Case study

Wokingham District Council

Age Positive Champion

A local authority in the South East, covering an area of 150.000 people and employing 1,600 staff.

We provide services for the whole community and our workforce should therefore reflect the demographics of the community. Removing age barriers from recruitment enables us to attract a larger pool of applicants. This helps us to reduce vacancies and to recruit the best people to our posts.

Anna Machens, HR Officer

OUR AGE POSITIVE GOOD PRACTICE:

It used to be our policy that employees had to retire at the age of 65. We now encouraging staff to stay on beyond 65 . All requests to continue working over the age of 65 have been approved for some time. There are currently 20 employees working over their usual retirement age.

We aim to retain our retiring social care workers, particularly for sessional and case work.

A Resource Worker in one of our community care teams was sponsored by us to start their NVQ level 3 at the age of 55. At 56 they completed their NVQ level 4. They have progressed to Assistant Social Worker, for the three-year degree in Social Work, which they will complete at the age of 60.

We talk to a mature Social Work students at a local college to show commitment to recruit second career staff.

We provide carers leave for older employees who may no longer have childcare commitments but may have to care for parents or partners.

Our Return to Care campaign encourages Social Care Practitioners to return to work after a career break.

We attend school career fairs and career talks. To increase applications by young people, we made it clear to our service managers that young Social Workers don’t necessarily lack the life experience to be a good Social Worker.

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