Local Government Hiring Strategies

Frequently overburdened with increasing service demands while contending with slashed budgets and lacking resources, local governments are often under strain when it comes to executing an effective hiring strategy. However, a realistic yet impactful strategy seems to be exactly what the sector needs now, as a recent report found the workforce growing, with an estimated 5.94 million employees in the public sector in June 2024, an increase of 76,000 (1.3%) compared with June 2023.

With the right approach, local government hiring teams can overcome many of the obstacles traditionally faced in the sector, allowing not just the recruitment but also the retainment of top talent.

Effective Promotions

With a lack of time and money, promotions of the up to 800 different professions that are available in the public sector have to be targeted and considered. Taking stock and conducting an analysis of the results achieved historically with various platforms, job fairs, and employer branding methods will likely help guide a sensible allocation of resource.

One eye should also be kept on emerging trends. For example, earlier this year #governmentjobs incurred over 22 million views on TikTok, as Gen Z expressed their desire for the stable security of working in the public sector, as more of them became averse to the high-risk high reward toss up of higher earning industries that were seeing a wave of redundancies.

While this doesn’t mean your recruitment team should be tasked with creating viral content on TikTok, it does present an opportunity not only for targeting younger professionals, but also makes explicit the language, values, and propositions that would most appeal to this particular cohort of potential candidates. So, whether you’re drawing up advertisements for next year’s graduate scheme or finalising the job description of upcoming junior vacancies this offers public sector recruitment teams some guidance for how and where their limited resource should be directed.

Transparency in the workplace has also been a growing priority among talent. Transparency is also beneficial to employers, as the more authentic your employer brand is, the more likely you are to attract to correct talent and retain them. Therefore, it should be a priority to ensure recruitment marketing efforts are guided by this ethos – sharing salary bands, genuine employee testimonies, and answering candidate questions with positive honesty during the interview process will ensure effective recruitment.

Flexibility

Flexible working has a long list of benefits which impact both the employee and employer. Two of the most significant are:

Improved Diversity, Equality and Inclusion:

When you offer flexible work, you expand your talent pool significantly. It makes your workplace more accessible to those who live with disabilities that may make commuting or working in an office five days a week challenging. Geographically, it’s more inclusive and enables those who may not be able to afford long commutes or living in big cities to apply for your vacancies. People who have caring responsibilities and single parents also benefit from flexible working arrangements.

Mental Health:

Flexible working has been linked to improved work-life balance, which can enhance employee mental wellbeing. This is also a benefit to the employer, as a happier, healthier workforce leads to a boost in productivity, retention, and engagement, with Gallup finding that the optimal time spent off site was 60% – 80%. This ultimately results in saving money and improving output.

Invest in your Tech

One of the most effective ways to improve your hiring strategy is streamlining processes. This improves candidate experience, as they receive quicker responses and don’t have to go through clunky, time-consuming applications, and also generates time and cost savings for the organisation, as automation and workflows take care of the admin that previously hindered a fruitful recruitment strategy.

A robust ATS should also be highly customisable, allowing it to be tailored to the unique challenges and needs of your council. This should also allow your organisation’s recruitment team to have bespoke dashboards to increase visibility of your organisations hiring and people metrics, enabling you to measure and track the success of your hiring strategy and identify areas for improvement with greater accuracy and speed.

Since implementing Hireserve ATS, Merton Borough Council experienced huge streamlining in their day to day processes, saving them much needed time and people resource.

ATS Recruitment Manager, Caroline Ramsey commented: “Hireserve ATS has streamlined the process massively. A big plus for me is the referencing that can be done through the system. My team used to have to prepare each reference letter and attach it to an email individually to send out just one request for one candidate. We used to spend an awful lot of time doing that! Now with Hireserve ATS it’s much, much easier. Once a candidate has given us their reference details, it’s literally just ticking a box and the email automatically goes”.

Read the full case study to learn more.