Staff shortages are now a national crisis

[Confusedofbritain]

Staff shortages across many sectors is now a national crisis surely? I’ve given up expecting anything of this government, but why isn’t Labour beating them with a stick over this?

Some examples which affect me personally….

• Can’t go on holiday due to cancelled flight, cause by lack of ground staff.
• I work for NHS trust and we have closed a ward due to c 50% vacancies. We have plenty of money but can’t spend it. Now competing with other trusts paying increasingly high golden handshakes.
• Tried to book restaurant for Tuesday birthday. Not possible as all places shut Monday and Tuesday due to short staff (esp chefs).
• Poor service when we do go out. Staff look frazzled.
• Can’t get a builder to do an extension. Often not bothering to quote. Builder friend can’t keep labourers and brickies. Paying increasingly high wages but getting poached.
• Window fitter quoted me 2x higher than 2019 (for a much smaller window!) probably because they’re so busy and can’t increase capacity due to lack of staff. So prices have gone up by 100%.
• Long delay in discharge for father from hospital, due to long waits for care package (caused by staff shortages). He was in hospital a lot longer than necessary and declined hugely as result.

It’s largely caused by Brexit, partly people retiring or changing livelihood during Covid…:.but why wasn’t this anticipated and what are we doing about it?

I want to see posters EVERYWHERE encouraging people to consider NHS careers. It’s a rewarding career, but impossible to cope and keep going with so few staff. We are escalating to NHS England constantly, saying we need a national solution. It’s beyond critical, but I’m not confident that there is a national drive to sort this out.

The economic and social consequences of ignoring this massive structural issue will be disastrous!

And the Polish government have paid her a lovely amount to return back and work, so she is doing really well. She owns a small house in England (rising massively in value where we live) she gets her UK benefits and access in full, they own a small flat in Warsaw (their original home) and that is also rising in value. The Polish government are throwing money at them to stay and she has the best of all worlds.

My friend's daughter was a qualified SENCO manager in a nursery, when she left that job she got a job in Tesco temporarily.
She's paid more, less stress and staff discount. There are many staff there that were care workers, nurses, HCA in hospitals etc who wouldn't return to their previous occupation as they were paid better for less stress. (Obviously nurses are higher paid than Tesco staff but the responsibility is much less. )

Summing up previous posters, some of the solutions are….

• better career education in schools, colleges, university, matched up to real, local job opportunities
• heavily subsidised midlife career change training & apprenticeships
• free NHS bursaries and more training places, perhaps for teachers, dentists and vets too
• immigration (but also contentious as will drain lower income countries of talent)
• improved flexibility, pay and conditions for staff
• national recruitment drives with golden handshakes, formal programmes to encourage new entrants in careers with high demand

No, she is married to a Polish man whom also has full residency, he lives and works here (has met another woman in fact) and my cleaner lives in Poland and sometimes come back here to visit with her son. They jointly own their English and Polish home, I assure you everything is above board.

Ah, true, you did, but quite a way into your story about her. But if she’s deemed to have UK residency then she’s liable for tax here, (as well as her husband paying tax) so why shouldn’t she get the benefits?

Yes that is a good list in a nutshell confused I would add the unemployed are offered full retraining and guaranteed jobs at the end of the training period. Some will need extra support, most won't and this will transform their lives and prospects in the process.

There will always be some who are able to work systems to their advantage, but I don't think this person is typical somehow. But it makes a nice Daily Mail type story. Digging deeper it's not so black and white, is it?

So in short this one Pole has perhaps got a legitimate address in the UK, technically still being married to a UK (?) citizen. I wonder whether she has told the authorities that she's not here most of the time? I bet not. As to getting the Dr and Dentist appointments, I am still baffled.

It’s a global issue. I’m in Australia and it’s the same here. People left a lot of the industries most impacted (travel, hospitality etc) and got other work in other areas. Add to that our borders were shut for nearly 2 years.

But a shortage hopefully means they start paying better wages to attract talent- Australia like other countries, have driven down wages by the hiring of people from third world nations. And who doesn’t want higher wages in high inflation environment?!

The long term unemployed could work in farming, agricultures, factory work, be trained to be lorry drivers, cleaners work in restaurants or the millions of other jobs for the unskilled. They won't gain confidence, people skills, budgeting until they have actually started to do a day's work will they! They are a massive drain on our country, and most people think so. The government now needs to absolutely insist on full employment - and cut benefits to zero if they won't work. Our country is an easy ride for lazy people. I am visually impaired and have a heart condition. None of those roles are accessible to someone with a visual impairment, although give me a lorry and I’ll drive it if you like. ;)

Added to which, the roles I am looking at, admin/customer service are overrun with applications, and given I don’t have recent experience employers won’t look at me twice.

And volunteering to get experience is no longer an option since employers are now demanding references from paid employers or professional references with Min the last 2/5 years.

The job centre were sending me jobs for car park wardens and amazon delivery drivers, and it’s taken me 3 months to be told that we have a disability employment adviser.

If you know a job I can do and an employer wo is going to employ me please do tell me because I’m not proud, I’ll work anywhere as long as it’s possible.

But far easier to brand the likes of me as lazy workshy benefit scrounges.

