High churn and relentless hiring pressure mean care recruitment teams can’t rely on skills and experience alone. Values-based recruitment helps care providers hire people who belong in care – and stay, thrive and grow. Here’s how to do it properly, without fluff, gut feel, or values tokenism.
Skills for Care say England will need around 2.17 million care posts by 2040 – 470,000 more roles than today.
There has been some positive progress, with 52,000 more people delivering social care in 2025 than 2024. But it’s still nowhere near enough to cover predicted shortfalls.
Read our State of Care Sector Recruitment 2026 report now
There’s no magic bullet, but values-based recruitment (often abbreviated VBR) is one of the talent acquisition strategies that deserves a place in care recruiters’ toolbox.
Let’s talk about what values-based recruitment is (and what it isn’t), and how to do it right.
What is values-based recruitment?
At its simplest, values-based recruitment means hiring people for who they are, what they care about, and how they behave, not just what’s on their CV.
Instead of asking only:
- “Have you done this job before?”
- “Do you tick every technical box?”
- “What’s your past performance record?”
Values-based recruitment asks:
- “Do you share the values that underpin great care?”
- “Will you treat people with compassion and respect even on the hard days?”
- “Will you thrive in this culture, with these people?”
That distinction matters in care. Skills can be taught but values are much harder to train into someone. For care organisations, VBR is about aligning recruitment with the very things the sector exists for: person-centred care, empathy, integrity, accountability and respect.
What values-based recruitment is not
Done badly, values-based recruitment can slide into subjectivity and unconscious bias. Hiring for values doesn’t mean fluffy. It doesn’t mean:
- Hiring people you like just because you like them
- Gut instinct dressed up as culture fit
- A replacement for skills, training and due diligence
- A single interview question about empathy
Done well, values-based recruitment is structured, fair, evidence-based, and designed to reduce bias, not introduce more of it.
Why values-based recruitment matters in the care sector
Health and social care isn’t transactional work. It’s relational, emotional and profoundly human, often at moments of deep vulnerability.
If they don’t share your values, even a technically-competent care worker with a great CV can:
- Damage trust with people receiving care
- Increase complaints and safeguarding concerns
- Burn out faster and take shortcuts
- Create friction inside teams
- Drive up attrition and rehiring costs
While people who belong in care – even if they’re new to the sector – are more likely to:
- Stay longer
- Engage more deeply
- Challenge unsafe practices
- Champion ethical behaviour
- Deliver better experiences
- Build stronger relationships
In tangible business terms, that translates into outcomes like:
- Lower recruitment costs
- Lower turnover
- Lower sickness and absence costs
- Better performance
- Better staff wellbeing and engagement
- Improved quality of care
- Stronger ROI on recruitment spend
- Lower risk of harm
In a sector fighting constant churn and ever-widening demand shortfalls, those are benefits worth paying major attention to. So let’s talk about how to do it.
What values-based recruitment looks like in practice
Strong VBR runs through the entire hiring journey, not just the interview. (It’s not just throwing in a question about compassion and being done with it…)
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Define your values
You can’t recruit for values you haven’t articulated. This means going beyond vague statements like “we care” and being explicit about:
- What good care looks like day-to-day
- How staff are expected to treat people
- How colleagues treat each other under pressure
Anchor values to concrete behaviour so candidates – and your current tribe – know exactly what your values look like on-the-ground. And so recruiters and hiring managers have something concrete to assess against.
“We respond with kindness, even when someone is distressed or challenging” is much more meaningful than “we’re compassionate.”
This is closely related to designing your employee value proposition. It’s about articulating what your culture is actually like, so you can hire people who’ll actually thrive.
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Attract values-aligned candidates
Values-based recruitment starts before anyone applies, to help candidates self-select in (or out). Candidates who apply because they connect with your values are far more likely to stay than those applying to seventeen-million jobs.
