To wonder if any other employers have struggled to fill positions?

[bitjel]

We have had NO interest in a couple of our roles for over a year and have even gone through then job centre (no help). Is unemployment so low ate the moment that there is no-one to fill roles?

Home to school transport only. We are a SEN school, yes.

£475 per week (averages 18 hrs a week). I realise its just not enough. I'll feed back to "up top".

Even if your hourly rate is generous, the overall pay will be low

As others have suggested, I think better to include this role in e.g. janitor duties

£26 an hour? For a minibus driver?! Where on earth IS this?

If that it was you are actually offering, that is obviously a lot for a job like this. But it's still split hours, and people won't want to do a couple of hours in the morning, and a couple of hours 5 or 6 hours later. It restricts what they can do with the rest of their day.

Are you sure, a school is offering £26 per hour to a bus driver? If they are, I'm very surprised you can't fill the role.

It isn't necessarily that your pay rate is low, but it's the context. Your pool of potential applicants is mostly going to be people who have structured their lives around their own (grand)children's school run. If they take the minibus job, then they have to organise and pay someone else to take their own (grand)children to school in their place. Are you paying enough for someone who'd have to fund childcare out of that wage?

I honestly think you'd solve the issue if you made it a perk that a driver's child got priority for a mini bus place.

I always love the "The pay is very generous". No, it's not. Not if the total hours are low and timed to make it difficult to find a second job.

As you've realised OP, the low number of hours and awkward times of them make this an unattractive offer for people, even on a decent hourly rate. Your best bet is to combine the bus driver role with another role, like caretaker. You're far more likely to get uptake on a full time position.

Wow, where are you? My daughter (who has experience both with working with children and driving a van) would have jumped at that. She's currently earning less than that working full time in a food/drink outlet.

Exactly that. Yes, at a normal driver's rate this job would be most unattractive, but if it's really paying £26 p/hr you can earn equivalent to FT on NMW for a few hours a day.

I suspect it's not though.

£26 an hour? For a minibus driver?! Where on earth IS this?

If that is was you are actually offering, that is obviously a lot for a job like this. But it's still split hours, and people won't want to do a couple of hours in the morning, and a couple of hours 5 or 6 hours later. It restricts what they can do with the rest of their day.

The generous hourly rate still only helps if you can work 18hrs a week term time only.

It's enough to stop you doing anything else.

The question should be in the total wage greater than benefits - if yes then there should be (1) no excuse not to take it (2) sanctions if you don’t apply

Think about where you are advertising. I recruit volunteer drivers and we have a lot who are retired from uniformed services. They retire earlier than most and like to have some structure to the week still. Or as one chap put it - my wife wants me out of the house!

Think about what you're competing with. Some of the things people might consider when looking at this job:

• No opportunity to work from home
• Inflexible working hours
• Potentially stressful with regards to driving in rush hour traffic
• Possibly having to deal with badly behaved children
• Term time only so only earning for 3/4 of the year

You have to think about all the jobs which don't have these drawbacks and make sure you're compensating (i.e. paying) for them.

It's not enough to look at other roles and say "We pay more than them," because the chances are people might be willing to accept lower pay for those roles because of the T & Cs, but a job like this is going to take a lot to tempt people. It's also not enough to say "We're paying more than we paid before Covid, even when taking account of inflation," because workplaces have changed drastically since Covid and a lot of people are expecting a lot more in terms of work/life balance.

@bitjel I used to recruit this role for a county council (over a decade ago so old experience!) and it was the DBS that put most candidates off. Great your pay rate is competitive, we paid minimum wage and it was a struggle. We used to target the retired, I'm sure I started putting adverts on on the notice board at a few bowls clubs to try to reach people!!

My thoughts on this specific role:

Hours wont be great - Im assuming 8am for an hour or so and again at 3pm for another hour or so. Thats often when parents/grandparents etc are doing their own school drop off

Driving licence - most people dont have a licence that allows them to drive a minibus. I passed in 2000 and dont have D1, my DH passed in 1993 and does. Anyone 40's or below is unlikely to have D1 on their licence unless they took a separate test.

Often people who work part time want flexibility to fit it around their other responsibilities, but this role has none as it cant be done at home or in hours that suit the applicant. This means that people who do want to work part time for the money offered will find employment that does this rather than being tied into the requirement of this role.

Its the sort of role that would ideally suit somone who is older, possibly retired, thats wants to top of their income. I actually know 2 people who do this role - both of them are over 70 and do it to top up their pensions and I think they found out about the roles through word of mouth as they are not unemployed, on benefits or actively looking for work so dont check out the usual places you probably advertised.

If you could try to get the role targeted to this type of person you may get more applicants.

Could you advertise it in your school newsletter and ask parents to pass it onto to anyone who may be interested? What about the local newsletter (we get a couple here delivered free with ads for local businesses, whats on in the area etc) as that would widen your applicants too?

Good luck

When I ran an ‘alternate curriculum’ the support staff did the pick ups and drop offs in the minibuses. It gave them a bit more money as they were also on low wages. 2 would go out on each bus. One to look after the students, one to drive. It was a safeguarding strategy too.

Are you in a student area? Do you need over 21s or over 25s for your bus insurance? I read something about students in Bristol driving buses. Admittedly students don't generally like getting up early, but it's an option as very part-time hours brings in beer money while allowing time to study. If you are in some rural area miles from a university then ignore me!

If you're round south London I'll do it 👋

Driving licence - most people dont have a licence that allows them to drive a minibus. I passed in 2000 and dont have D1, my DH passed in 1993 and does. Anyone 40's or below is unlikely to have D1 on their licence unless they took a separate test

ignore me then. I hadn't realised there had been a change as I could drive a minibus with my licence but I know when I was at university some bus insurances only let you drive if you were over 21 and others wanted you to be over 25.

I suppose another issue with targeting retired/middle aged people is eyesight requirements. For example, my DH has an eye condition- he is fine to drive socially but if he wanted to do the job you are advertising he would have to inform the DVLA and do an extra eye test.

For that reason, a lot of school "minibuses" are 9 seater, especially special schools where groups are smaller, which can be driven on a car licence

Also to answer your question yes, our business has had a nightmare getting roles filled. We pay above average for the role, we're friendly people to work with and we give big staff discounts. We don't even get the applications except for the ones the job centre forces to come and they are mostly unfortunately unemployable.

Most roles we've managed to fill have been through friends or family friends.

If that's genuinely what you're offering, then I'm surprised you're getting absolutely no interest. But that would be term-time only and a split morning-afternoon shift? - not attractive to anyone that needs to earn as it'll be hard to find a second role to work around that.

There's a world wide recruitment crisis. Yes it's very hard to fill roles