What would make you consider working in NHS admin right now?

[Helpmethinkofasolution]

I have never known things as bad as this. Job getting no applicants, successful applicants regularly turning down jobs and then us having to go back to the start in terms of recruitment.
When I started in 2018 I remember there were 200 applicants for most band 4 jobs. Where are those people now and what is going to attract people to apply again?

Is it post Covid wariness of the NHS? Is it that we used to be flexible but now WFH jobs are even more flexible? Is it that the private sector is paying more? To my (possibly un- observant) eye, it doesn't seem like there are loads of admin jobs out there offering much more money. Unless it's that there is less responsibility with these private sector admin roles.

We used to get a good stream of working mums (generally) who would appreciate an interesting and flexible job with good sick pay, annual leave and ok pension but they are no longer applying.
This won't be used in any recruitment campaign, I'm just genuinely interested (and bloody worried that I'll be doing six peoples jobs forever!)

Not a thing.
I applied for plenty of NHS roles back when the ink was still drying on my degree and couldn’t get so much as a call back, despite having appropriate experience along with qualifications.

I would have loved a job that paid that much….20 years ago. I wound up getting a totally different project management role on a much higher salary and went on from there.

Something is very wrong with the NHS recruitment process and has been for a very long time.

£22k isn't enough for an adult to support themselves on, especially if they're paying £25 a week (so £100 a month) for parking.

There was a thread on here the other day where someone was complaining that they had very poor quality applicants when they were offering about 22k for a graduate

The overwhelming response was that they are not offering enough money. 22 - 25k just isn't enough to live on anymore.

Employers (and the government) need to wake up to the fact that it isn't an employers market anymore.

Where i live in surrey, estate agents wont consider renting studio or 1 bed flats to anyone earning less than 30,000 per year...

You cant even get a viewing for a rental.

Makes taking a job paying less a real headache as it creates just as many problems as it solves... Unless you can live witg parents into your 30s or have a well paid partner, these salaries are hopeless for people without other sources of income.

Never again would I do an NHS admin job I was band 3 and it was horrendous! Terrible conditions, parking nearly £9 per day, bullying was rife, a very young manager who got promoted with no experience (was the niece of a service manager), just from start to finish a very stressful awful experience! I now ask for any appointments that have to be done in that department to be at another hospital because of what that job did to my mental health.

@MidnightMeltdown some employers aren't getting it even yet.

My previous employer paid £18k for the lowest grade admin roles. Retention was always a problem but when I left last year they were lucky to keep people past a month. Some just disappeared after the first couple of days. Some didn't show up at all. The official senior management line was that recruitment was "challenging" these days. Well sure it is, when you're paying people what I earned 24 fucking years ago. That entire department spent its time recruiting, interviewing and training as an endless stream of people came in and out the doors.

Quality obviously dipped, processes were falling apart, nobody knew what the fuck they were supposed to be doing because they'd been trained by people who had only been there a week themselves. Meanwhile senior management continued to work from home and do blog posts about well-being and organisation values and the importance of teamwork. It actually got to the stage where it was no longer even stressful; it was just farcical.

Your post is interesting, in our trust band 4 is a supervisor and most other admin jobs are band 2 or occasionally band 3. Our work load has gone through the roof including our responsibilities and stress is causing a lot of staff sickness.

I echo what people are saying about wages/cost of petrol and parking.

Another thought is that with it being NHS, if it was patient facing, would it involve wearing a mask all day whilst sitting at a desk? That would certainly put me off, when other jobs available for similar wages would involve working from home.

Nothing
I'm band 3 admin, like a previous poster said, band 4 where I am is a supervisor role.
This is a job I wanted for years and now I have it, it's ruining my life
Thankless and demoralising

The main putting me off any public sector job is how complicated and impersonal the application process appears compared to any other sector. I have a Masters degree and couldn't work out what any of the job roles even involved and what exactly was required due to the jargon-filled job adverts. There's very little sense of how transferable skills would help; for example I may not have direct experience of governance from other roles but as a reasonably intelligent person could learn...

I also have the impression NHS workers are always overworked and there are none of the more "fun" perks there may be in the private sector and morale is low.

I looked at some NHS roles in my local area and the hours also seemed very inflexible with fixed start times, and the location isn't that good either in my area (London but it's not near a station so would need to take a bus and always find them unreliable).

I work in the NHS with 13 years to go before retirement age (if the government doesn't move the goalposts again of course) and am just about to change Trusts, I almost gave up on the application as Trac jobs is SOOOO very bad compared to old NHS jobs. I'm sure HR just love it though. It did make me wonder how many people do actually just give up and go and apply for jobs that just need a cv, offer wfh as standard, and aren't under constant threat of merger/being destroyed by the current government, who I can't see being replaced in England ever again. If I were younger I wouldn't be staying in the UK, let alone the NHS.

