NHS trust sees surge in job applications
Hospital bosses say a successful social media campaign has led to a spike in job applicants.
University Hospitals of North Midlands ran a ‘Five reasons to join UHNM’ campaign in January in a bid to attract more people to apply for jobs at the trust.
A staffing crisis has been one of the biggest problems facing the NHS in recent years, and UHNM has been no exception, with the trust’s vacancy rate peaking at 14 per cent a year ago – meaning one in seven posts was unfilled. But UHNM board members were told that the ‘Five reasons’ campaign had been a big success, with job applications increasing ‘across the board’.
The number of applications for jobs within UHNM’s administrative services increased from around 1,000 in December to more than 2,400 in January, with increases also seen in healthcare science and in nursing and midwifery. UHNM’s vacancy rate fell to 8.2 per cent in January, below the target of 11 per cent, with the trust’s turnover rate also falling over the past year.
Chief people officer Jane Haire said: “Over the course of January we had our ‘five reasons to join UHNM’ campaign. It was a large scale social media campaign, which was really successful. We’ve seen a big spike in the number of applicants we’ve received into posts over the month.
“In particular, we’ve had a 245 per cent increase in our admin and clerical applicants, which is great news for the organisation. But we’ve also seen increases across the board. So we’ll repeat that campaign when the time is right for us.”
The campaign’s five reasons for joining UHNM were: ‘Our people and our careers’, ‘Working at an acute major trauma trust in the heart of Staffordshire’, ‘Our benefits’, ‘We look after our people’, and ‘Our patients’.
UHNM chair David Wakefield congratulated the HR team on the successful recruitment campaign.
He said: “I thought that ‘five reasons to join UHNM’ campaign was magnificent. A 245 per cent increase in applications for admin and clerical positions is great.”
At the end of January, UHNM had 1,023 full-time vacancies, compared to a ‘budgeted establishment’ of 12,094.
