Showcasing Opportunities for Young Talent

Thursday 17 July 2025, London

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How does local government attract more young people into the workforce?

“This issue of the aging workforce in the public sector as a whole, but in local government in particular, is not new, but we do not appear to have done much to tackle it over the last 15 years,”

Pam Parkes, Public Services People Managers Association (PPMA) President and Commissioner opened our roundtable with this reminder.

Commercial Services Group brought together senior executives and HR Directors from Local Government to focus on some of the key challenges that have contributed to this persistent problem and to share ideas for how to overcome them.

Key themes that stood out were:

• Promoting the variety of available roles in the sector
• Much earlier engagement with schools and colleges
• Fewer qualification/experience barriers
• Simpler applications and interview processes
• Purpose-driven careers

What is the problem with Local Government?

Recent LGA statistics clearly illustrate the challenge; less than 5% of the local government workforce is under 25.  At the other end of the spectrum is the aging nature of the existing workforce, many particularly in crucial areas such as planning, leaving local authorities facing a staffing crisis.

This roundtable is the first of a series commissioned by Commercial Services Group addressing some of the key issues such as the recruitment crisis in local government.  Co-hosted with Pam Parkes, PPMA our roundtable aimed to capture not just some of the problems but also solutions to this persistent issue.  The most recent ONS statistics shows that 1 in 7 under 25s are not in education, employment or training, yet the public sector is simply not attracting applications from this group:

“Despite some good initiatives, I think we’re woefully behind in terms of really understanding how to attract young people. And we need to do better as a sector or else we’re in serious trouble.”

And these challenges go far beyond social care; councils now struggle to recruit across professions including legal, surveying, finance all of which compete with the private sector.

To gain some clarity, who better to ask than someone of the right demographic.  A young officer of the Hackney Council Recruitment team joined us to share their personal experiences, why they joined the council and to help us understand what some of the barriers to others following might be.

“I had family members who worked in the council who told me about the apprenticeship scheme. I would advocate promoting current apprenticeships into secondary schools. People think you need a degree or experience for a job at the council but it’s not necessarily like that. And there are so many different roles. Although I joined to be an accountant, I loved the time I spent in recruitment so I’ve stayed there.”

Local government doesn’t do well in comparisons with the private sector so how can councils make their roles more attractive? Our Gen Z rep was quick to point out that councils can offer many benefits in comparison to, for instance, going to university. It emerged that there was little career support during GCSEs with young people feeling they are left to figure things out for themselves. Councils can offer opportunities to work and be paid while getting a qualification, if only people know about them.

“If the tech supports it, why should I sit in a crusty town hall?”

Another opportunity for local government is emphasising the sense of purpose that young people value. An example from our Gen Z rep helped bring this to life.

“I supported someone with a visual impairment, read the offer letter to them and answered questions so they could understand everything. I had their gratitude. It’s cool that we offer things like that, an employer that supports wellbeing and dignity.”

There is no doubt that opportunities exist for young people in councils but there is a real lack of awareness; there is much more work required to promote councils as great places to work and that promotion needs to be where young people are.

“And young people need to be part of the promotion. Otherwise, I can’t see that I would belong there.”

How to reach young people?

This leads neatly to how to reach a younger demographic. Most councils still take the same approach to promoting their jobs, one HRD said,

“Why do I think that shoving something on a recruitment website is going to attract young people to apply? They won’t even see it.”

The discussion focused on two areas.  One already touched upon was engaging young people much earlier in the process, visiting schools and colleges, showing what sort of opportunities exist.  Councils can also offer great entry points into professions to school leavers that they may not normally have access to.

“We forget we have a range of opportunities to offer local people, and I was quite amazed by actually how poor we are in terms of those entry points into employment. At my previous authority we were quite a young team, and we deliberately targeted, younger people. We forged those links with colleges, with universities, with schools.”

When many entry level roles are increasingly threatened by technology this is a real opportunity for councils to attract young people.

