A national recruitment initiative to re-train and employ thousands of airline staff into frontline care roles has been unveiled.
Home care provider Cera is partnering with industry body Airlines UK to offer roles to airline staff that have recently been made redundant.
It comes the day that easyJet announced plans to cut 30% of its workforce following thousands of job losses at British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair.
The skills of airline staff are seen to be “highly-transferable” to social care.
New carers will be recruited, trained, certified and deployed to work in as little as ten days using a digital platform, Cera claims.
The aim is to alleviate the pressure on the care sector whilst simultaneously reinstating thousands of the UK workforce back into full time work.
Cera chief executve and co-founder Dr Mahiben Maruthappu said: “Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, we’ve had three main priorities as a business; the first is to support the social care community and provide best-in-class frontline care throughout the UK, the second is to alleviate pressure from the NHS wherever possible by providing resource, and the third is to put people back to work – particularly those from heavily-impacted industries.
“By working with Airlines UK, we’ve taken another major step forward on all three of these fronts.
“The skills possessed by the UK’s airline personnel are highly transferable to social care, and our unique digital platform will allow us to recruit, train and deploy them into care roles at rapid speed.”
Airlines UK chairman Jane Middleton added: “This is an unprecedented period of disruption for UK airlines and the wider aviation industry, and as always, our priority is to support our members and their communities.
“From an employment perspective, Covid-19 has had a drastic impact on the UK airline workforce, and we are glad to have had the opportunity to spread the word amongst members, of the employment opportunities with Cera Care.”
