I’ve been thinking about how to keep Blog entries pertinent.  Many ideas seem less so after a couple of days’ reflection.  However, here’s one that passes the test!

Last Monday there was an article in the Independent, headed ‘Second Life’, which describes how Japan is dealing with the twin problems of a fast-ageing population and the need to find new roles for jobless ’salarymen’.   “Japan is desperately short of geriatric care…nursing homes will need…100,000 new workers by 2010………460,000 people have lost their jobs in Japan since the collapse of Lehman….”  So the idea is that retraining a small proportion of these could go a long way towards meeting the need.

However, there will be a lot of sifting out as the training progresses.  “You have to be able to develop different skills; reading the faces of people you’re caring for and understanding their emotional needs”….”a lot of people try care work before discovering how hard it is and leaving….” .  On the one hand, its clearly good to try to remedy unemployment and sometimes the initiative results in an unexpected success.  On the other, aptitude testing can save misdirected effort and frustration.

In the UK, we don’t have such a ‘top-down’ approach.  While KentSCP continues to exhibit at Jobs Fairs and co-hosts the Kent Social Care Expo, this draws people who are already quite interested in social care.  We then identify the traits, likes and dislikes and aptitudes of everyone who approaches us, in order to be sure they will be happy in this line of work.  Result?  Very high satisfaction scores in both our client and candidate satisfaction surveys.

The best operators in the UK’s recruitment industry will play a vital role in helping to solve the problems of unemployment as the recession progresses.