The second area is getting the message to the right people.  The issue of using social media more clearly challenges some councils, but those that are already engaging this way are reaping the benefits of getting to different audiences.

“Some of the apprentices already working in the council have done promotion of their work through TikTok, which we’ve seen increasing interest from.”

Another council shared that they have a social media advisor who sits in their recruitment team the role being to get messages out on the socials, raise the council profile, look at branding.

“She’s done some brilliant creative stuff with managers in terms of videos.”

Young people want to see others like themselves represented, another shared:

“I’d recommend taking young people out to talk to others.  We take current apprentices out on recruitment drives. What is interesting is that they give a warts and all description of experiences, about what it’s like working in the council, how they got to be in the job how they applied and people were really engaged.”

And people don’t know what the breadth of jobs in councils look like. One council had success with a series of videos showing different places of work, whether that was a social worker doing a home visit, or a community support worker or somebody  who works in parks.

The consensus was that councils will need to make more effort to be where their would-be recruits are if they are to get more applications.

Having access to a pension is incredibly important but may not be top of the priority list for a young person. So if councils can’t afford to offer more money and what typically they’ve used as a benefit isn’t what young people value, what other levers exist to improve recruitment and retention? This is where promoting the total package of benefits is important.

For example, young people like to follow trends and fitness and health right now is something that’s clearly important to them. Schemes like cycle to work, gym memberships and other offers that promote health and wellbeing are likely to be valued by Gen Z.

Our discussion touched on flexibility earlier and the working world has changed so much but there is a tension between what councils would like to offer and what members expect as a public place-based organisation.  

“We need to educate our members and our senior officers with the evidence. The workforce is aging, we need to be able to replace these people and at the same time attract people with new experience. Oh and by the way they operate differently to when you were a lad.”

How that flexibility is defined and giving choice of working patterns can be challenging:

“We’re almost kind of embedding the opposite of flexibility by offering hybrid work in that we say this role is flexible, but you have to be in the office certain days of the week.”

And there are challenges of role-modelled behaviour,

“It speaks to trust. We hear things like my manager doesn’t turn up at the office but expects me to be there, five days a week.”

And it was recognised that for a lot of young people, Covid was their first work experience raising questions of mental health and social isolation; issues that can impact all ages. Flexible working is not necessarily a one size fits all. Thought is needed around how to support people working remotely and how their performance is managed.  Do staff know what good performance looks like, it’s probably not talked about enough in this context.

Flexible working also requires more effort to build a team and to get colleagues collaborating.  This may mean ensuring when staff are in the office that there is at least some structured time but also making time for the social stuff too. Not all managers are good at this and perhaps it’s these areas that HR can provide more support as to what good likes like.

Supporting workforce planning

Reflecting that there are still significant challenges to attracting young people into local government what else can be done to improve workforce planning?

One area discussed is encouraging recruiting managers to be more flexible.  Budgets constrain the salaries on offer and although hiring managers will want people who can hit the ground running, HRD’s may need to be deliberate about saying no and insisting that a role becomes an apprenticeship or a different route is created for that role.  This will mean hiring for aptitude and attitude, the ability to learn on the job. One HRD explained:

“I’m currently working on a people strategy. As part of that, one of the key things that we need to focus on over the next 2 or 3 years are those early careers. What are the right kind of skills, behaviours, values, what learning do people need?”

As traditional career pathways break down the right structures are needed to provide a replacement and these changes must come from the top; otherwise there will always be barriers and not just for young people.  Specific years of experience, insisting on certain qualifications for even early career roles will continue to limit opportunities and therefore applications.

After all the hard work to capture their attention and bring someone in, if that initial experience isn’t good in terms of induction support, things can go wrong in the first few days.  And it’s unlikely that apprentices will want somebody in their 50s mentoring them.

“We started a young people’s network, which became the Early Careers Network. They’re so energized, so organised. They’re knocking spots off the other networks in terms of their drive and enthusiasm.”

