What should we look for in a Social Work employer?: Matt Bee
RIGHT now, as I write this, I’m between jobs. And the truth is I love it. Every bit of it.
I don’t even feel bad about the cash.
My bank account might be a yawning chasm of nothing, there might be an echo every time I withdraw my card from the cash machine, my car might be fifteen years old, my shoes might have holes in them, my roof might be leaking…
Actually, I might need to go back to work.
There’s always a moment. Call it intuition, a hunch, an inkling, or just enough post accumulating behind the door with red ink on, but sooner or later I feel the need to report to the nearest local authority for gainful employment.
Except these days, of course, I don’t need to just consider a local authority.
There’s plenty of job agencies.
I could always go work in the voluntary sector.
A good job, too, because a while ago I wrote in Community Care how little I liked working for local authorities, and it is, to date, the most controversial feature I’ve penned. Maybe I was upset when I wrote it. I don’t recall. But I do know it got a reaction, and one I wasn’t entirely expecting.
Aside from the comments on the website, a few readers got in touch directly (I say ‘a few.’ One. One reader contacted me). And after the initial furore died down, it left me feeling quite bewildered.
So I’m going to broach the subject more carefully this time.
What are we actually looking for in an employer?
See, I ask the question and that might not even be the right question. Most of us know what we want: an employer with morals, ethics, a semblance of professionalism and at least a passing interest in our general welfare.
The problem is finding a recruiter that fits the bill.
In the UK you can browse the Sunday Times top 100 not-for-profit organisations to work for, and although you’ll find plenty of housing associations in the mix, you won’t find any large recruiters of social workers.
It begs the question, should we not have some sort of social work collective? A place where we can recommend employers to one another, privately, so that we might know what we’re getting into before signing on the dotted line?
That’s the problem, you see. It’s so hard to tell. A bit like with dating sites or when you read the label on a bottle of wine, it’s hard to glean an honest impression. When a job advert says: ‘An exciting opportunity has arisen…’ by whose terms are we measuring this?
An exciting opportunity to do what? File paperwork? Handle complaints?
Genuinely, right now, if you Google: ‘An exciting opportunity has arisen…’ the first three results back are for:
1) an adult sleep disorders centre
2) a paediatric nurse,
and – I’m not making this up – 3) a senior auditor.
‘Exciting’ is the most overused word in job adverts, and yet ‘exciting’ is so the wrong word.
‘Stressful,’ is the correct word.
If the modern world were in any way just and fair, job adverts would be written by the person vacating the post before you. Surely, they are best placed to describe the role?
Using this system a typical, honest advert would read: ‘A stressful opportunity has arisen in a small but highly chaotic team. Conflict and trauma a daily occurrence.’
You see? Much better. You know where you are then.
As things stand, though, HR departments can have Pinocchio cobbling together their adverts and no-one would bat an eyelid. Amazing, isn’t it? It’s illegal to mis-sell cleaning products, but you can write anything you like about a job. I’ve come to trust Dettol more than the careers sections of most daily newspapers.
So, yes, I say we meet up and swap notes.
We could award gold stars for employers we liked, black ball the ones we don’t – and all this would be on the hush, a sort of need-to-know basis. Gone would be the days of starting a job full of hopes only to see these dashed as the dull realisation hits home: ‘What have I let myself in for…?’
The truth is there is no truth in job adverts
Nobody tells you the truth at job interviews, either.
When you ask: ‘What’s it like working here…? No-one on the interview panel is ever going to lean forward and say: ‘What, here? Awful!’ The best you can hope for is they’ll let something slip, like if they use the word ‘challenging.’
That’s code for ‘chronically understaffed,’ by the way.
This much I’ve worked out already.
The rest we’ll have to figure out together.
MATT qualified as a social worker in 2007 and has worked for local authorities, NHS Trusts and charities across adult services. As a freelance writer, he writes for Community Care, Professional Social Worker, the Guardian’s social care network, and is shortlisted for Liquid Personnel’s 2016 writing contest. Occasionally he tweets: @MattBeeWrites
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