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!

The Govt. we’re warned but remainders were vilified for scaremongering. All of our services are depleted. It’d be funny if it weren’t so detrimental to the country.

Recently took a short break, having booked to go to Italy, pre Covid. We’d paid up front and the hotel had saved the booking but it was kind of “use it or lose it” time. Never again. The airport was chaos. We were checked through the gate by a frazzled looking woman who didn’t bother looking at our documentation properly and was wearing a pink fluffy jumper and cut off jeans.

There are no dentists, no ambulance drivers, fewer nurses and medics, depleted hospitality workers; it’s a total mess. Just as it was predicted.

I don’t understand what you mean by that?

maybe she didn’t interview very well the first time? Or interviewed ok but other people interviewed better. There has to be a limited number of places per year due to placement capacity. Wards can only have x number of students per shift. I turn a lot of good applicants away for a similar degree.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out - after years of employers calling the shots, zero hour contracts , crap shift work- suddenly the employees are in demand - and choosing the best job for them and no doubt wanting higher pay.

Some of those unemployed will be people who are more than qualified and experienced enough to do a skilled job but who now have fluctuating health conditions - not enough to be totally incapable of work and not nearly enough to be entitled to sickness benefits though.

Employers don’t want them, because it’s so difficult to accommodate someone, who may be brilliant at the job, but who you’re never sure will be there as there is no slack in the system. For example, I have a relative with ME. He’s a high-flier, extremely bright, capable of high level work and has done jobs like that very successfully before developing ME. Now, any even mild illness knocks him for six and means days off work, usually this happens every month because public transport and going to work mean coming across other people’s germs. That means Bradford Factor scores end up very high, and he repeatedly gets managed out of jobs. WFH actually helped him as much less exposure to other people. He’s relocated to a cheaper area and got his living costs right down so he can work part-time to help manage the condition but he’s still been managed out of two jobs there.

And the numbers of those people is getting bigger and bigger as long Covid seems
to have a similar effect. I have a teacher friend with long Covid, who had Covid in January and is still not back at work full-time. She’s resigned from the end of this term as she doesn’t feel she’ll be able to work full-time again and was struggling with managing even part-time. So that’s another teacher vacancy to fill.

It will definitely mean better terms for employees. Employees cannot be the ones to always carry the risk.
Set hours and shifts will be a selling point for employers.

Not read the whole thread but but just trying to picture the Polish cleaner going on a 2000 mile round trip with her son for a 5min GP appointment to get some painkillers.
If someone has ever done that, they will not do it a second time!

@messybutfun I want to know how she got an appointment in the first place 🤣🤣

We have a very small, and highly successful, engineering business; most of our work is in the marine industry, and this week two of our guys went to do a job. It went smoothly so the yard supervisor offered them both jobs. Happily for us, both declined the offer as they live too far away and property in that town costs stupid money. But they also declined because we are a small business, and because the staff know that we don't take much more than they are paid. Not every employer takes the Michael out of the employees, although too many do. DH is considering whether the budget will stretch to making one-off payments to help with the cost of energy next October.

You were lucky there. But in the main people are being poached daily. A friend got a very well paid job he was over the moon, great hours, great team, he was poached 48 hours later for more money again so quit.

TBF the companies who are looking for forklift drivers should provide the training.

It's up there with the wanting trained people but not willing to foot the bill to pay for it. Even if they put a clause in the contract you have to stay for x months.

@xingming. You sound like a fair employer who treats people as human beings and not just a mere number.
We need more employers with that attitude.
fair pay, conditions and hours usually results in staff loyalty.

LinkedIn is going nuts, I get around 6 look sees a week,. DS is getting two or three e mails a week for an industry he no longer works in. They want to know if he's interested in xyz , if he was still singl, childless yes he'd travel the world but those jobs are not as attractive post covid perhaps

Even if there were that many, would you want them cooking or serving your food?
Want them to be cleaning your house or office?
Your ok with them "caring" for your mum in her care home?

Let's be honest, those few who are long term unemployed, but are happy to live on £77 a week are not going to make good chefs, waiters, carers etc.
And if you think it's so fabulous living on £77 a week, why don't you try it?

Re automation. Dh is a skilled workman and his boss was approached by a sales company to buy a piece of kit that would do dh job instead of him.
It was a very expensive piece of kit that took twice as long as dh so the management decide against the purchase.

They have also given several pay rises to their staff this year to help with rising costs.

A good employer is one who will survive unscathed.

