The shortage of care workers is a significant bottleneck for hospitals, care homes and outpatient care services. While the number of job vacancies is constantly growing, it is becoming more and more difficult to fill them with German workers. Numerous German healthcare facilities are thus already directly recruiting international care workers from abroad. In order to ensure that they will also have a sufficient supply of workers in the future, they will need to attract personnel from abroad in increasing numbers.
Reliable information, transparency and fairness are indispensable criteria for respectful collaboration between all those involved in the recruitment of care workers from abroad. They are the foundations for successful cooperation from the placement and recruitment process through to the initial training and integration of the workers in the healthcare facilities. The purpose of the new RAL Quality Mark for Fair Recruitment Healthcare Germany is to clearly define precisely these criteria. It is the state label of the Federal Republic of Germany for the recruitment of specialist care workers from third countries by the private sector. The owner of the label is the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG), while the Quality Assurance Association for the Recruitment and Placement of Care Workers from Abroad that was established for this label is responsible for awarding it. The RAL Quality Mark for Fair Recruitment Healthcare Germany is allocated to the new category of “Quality marks with a legal background” and its corporate design thus differs from the other RAL Quality Marks.
The catalogue of criteria that have to be fulfilled by those companies interested in this quality mark focuses on three key areas: providing sufficient information on economic migration in the German healthcare market, ensuring transparency across the entire placement and recruitment process and defining the responsibilities and voluntary commitments of companies across the entire process. To ensure that the quality mark helps to maintain quality in the best and most comprehensive way possible, its criteria are based on a broad catalogue of national and international standards.
