector recruitment

A Survey of more than 500 employers undertaken by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and Hays has found public sector organisations facing increased problems in recruiting and retaining staff.

Some 82% of organisations surveyed had difficulties filling vacancies. 38% of public sector respondents were struggling to fill vacancies at manager and specialist levels and 19% experiencing problems finding senior managers and directors. According to Rebecca Clake at the CIPD “The image of the public sector is putting off some new recruits.

This, coupled with widespread pay freezes and pension reform, makes jobs in public sector organisations less and less appealing to those individuals who have the skills required for the vacancies.” Alongside this, the Guardian has been running a series of debates on the ‘hidden poor’ and the BBC has an interesting article on how successful eight former employees of a fair trade shop have been in finding new jobs .

Taken as a collective this work highlights how many people (including those working in the public sector) are living below the breadline and experiencing in-work poverty: one civil servant described how “I’m not ‘poor poor’ – I can afford to feed my son and myself, but I usually run out of money a few days before the next pay cheque comes in.

“And I mean I literally run out: I often don’t have a single penny to spend for three or four days.”