When you’re looking for somewhere to work, people tend to place a lot of emphasis on the job, rather than the employer. What you want to do rather than where you want to do it. This is only natural: your job is what you’re going to be spending all your time doing so you need something that plays to your skills and experience, and something you find rewarding.
It is, however, also well worth considering who you do your job for. All employers are not created equal, and some offer great benefits as well as pay, and a company culture that values employees rather than seeing them as interchangeable units.
Today we’re taking a look at the benefits of working for one of the largest employers in the UK, so when you’re thinking of making a move, your decisions are informed.
NHS
The National Health Service has become something of a political football in recent years, as the current Conservative government seems somewhat hostile to the idea of publicly funded medicine and the press on both the wages and contracted hours of junior doctors has made headlines.
It’s important to look beyond the headlines, however: the NHS employs a panoply of different skillsets, from front line doctors and nurses, to filling specialist roles like Occupational Therapy jobs, researchers and technicians, and then the army of administrators who make the whole machine work from HR to procurement.
The beauty of the NHS is that it’s such a large operation there’s room for almost any skillset inside, so if you want to work there, you’ll find a place! It offers a generous holiday allowance of 27 days a year, rising to 33 after ten years service, and access to the NHS pension scheme, which is a robust, reliable fund given almost a million and a half people are paying into it so you know your retirement is safe after your career is over.
The NHS also offers assistance to employees wanting to get onto the property ladder, with interest free loans available for employees and even more help for those designated key workers. This makes sense, after all: the NHS invests a lot of resources in training the staff it needs, and providing help as they grow will help the Service retain those staff and not lose to them to the less intense private sector.
On that theme, the NHS also offers childcare assistance, with creche facilities located in some hospitals, creches and other NHS locations, and childcare vouchers as well. Despite the problems caused by resourcing, the NHS is an old fashioned organisation that cares for and nurtures its employees and is well worth considering when you’re shifting jobs.
