Europe’s biggest care provider commits to expediting 5,000 new workers into the sector

Cera Care is set to concentrate on recruiting 5,000 new carers to mitigate the current talent shortage.

The digital-first home healthcare organisation has announced their aim to recruit more care staff following the new figures released this week by Skills for Care revealing a 52% increase in vacancies across the sector.

Most of these roles will be on the frontline, providing services such as caring and nursing in metropolitan areas including London and the West Midlands, as well as regional areas such as Lancaster, Warrington and Lanarkshire.

Launched in 2016, Cera uses tech-forward methods of recruiting carers which has improved the conversion of applicants by 112%, brought down the cost of recruiting by 40% and the time to hire someone by 20%.

However, Cera’s search for new workers could be challenging as research that was published by Florence, a tech platform designed to assist the health and social care sector, revealed one in five NHS and social care workers are planning to leave the industry.

Although, the online care service says applicants for professional care roles do not need specific qualifications – 67% of Cera’s recent recruits were from outside the care sector, expanding the talent pool and giving thousands of people much needed work during the current financial crisis.

Martin Warnes, Director of Carer Acquisition at Cera said: ‘Given the decline in the number of posts filled in the care sector, we are taking urgent action.

‘For too long, the social care system has been treated as the poorer sibling to the NHS,’ he said. ‘That’s despite the number of people over the age of 85 being set to double in the next 25 years and a large proportion of this ageing population experiencing long-term and multimorbidity conditions that require more complex care. 

‘We need to encourage more people to consider a meaningful career in care, which is why we are expediting the recruitment of 5,000 carers into the sector.

‘At Cera, we have created and implemented technology which allows carers to spend more time with the people they care for rather than working on unnecessary and tedious administration.’

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters