The Care Talent – Securing the workforce via skills, wellbeing, and smart benefit

A recording of the webinar can reviewed below, and a copy of the slides can be found HERE.

Salary is no longer enough. Despite advertised median pay climbing 7.5% to £33,526 in 2025, more than half of UK workers are still cutting back on everyday spending, and the top career goal for 2026 isn’t a pay rise. It’s a better work-life balance.

This webinar drew on 21.6 million UK job ads and surveys of 3,000 workers and 1,000 recruiters to reveal the growing gap between what candidates truly wanted from an employer and what most organisations were actually advertising. The findings were striking: flexible working hours were the single most desired benefit, yet only 4% of employers mentioned them in job ads. Enhanced sick pay was wanted by 28% of workers but advertised by just 1%.

In this session, we showed how to close that gap, practically and quickly. Attendees learned how to audit their current benefits package against real market benchmarks, which low-cost benefits delivered the highest return on retention, and how to communicate their culture more compellingly across every job posting and employer brand touchpoint.

Whether they were recruiters, HR leaders, or hiring managers, they left with a clear, evidence-based framework to make their benefits package a genuine competitive advantage in 2026.

What They Learned

• The benefits gap – what workers wanted vs. what employers advertised, across 22 industries
• High-impact, low-cost wins – the benefits that drove the biggest uplift in applications and retention
• How to segment by audience – tailoring the benefits narrative for different roles and industries
• Transparent job ad copy – practical language and structure to showcase culture and convert more applicants

Should you wish to discuss any of the points raised or have further questions, please contact:

Andrew Mcintosh – UK Manager, Care Specialist Team, Total Jobs: andrew.mcintosh@totaljobs.com