You've said it yourself there why they declined the job - they're loyal to you because you treat them properly, like assets you want to keep rather than a necessary evil that is begrudgingly given the bare minimum, and not even that if it can be got away with.
Companies like yours are the ones that will survive this and maybe even come out stronger because people don't want to leave a good employer when there's so many around that are awful.
I've twice gone back to employers because they were good employers who realised that their staff are their biggest asset, they are both family owned small/medium businesses in different industries and they've seen what's happening and responded to keep their current staff and attract the new ones they need as things expand for them.
No workplace or job is perfect but the employers who at least realise that their staff are potentially their biggest asset and that if you treat them well they will be happy, loyal and work harder for you, are the ones that will get through this.
We seem to be obsessed in this country (and maybe others I don't know) about employees taking the piss, and preventing that happening, it does happen but it would probably happen less it the employees felt invested in instead of resented.

*Not read the whole thread but but just trying to picture the Polish cleaner going on a 2000 mile round trip with her son for a 5min GP appointment to get some painkillers.

If someone has ever done that, they will not do it a second time*

Its funny - DDIL is Polish!! Covid apart, she far prefers to get medical care in Poland, whenever she goes home to see her family. They got to see a GP the next day for DGS - none of this spending 40 minutes on the phone to get an appointment, telephone triage and then the GP insisting DGS had a PCR test, before he could be seen f2f! Her mother had a stent - she had a week’s stay in hospital. DH had a stent - he was sent home after a couple of hours!

DS’ previous girlfriend, also Polish had braces as an adult, to straighten her teeth, about 5 years ago. It either cost £120 or £200 for the whole course of treatment - months of work!

My dh works in a warehouse and all the permanent staff recently got decent pay rises. They use a lot of agency staff many of which aren’t great or reliable so guess company realised they need to keep the reliable ones happy, theres lots of warehouse adverts at the min

I imagine that an issue with some jobs is childcare.

When children get to primary stage, it helps if one parent is self-employed or flexible - such as a cab driver, or self-employed electrician, self-employed hairdresser, TA with school holidays, so that they can be the one to pick up the child from school, if sickness strikes midday, or stay at home with then, if they are sick that morning. For some couples, that kind of pattern works better than both working 9 -5 shifts, or longer. Some parents may not feel that they can commit to retraining for a different career.

Well lots of us would like to be party members again, the great resignation of women happened in the labour party because they dont seem to know what a woman is.

On top of that, decreased funding meaning particularly decreased support for children with SEND. You are told that you must manage children with, in some cases, quite severe SEND with no additional support.

Yes, l taught Textiles. Quite often had visually impaired children with no support using a machine with a constantly moving needle that they couldn’t see🤷🏼‍♀️

And then there would be the rest of the class with no support. ADHD, ASD, behaviour issues etc.

l could either sit with visually impaired kid all lesson to make sure he didn’t get a needle through his finger, whilst the rest of the class were ignored and misbehaving.Or teach the rest of the class and risk the VI kid getting a needle through his finger. It was all dangerous with no regard to H and S.

Not allowed to modify the curriculum as ALL children must have the same experience.

l retired aged 57. This is just one example of the current shit in schools. Add Covid, accountability, behaviour, Ofsted, no support staff, increasing mental health issues among teens with no support, no money for materials, punitive sickness procedures, why would anyone stay? Everything is always your fault. Little Johnny got belted by his dad last night? It’s your fault he’s not making progress.

l liked teaching and liked my colleagues, but had had my fill of the rest. The damage it’s doing to teen mental health is disgusting. So is the damage it’s doing to staff. This is why they leave…

Yes you sum it up well

I think we were better governed when we had a hard 11+, taken by everyone, and creamed off the clever ones to grammar schools and a tiny high powered university system where only the top 2.5% qualified. I disagreed with lots of politicians who came up that route in the 50s and 60s but they look like geniuses compared to today's shower.

Late 1970s and 1980s education seems to have produced people highly trained, qualified and able in their narrowly focused fields, but not very rounded or interested in becoming so.

Attributable, I imagine, to a disastrous combination of progressive nonsense in education followed up with years of preoccupation with league tables and an impoverished curriculum. And generations raised with the easy distraction of telly - ‘boredom’ is a great motivator.

The mobile phone addiction is a real detriment to learning

I think it affects concentration etc

Why describe it as “early retirement” for the over 50s?

The legal retirement age was abolished a number of years ago and since the ‘pension freedoms’ of 2015 (?), you can draw down on your private pension from aged 55.

why wouldn’t you (if you can afford it and assuming you don’t have a job you love more than life itself)?