The standard local government application process is seen as off-putting. One HRD illustrated that after an initial assessment for skills and behaviours completed by the recruitment team, candidates were then required to complete another assessment for the service and another interview; as a result several dropped out after the initial phase.

Young people don’t want to be in some long, drawn-out process and what’s required for appointing a chief executive, is not what’s required for an entry level role.  Focus is increasingly on what are the behaviours needed whilst the skills can be learnt.

Exploring other creative ideas

Local government can learn from the private sector. One senior executive spoke of their nephew who started work in his first graduate job.  Even before he started, a lovely gift box arrived with his laptop, everything he needed to start work even a company mug.

“He was, wow, this is amazing. You know, even things like that. Why can’t we do that?”

There are opportunities with the onboarding process even if there are IT barriers to delivering someone’s laptop. Why not in the same way as connect days are offered to people on maternity leave put something similar in place before people even start work?  

Apprenticeships offer many great opportunities but there are other ways to encourage young people in to gain experience of councils. For example, more councils could provide internships or graduate placements either as part of a sandwich year or as a first graduate role.  Bursaries could attract more graduates into the sector.

“We’re happy to pay high agency fees for temporary staff. Why not give a couple of thousand pounds to a student as a golden hello to attract young and newly qualified professionals into a role. As a lawyer, a planner, surveyor in all the areas that we struggle to recruit, that could be money well spent.”

We discussed how the marketing of local government roles needs to be more creative. By way of example there are some unique types of experience that can be gained from working in a local authority.  If you’re a surveyor, whilst the private sector has the attractive salary, town planning is interesting statutory work that you can only get working for a council. In other areas such as legal, councils may be able to offer experiences that add real social value that simply cannot be matched in the private sector.

One HRD asked why councils don’t use talent pools more as one way to keep in touch with people that have already expressed an interest working for the council. 

And surely councils can do more to support young care leavers but the recruitment process can get in the way.  Why not offer them an internship to develop their work experience and hopefully they will either stay or even if they leave, they will have a better chance to secure a job elsewhere.

“If that’s our outcome, let’s make the process work such that it facilitates that outcome.”

Local authorities can put too many obstacles in the way such as detailed job descriptions, so obscure they don’t mean anything to applicants. Why not focus on the skills and behaviours required for the role? Our attendees felt that they were making progress moving away from some of the more obscure job titles but it is taking time to get this change implemented.

Another challenged,

“Why wouldn’t you have some roles sponsored by organisations that we’re already contracting with across the council?  You could ask them to sponsor some of entry to work schemes.” 

One shared that at they had their supply chain sponsor staff awards, so why not take this a step further? Can suppliers be managed better to provide the added value that councils are looking for? One attendee raised that they meet quarterly with their agency recruitment provider to review social value, what difference it has made. Their contract includes support to care-leavers, working an in-house graduate scheme, following a hard to recruit career pathway.

Councils face the challenge that young people leave the area for university never to return.

“In Tower Hamlets, pretty much all the schools are good or outstanding, just think about that talent pool that you’ve got. And what will happen is many will go off to university and stay out of the area particularly as they can’t afford to come back to live.”

Another raised the issue of supporting people with special needs into employment, councils are often little better than the private sector at recruiting people with special needs and helping them into meaningful work. This often comes from perceptions that they have more sickness absences and they all need more time and adjustments.  However, this isn’t treating them as individuals and as result they are being excluded from entering the workforce either by design or through faults in the recruitment process.

Final reflections

New ways of working will continue to develop and crucial for Local Government is catching up or even getting ahead of the curve to secure a talented and resourceful workforce fit for the future. From our discussions, councils need to focus on:

• Promoting the variety of available roles
• Early engagement in schools and colleges
• Fewer qualification/experience barriers
• Simpler applications processes
• Purpose-driven careers

And perhaps social media is the key to challenging misconceptions and reaching the next generation of talent?