Scottish Government

ISBN 0 7559 2833 4(Web only publication)

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Campaign Overview

• The Scottish Executive launched a communications campaign in October 2002 to improve public perceptions of the social work and social care sector and promote it as a potential career. The campaign was aimed at adults in Scotland between the ages of 25 and 45.
• The initial campaign, which ran in October 2002 using TV and press adverts, was repeated in 2003. The third phase of the campaign consisting of outdoor posters (central belt only), national and local press and radio adverts ran between 26 ^th January and March 7 ^th 2004.
• This Phase 3 advertising was aimed at raising awareness of social care and social work amongst specific audiences (including mothers returning to work, people who have retired early, and young career changers).
• The findings below relate to an omnibus research study conducted in January 2004, prior to the third wave of activity. The purpose of the exercise was to investigate attitudes to social care careers and to understand the key motivators to change.
• A total of 1014 telephone interviews with respondents currently in employment were carried out between Tuesday 6 ^th and Wednesday 14 ^th January 2004.

Highlights

• When the respondents were asked "how satisfied are you with your current job?", differences emerged by gender, age and region. For example, a smaller proportion of men than women said that they were satisfied with their jobs (80% compared to 84% total satisfaction).
• A total of 41% of all those in employment at the time of the research would consider changing job to do something more meaningful or worthwhile. This willingness to consider changing job was associated with factors such as socio-economic group, age and region.
• Willingness to consider changing job decreased with social grade, with those in the AB ¹ group most likely to consider doing something more meaningful or worthwhile (47%), and those in the DE group least likely to do so (33%).
• Willingness to change jobs decreased with age. In keeping with this trend, those in the 18-24 year group were most likely to consider changing jobs (66%).
• Across all respondents, 35% of respondents said that they would consider a career in social care.
• Two in ten people would both consider changing jobs and consider a job in social care.
• When considering factors important in choosing a job, job satisfaction was the most important factor, followed by salary, then security. Job variety and flexible hours were less important.
• Those in the youngest age group put salary level as the most important factor when choosing a job.

Implications

• These findings provide a insight into the characteristics of potential career changers in Scotland at the beginning of 2004.
• These findings were used as background information to support publicity and campaign activity in February 2004.

¹ A widely-used scheme of classification is a scale dividing occupations into five categories, with a sub-division at C:
Class A : Higher managerial, administrative or professional
Class B : Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
Class C1: Supervisory, clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional
Class C2: Skilled manual workers
Class D : Semi-skilled and unskilled manual
Class E : State pensioners, those on social security and casual workers