RECRUITMENT & RETENTION
HOW TRAFFIC LIGHTS STOP YOUR CARERS LEAVING
Acting in advance of staff leaving your organisation has a multitude of benefits, explains Amrit Dhaliwal, Founder and CEO at Walfinch home care.
Every time a carer leaves their job, other members of the team have to cover their work, and management faces more recruitment and training costs. At worst, client care can suffer.
Stats from Skills for Care show that during 2022-23, 390,000 people left their roles and the number of people leaving the sector is expected to increase over the next 10 years due to the increasing age of the workforce.
SO HOW DO WE CUT THE NUMBER OF LEAVERS?
The short answer is increased retention. Good retention practices help prevent recruitment emergencies and costs, but more than that; increasing retention can cut the number of leavers and improve working conditions for everyone. This means staff are more likely to stay and happy staff are more likely to help you recruit their family and friends. But how do we ensure staff are likely to stay?
ACT IN ADVANCE
Don't leave it until an employee's exit interview to find out why they are going. It may be an issue that could have been solved months ago had it been known. What's needed are ways to spot problems before they blow up into a leaving issue.
First, ensure your culture encourages staff to speak about their feelings. Workplace culture is a big factor in recruitment and retention. Regular informal consultations with staff by care team leaders and supervisors should make it clear that management’s door is always open for those who have issues that may affect their work or cause them to consider leaving.
Consulting staff means you can find out what practical measures attract and keep carers. The very act of consultation is likely to increase employee engagement, which increases retention. No- one knows better than staff what will encourage them to stay, or what benefits would attract new care team members. Include staff at all levels. Actions that retain care managers and supervisors can differ from those that apply to frontline carers.
With an open culture and communication lines established, you can begin to spot signs that may show individual staff members are not happy, and may be considering leaving.
Look out for signs such as someone who is normally cheerful going quiet, or withdrawing from the team, and listen for talk indicating that team members have quarrelled. Don't be tempted to assume these things will sort themselves out. Take these signs seriously.
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www.tomorrowscare.co.uk THE TRAFFIC LIGHT SYSTEM
Checking on workplace wellbeing should be a gentle process, but recording concerns can ensure that management acts early to solve problems. A staff list that rates each person's job satisfaction may help, perhaps coded green for 'happy', amber for 'may have some issues that need to be addressed', and red for 'unhappy and may be looking to leave'.
You could use a star rating or points system instead, but whatever is used, any rating other than happy needs to trigger an informal, private chat with the staff member to check if anything can be done to address their concerns. It could be that a change in hours or rotas will fix the problem, or there could be an issue at home that perhaps the employer can help mitigate.
Normally, supervisors and care managers can do this, but there are times when top management should get involved, because there may be a clash of personalities between, say, the carer and their manager. It's a sad fact that one of the main reasons people leave their jobs is that they do not get on with their immediate boss.
Whatever you do, don't let problems fester. Conversations with care staff can cut the chances of them leaving.
https://walfinch.com
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