Recruitment and Retention Strategy - July 2024

1. Overview

Our Vision

“Carmarthenshire County Council – The employer of choice for West Wales”

The Recruitment Strategy sets out our objectives and describes how we will address our resourcing challenges.

This aligns with our ‘Workforce Strategy’ and Transformation strategy’ and reflects our corporate commitment to equalities and diversity whilst ensuring safe recruitment practices are in place.

It also aligns with our Cabinet vision statement, specifically:

• Work to position our recruitment competitively and work towards continuously improving recruitment levels across the organisation. Seeking to understand the steps needed to become the employer of choice in West Wales.
• Work to market Carmarthenshire County Council as an attractive employer for apprentices, school leavers and graduates. Focusing on reducing the migration of young people out of Carmarthenshire and from rural areas”.
• To work with relevant groups to promote the council as an employer across all communities including within the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic community.

This strategy focuses on the attract recruit and retain element of the workforce strategy and is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all our work, instead it outlines the key areas where our focus will have the biggest impact.

Having a clear strategy and purpose informs everything we do for both current and prospective employees.

We are the largest employer in Carmarthenshire with 8445 staff employed directly and around 100 agency workers engaged by us.

We recruit into many diverse roles across the County that cover a variety of professions at all levels. This makes us an attractive local employer, processing 5456 applications in the first quarter of 2025.

According to the Local Government Association (LGA) the average staff turnover rate for local government in the UK is generally considered to be between 13% and 17% annually. The analysis indicates that the turnover rate within the Authority is below the average.

 

Department	FY21/22	FY22/23	FY23/24	FY24/25
Chief Executives	6.65%	10.42%	6.23%	8.45%
Corporate Services	6.19%	7.66%	6.49%	7.14%
Place, Infrastructure & Economic Development	12.66%	10.77%	10.47%	9.69%
Education, Children & Family Services	8.91%	9.35%	9.23%	10.70%
Communities	11.17%	12.91%	10.22%	9.17%
Total	9.75%	10.37%	9.36%	9.94%

  

Although our turnover is relatively stable, we still have areas of high-volume recruitment specifically in frontline roles for example: Care staff, Catering staff, Passenger Assistants and Cleaners.

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