Some tactics to attract and source values-aligned candidates:
- Ensure ads, career pages and social media signal what you stand for
- Share stories that bring your values to life
- Run recruitment campaigns around values and purpose, not just duties
- Hold open days to showcase your values and culture in a tangible way
- Prioritise employee referral programmes: your people know who’d thrive
- Source from aligned community groups or charities
Compliance 62% faster for HCRG Care Group
Read how HCRG Care Group landed 106% more career site visits, increased applications by 47%, and reduced time stuck in compliance by 62%, with Tribepad. Resulting in FTE headcount growth of 5% despite higher-than-usual churn. And a total revamp of recruitment’s credibility.
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Design applications that let values shine
Long, repetitive application forms don’t surface values. They just test stamina. And they’re hardly a great representation of respect and compassion themselves.
You can shout about values all you want, but if candidates’ first real experience of engaging with you is clunky, slow, and frustrating, that’s what they’ll remember.
Think about:
- Removing CV requirements
- Using video screening
- Adopting a two-stage application process
- Asking short, scenario-based questions
- Sharing clear info about your values
- Using fast, modern recruitment software
A good ATS is essential for effective values-based recruitment. Many care providers aspire to respectful, modern, fast recruitment processes that reflect their values, but are limited by what their software can do.
Look for tech that makes applying feel simple and speedy, even if you need to ask lots of questions. (Like Tribepad 😎)
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Assess values fairly and consistently
Values shouldn’t be assessed on vibes. You might have stopped over-relying on quantitative “facts” in CVs but that doesn’t mean you give up rigour. Gut feel is out.
Effective values-based assessment uses:
- Structured interview questions
- Clear scoring criteria linked to values
- Multiple assessors where possible
- Values-based assessment like video, SJTs, and group days
This consistency reduces bias, improves decision-making confidence and makes your hiring decisions easier to justify (and if needed, defend). And crucially for health and social care, it supports safer recruitment.
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Reinforce values during onboarding (and beyond)
Recruitment doesn’t end when you make an offer. Or it shouldn’t. Especially given health and social care’s challenges with churn. (One in four people leaves their care job every year: ouch).
Effective VBR means values are more than a poster on the wall. They’re your lived-and-breathed culture. Think about:
- Respectful, timely onboarding
- Fast compliance checks
- Values-led inductions
- Buddying and mentoring
- Ongoing training and reflection
- Performance conversations tied to values
- Regular staff feedback into culture
The right recruitment software supports values-based recruitment at scale
The idea of values-based recruitment is great, but care providers often struggle to operationalise. To walk the walk, in other words.
Too often:
- Recruitment’s a constant bun-fight so there’s no time to step back
- The interface is clunky, slow and inflexible for different roles
- Every change takes months because your software’s a black box
- Your system doesn’t support anon applications, values-led assessments, etc
- You can’t easily pull reports – and you can’t improve what you can’t see
- You lack oversight over managers and teams so there’s no consistency
- Hiring is spread over heaps of systems so everything’s a dumpster fire
Values-based recruitment is a powerful strategy but it needs the right tech foundation. The right tech helps health and social care teams:
- Deliver a candidate experience you’re proud of
- Ask consistent values-aligned questions
- Personalise questions and workflows for different roles
- Hire lightyears faster so you’ve got breathing space for all this
- Handle volume effortlessly, with ethical AI assistance
- Remove bias through anonymisation and inclusive processes
- Structure values-based scoring and feedback across teams
- Keep processes fair, auditable, and compliant
In other words: it makes values-based recruitment practical, not just a principle. It’s not an instant fix for all your hiring challenges. But it’ll make life easier.
35% faster time-to-offer for Well Pharmacy
Read how Well Pharmacy used Tribepad’s ATS to achieve an 150% increase in applications and 35% faster time-to-offer for hard-to-fill roles. Well-staffed pharmacies and happier patients, here we come.
Tribepad is the trusted tech ally to smart(er) recruiters everywhere. Combining ATS, CRM, assessment, video screening, compliance, onboarding, analytics and a fully-integrated AI assistant, our B-Corp certified talent acquisition software is a springboard for fairer, faster, better recruitment for everyone.
Tribepad is trusted by care organisations like Bluebird, Avery, Horizon, Keys Group, HCRG Care Group and Signature.