And I enjoy my job, I really do, but the stupid way the increments now work, the constant erosion of conditions, the way 22 year olds are waltzing into Band 7 and above while older staff are ignored at best and belittled at worst, and the utter contempt from the government and hypocrisy from most of the media are all exhausting. New junior doctors have started this week and they already look jaded and worn out.

I worked in GP surgeries as a receptionist/administrator for 14 years until this February. I was on minimum wage throughout and the role just got bigger with more stress. I worked throughout the pandemic even though the patients thought we were drinking tea and watching Netflix (I had this actually said to me as a patient had waited 30 minutes in the phone queue). 2 GP surgeries closed in our area so we had to take on their patients but we had no more clinians or admin staff to cope with the extra demand. Its an incredibly stressful job with limited resources. I tried so hard to give the patients what they needed and deserved but it was impossible and the abuse was horrible.

I had to leave for my own mental health as I was desperately miserable towards the end. I now have another job with far nicer working conditions, better management and I bring home more working 4 days a week than 5 days a week at the surgery.

What do you mean by flexible? In my experience it's very inflexible with set hours and set days.

It's better than I get paid as an admin officer in the civil service but I once worked in the NHS for a year and wild horses couldn't drag me back. There was an accepted, nasty culture of bullying from managers and a real feeling that you couldn't approach people on higher bands as they were way too important. The claim of flexible working was bullshit in my case. in theory you chose your shifts, in practice they all got changed. oh and you can't work from home of course

Stop using afc job descriptions when you advertise. They are designed to get the correct banding on posts not to attract new employees. Write a simple one page job description that non NHS people can understand and advertise with that. Big up flexible working opportunities and career progression.

I got made redundant from my PA role last October. When looking at job vacancies I completely dismissed anything in the NHS as the pay is so dire. I live alone and there was no way I could afford to drop that amount in salary and pay for the additional fuel and parking. I’ve also worked for the NHS in the past and they are bloody awful employers.

Follow policy as loosely as possible. Do expressions of interest and have it open for a week. Make the requirements of the role so specific only you can apply. I say this as v senior NHS hr. You’ve got to make the policy work for you. No one wrote that policy so that people like you wouldn’t get jobs you clearly deserve.

I’m starting a band 2 admin job for the nhs very soon. Worried I’m going to hate it now but I have to take it as I have no job and little experience and interviewing for and getting this one was bloody hard
work.

A decent pension is the only reason I'd work for public sector these days. That and better holidays. However I don't think that public sector jobs offer these now.

I work with public sector and everyone seems very stressed out, and the bureaucracy and red tape are a nightmare, policies and proceeded changes seem the norm and without much of a thought process. That would drive me nuts.

My dad used to work for public sector and did a lot of driving, around 150 miles a day, as part of his job. They wouldn't give him a car allowance as they didn't want it to look like a perk, so they hired him a car every day. It must have cost them £££'s all so they couldn't be held accountable for my Dad getting the perk of a company car. It's that kind of attitude that I couldn't deal with

I've found NHS jobs are more of a faff to apply for compared to something like indeed. That's why I've applied for less NHS jobs.

My band 5 admin job (rare as hen’s teeth but it was quite niche) that I left a while ago is now graded as a 3 (was typically a 4) and parking charges are now £9.80 a day. Not a chance in hell I’d every return. Paid far more in the private sector for better conditions and none of the shit that comes with it.

I work in the NHS and I find we are delusional about what we can expect for a low salary. Job descriptions are loaded more heavily every time a job is advertised, degree is listed as essential when it really isn't. Fewer jobs are advertised as permanent, and more require willingness to work in different clinics or departments "as required".

Meanwhile my DF works in a firm which pays admin staff 50% more for half the responsibility. Good applicants are not crazy.

22k was a reasonable admin salary 15 years ago. Why have employers got away with paying administrative staff such low wages for so long? And dont forget, with COL at nearly 10% 22k this year is worth a lot less than it was last year. I bet employers are still expecting the same calibre staff (probably graduates - ha!) For this wage that's worth even less than it was a year ago.

Concur with PPs: incomprehensible job descriptions, absurd person specifications, ridiculously over-engineered application processes.

Mind you, that goes for most jobs these days.

The pay puts me off.

I saw some posts advertised a couple of weeks ago and they advertised pay is around £5k below other admin positions I’ve seen advertised and I can’t afford the pay cut.

My friend was offered a job about 2 months ago and they’re still fucking around with her start date. She’s now looking elsewhere as she can’t wait any longer