AQW 13246/17-22

Mr Andrew Muir
Alliance Party
North Down

Tabled Date: 22/01/2021
Answered On Date: 29/01/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Finance to detail the actions being taken to address recruitment delays resulting in the reduced requirements detailed as part of January 2021 monitoring.

Answer:

Since January 2020, NICSHR has run approximately 636 competitions and matched over 2,500 vacancies.

In March 2020 activity around filling vacancies was paused in all but the most essential cases due to Covid-19 restrictions. Since then my Department has worked with all stakeholders to safely resume all methods to fill vacancies. This includes restarting paused activity, launching new recruitment exercises and introducing online assessment and interviewing methods. Significant effort has focused on progressing the AO, SO and DP corporate competitions as well as launching recruitment for volume EO2 (Work Coaches) recruitment on behalf of DfC, and allocating successful candidates from an internal Grade 7 promotion board (these competitions attracted over 30,000 applicants in total), as well as meeting priority Covid-19 and EU Exit vacancies all within the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The result is that over 800 offers have issued to candidates in recent months from General Service recruitment exercises alone, with several hundred more offers expected in the coming months, as well re-starting or launching activity to fill specialist vacancies. In parallel NICSHR has developed a high-level NICS-wide recruitment plan that sets out recruitment activity between now and end of September 2021 to create the supply necessary to meet the demands raised by departments. While the current restrictions have affected some recruitment activity again, NICSHR will continue to work to minimise as far as possible the impact on Departments.