Provide a decent mental health service, make it actually accessible and you can help more people get off long term benefits.

The only person i know on long term welfare has a serious heart condition and severe mental health issues. I suppose you'd consider her a 'shirker'.

One day I presume you will receive a state pension, unless you are very lucky not to need one. I am presuming this benefit (which is the most costly of all) ought to go too?

Some vile, US centric right wing views in this thread.

I work for a law firm and they are massively struggling to recruit lawyers. Hybrid and home working offered by many firms means a lawyer in one of the regions can earn a London salary. They can no longer compete.

Yes I agree @Swayingpalmtrees although technically they should be getting that support already from job centre and contractors who work with them eg A4E. In reality though they don’t do a great job of it, because it’s bloody hard to get someone who is far from the Labour market into work. It would need a lot of investment. Agree it’s the right thing to do, especially as it will improve their lives as well as make them into positive contributors to society (excluding those who can’t work for health or care reasons).

Absolutely! The NHS staffing shortage is directly affecting services. And even if we found the answer to this tomorrow, it would take at least 3 years for any difference to be felt and 7 plus years for it to become embedded.

There are also more people looking for work who are not on the unemployment figures like me, as I have stayed at home whilst my children were young.

I am struggling to find work, as my wheelchair and ability to drop things randomly rules me out of most shop, bar, kitchen work. I have happily had many jobs in these areas in my teens and twenties alongside education.

I currently spend hours filling out application jobs, many of which I never hear from again. In terms of jobs paying a living wage, they are not struggling to fill positions. As otherwise I would be working today, rather than having a short break from filling out yet another tedious form!

It is still hard to find work in this country, I wish I had @swayingpalmtrees magic wand ability to find me a job. Wheelchair friendly, within an hours drive from home.

(Just to add I have had several career jobs and promotions in the past, currently do volunteer work, have a good CV and references.)

Oh and I was offered a job in 2019 but due to the inaccessibility of their computer systems the job offer was withdrawn in 2020.

There will always be some who are able to work systems to their advantage, but I don't think this person is typical somehow

I think you would be surprised/horrified to know the numbers of people taking advantage to be honest, and it has been taking places for decades already. She is not a rare case at all.
The UK became a bit of a laughing stock because it is so easy to come and use our services. It has only recently tightened up to the extent it has.

Tony Blair gave us new hospitals with public/ private finance, draining money from the nhs in perpetuity. Very badly designed because they never asked the staff what was needed, costing yet more millions to change around. Millions wasted on computer systems not fit for purpose etc etc. It is just endless.

@Swayingpalmtrees I also presume you would be happy to do low paid shit work yourself.
It is interesting that the most poor people in the UK are not on benefits but already in work, struggling more than the long term sick.
I suppose this gives you a shudder of pleasure, they're probably all just uneducated working class scum anyway.

"but i too am working class!" i hear you reply, lol. They make the worst possible tories. I'm alright jack....

Confused add to your list proper funding for schools so that they can afford to offer a competitive salary to admin staff/TAs/invigilators/cover supervisors instead of losing them to supermarkets and Amazon.

She is supposed to be ordinarily resident in order to be entitled to otherwise chargeable NHS treatment. The things you mention wouldn't qualify her for free NHS treatment in themselves. 'British residency' isn't the correct definition or test here.

Sorry they did that too you Shame they think so little of their current and potential employees, so don't make things accessible for everybody.

I see this all the time, a small cement step somewhere, which only able people can use safely. Rather than a cement slope (in the same space), which would be accessible for everyone!

Op, I will pull you up on the “why wasn’t this anticipated?”
it was. It was raised by many people in the press and tv numerous times.
it was also pretty obvious that brexit was about immigration as far as voters were concerned “taking our precious jobs” . Bollocks. Most jobs done by migrant workers were jobs most uk people didn’t want to do. And stopping EU movement was never going to solve any immigration “crisis” anyway as it is a lot wider influx than EU citizens.
as well as all the issues with supply chain. I worked in supply chain and could not understand how the general public were so woefully ignorant of how goods more across borders and logisitcs capacity globally . Off course Brexit would have a catastrophic effect on supply chains.
I cannot understand how the British public are so woefully bad at maths that if you say we are going to remove ourselves form “Brussels bureaucracy” it is going to cost us as public a lot more to support all the increased civil servants and paperwork needed to manage even essential paperwork, laws, customs that previously we’d split cost between us and 26 plus other nations .
so this is not about government being “ignorant” or not foreseeing anything. Don’t delude yourself. Brexit was a vanity project about a jingoistic desire to return to glory days of the empire. Plus about people with a lot of money hedging against it to make even more money from the miseries it has resulted in. People like Rees Mogg and his cronies have got very wealthy form it. It was NEVER about what would be best for the average British household, the NHS ( especially those lies about the magic money tree), builders, inflation etc. That was all predicted .

the great British public didn’t want to listen to these arguments. They preferred the jingoistic call that we could make Britain great again - codswallop.

I don't know the answer but I totally agree. My partner runs a small-medium sized business in a highly competitive sector that so many people want to get into (and there aren't many companies like that around here) yet they can't get the staff. They used to get hundreds of enquires to each vacancy and now less than 10 for some. Everyone wants a flexible work from home role and they can't offer that.