Public
sector employers in Surrey, Sussex and Kent are taking part in a one-day
workshop aimed at meeting the recruitment challenges faced in the South East.
The
workshop will involve representatives from county, borough, and district
councils, the police, fire and rescue services, Jobcentre plus and the Learning
and Skills Council.
Debbie
Ellis, executive director of customer and staff relations for Surrey County
Council, said the workshop would try to identify partnership approaches for
promoting recruitment and retention across the three counties, which have been
hard hit by high house prices.
"We
want to find some long-term solutions to the employment challenges we
face," she said. "Some of the things we shall be considering will be
ways of helping mums return to work, for example, and extending the working
lives of people who have retired from the private sector who might have run
their own business.
"We
shall also be working with the private sector by helping it deliver some of its
corporate objectives around providing community services," she added.
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Ellis
said the workshop, which is being jointly led by the Kent Sussex and Surrey
Workforce Confederation, would consider how to address the public sector’s poor
image as an employer, which is preventing it from attracting the next
generation of staff.
Ideas
from the workshop will be fed into a new steering group, which will have the
task of implementing them.
