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Recruitment and retention issues in better neighbourhood services fund programmes

CHAPTER THREE RETENTION

3.1 Staff retention was identified as an issue in all Pathfinders with the exception of Pathfinders F and M. Seventeen different positions were affected by staff leaving, but the total number of vacant jobs totalled 56 as some positions were vacant on more than one occasion while other generic positions with multiple jobs (e.g. neighbourhood wardens) experienced more than one vacancy during the BNSF programme. From our discussion with Pathfinders we estimate that this is approximately 1 in 10 jobs. However, taking into account the number of jobs created by the BNSF programme as a whole, our view and that of Pathfinders is that none of the Pathfinders were adversely affected by staff retention difficulties and that staff turnover was not unreasonable.

3.2 The professions most affected by retention difficulties were broadly similar to the positions affected by recruitment difficulties. However the distribution between the professions is different as youth workers and social workers were less commonly affected by retention difficulties than by recruitment difficulties. Programme management/administration and community safety jobs feature more prominently in the professions affected by staff retention. Details of the professions affected by staff retention difficulties are as follows:

• Programme Management/Administration - an issue in four Pathfinders where the positions affected were a senior clerical assistant, an administrator, a monitoring officer, clerical assistants, a development officer, a BNSF project officer and a BNSF research and information officer.
• Community Safety - an issue in four Pathfinders where the positions affected were a community safety worker, an estate warden, neighbourhood wardens and a community worker.
• Qualified Youth Workers - an issue in three Pathfinders where the positions affected included youth workers, youth outreach workers and a youth information worker.
• Health professionals - an issue in four Pathfinders where the positions affected were a drugs outreach worker, health development workers, a health visitor and a co-ordinator.
• Education - an issue in two Pathfinders where the positions affected were child safety assistants, homework tutors and a community education worker.
• Qualified social workers - an issue in one Pathfinder.

3.3 The reasons why staff left varied. The most common reason was directly related to the temporary nature of the BNSF positions - 18 of the 56 jobs affected became vacant when staff moved to more secure employment. More attractive alternative employment included temporary contracts which exceeded the remaining length of BNSF contracts were also seen as more attractive. The second most common reason for staff leaving concerned part-time workers who left to secure more hours - 11 of the 56 jobs affected quoted more hours as the main reason. This involved both extensions to part-time hours and movement from part-time to full-time hours. In 10 of the 56 jobs the reason for staff leaving was not known.

3.4 Other reasons cited by the Pathfinders for staff leaving their BNSF positions were:

3.5 The specific positions affected at the time of our research are shown in Appendix 3.

3.6 Given the temporary nature of the majority of BNSF employment, Pathfinders felt that it was natural that staff 'would always have an eye on the end of their contract'. Pathfinders stated that their BNSF experiences were no different to other time-limited programmes - in other words there was nothing specific about the BNSF programme that created more staff retention difficulties than other time-limited initiatives. Pathfinders highlighted the final year of any programme as the crucial time when staff would be actively looking for alternative employment with the final six months seen as particularly problematic. Only Pathfinder N stated that staff turnover during the BNSF programme had been greater than previous experience of public sector working but they stated that the causes were not specifically related to BNSF. The Pathfinder's lead officer had previously had a settled team in place so the departure of BNSF staff was considerably different.

3.7 Two Pathfinders (H and M) that experienced significantly delayed starts to their programmes were largely unaffected by staff retention issues at the time of our research. However, these Pathfinders anticipated that they would also face staff retention problems in their final year.

3.8 The relatively limited extent of staff retention difficulties is also put into context by the acknowledgement from Pathfinder J that staff retention with neighbourhood wardens was not as significant as might have been expected given the characteristics of the jobs which are demanding frontline jobs in public facing roles. The Pathfinder pointed out that despite the temporary contracts and the difficult nature of the job - with numerous incidents of verbal abuse as well as instances of wardens and their vehicles being subject to attack by missiles and occasional minor assaults on personnel - there were only eight departures since July 2002. Of the eight, six had moved to jobs offering permanent contracts. The Pathfinder did however state that wardens had been anxious about the lack of clarity regarding their futures until the announcement of Year 4 funding.

3.9 The innovative nature of BNSF work was highlighted in the previous chapter as an aid to recruitment. It was also mentioned in terms of improving staff retention. Pathfinder C Co-ordinator's view was that staff retention has not been an issue because of the nature of the work which was described as 'cutting edge' and 'innovative', offering new experiences to staff from across the professions. The Pathfinder has only had two people leave out of over 50 jobs, one to another part of BNSF and the other back into mainstream local authority work. However, the Pathfinder also indicated that staff retention may become more of an issue as funding comes to an end.

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