The Sector Employability Toolkit

What is the Sector Employability Toolkit?

The Sector Employability Toolkit (SET) is a health sector specific pre-employment programme developed by Skills for Health in partnership with the Alliance of Sector Skills Councils, Jobcentre Plus and Skills Funding Agency, formerly the Learning & Skills Council. The toolkit supports the long-term unemployed and other Jobcentre Plus target groups in gaining employment in initial entry level worker roles within the health sector, such as domestic and laundry assistants, catering staff and porters. Delivery of the toolkit is based on a partnership between Jobcentre Plus, health sector employers and a training provider, and its key features include an initial recruitment and selection event, a two week training programme and a three week work trial.

The programme includes:

• An employability checklist to identify attitudes, skills and behaviour expected at point of entry
• Guidance and resources for use in selection processes, including interviews and assessments
• Resources (training plans, timetables, materials and handouts) needed to deliver a contextualised pre-employment programme. This includes off the job training and work based training and experience, equipping individuals with the skills required to enter employment.

Who is the Sector Employability Toolkit for and when should it be used?

Workforce planners and human resources personnel can use the employability toolkit in the following ways:

• To recruit hard to fill entry level vacancies. Although, the toolkit has also been used by some organisations to successfully fill healthcare assistant (level two) roles
• When having difficulty recruiting from your local community using traditional methods
• When you need to ensure your workforce reflects the diversity of your local community
• When suffering high turnover in entry level posts the toolkit can be used to reduce this.

Download the Sector Employability Toolkit

• Introduction
• Guidance Notes
• Section 1 - Planning and Preparation
• Section 2 - Recruitment and Selection
• Section 3 – Two Week Training Programme
• Section 4 – Three Week Work Trial
• SET - Case study
• SET - Summary Booklet

Pre-employment guide

This document provides a framework and guidance to support the delivery of high quality pre-employment programmes for the health sector.

It is particularly useful for situations where it is difficult to recruit into entry level or level 2 posts and healthcare organisations want to engage with local communities.