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REAL-TIME WORKFORCE INSIGHT FROM CARE WORKERS OFFERS CLEARER VIEW OF PRESSURES IN ADULT SOCIAL CARE


More than 211,000 responses from care workers have already been gathered through a new workforce insight platform, with early data showing recruitment and retention as the lowest- scoring workforce category.


The findings come from Click Pulse, developed by Flourish, part of Merseyside-based The Progress Group, which enables care workers to share feedback on workload, pay, wellbeing and other workplace pressures through everyday training activity.


The platform, which launched in May, gives employers and commissioners a more immediate picture of workforce challenges in adult social care, in a sector where workforce data is typically based on annual surveys. Click Pulse is believed to be the first platform of its kind in adult social care to embed continuous workforce feedback directly into training activity.


Flourish works across adult and children’s social care and education, providing workforce development and training solutions designed to raise standards and improve quality of care.


Click Pulse was developed with The Care Workers’ Charity and piloted with care providers ahead of launch.


The platform is built into Flourish’s existing e-learning system, which is used by more than 110,000 care professionals and generates more than 150,000 course completions each month.


It uses a consistent set of standardised questions designed to reflect real frontline challenges, covering key areas including pay, workload, wellbeing, leadership, training and retention.


Early data shows an overall broadly positive workforce sentiment score of 78%. However, the detail behind the results points to clear pressure points, with recruitment and retention emerging as the lowest-scoring category at 67%. The lowest individual score related to whether pay meets day-to-day living costs, highlighting the continued impact of cost-of-living pressures on the care workforce.


Eammon Price, Chief Executive of Flourish, said: “Adult social care has been relying on workforce insight that is oſten out of date by the time it’s used. If we’re serious about addressing the pressures facing the sector, we need a much clearer and more timely understanding of what’s happening on the frontline.


“Click Pulse introduces a more immediate way of understanding what staff are experiencing. Because the feedback is gathered


regularly, you can start to see where pressures are building and respond earlier. It’s built into something people are already doing, so insight can be gathered consistently and at scale without introducing additional surveys, systems or reporting requirements.


“That reflects many of the challenges providers already know exist, but having timely workforce insight means organisations can identify issues earlier and make more informed decisions about how they support and retain their people.”


Care workers are asked a single, structured question when they complete a training module, with the option to provide more detailed feedback through a fuller survey. By capturing feedback on a regular basis, it enables employers to identify emerging pressures earlier and respond more effectively.


Karolina Gerlich, Chief Executive of The Care Workers’ Charity, said: “Care workers’ voices matter, but they’re not always heard in a way that reflects what day-to-day life on the frontline is really like.


“That’s why we’ve worked with Flourish on the development of Click Pulse – to help shape an approach that makes it easier for workers to share their experiences in a simple and consistent way, without adding to workload.


“Having a clearer, more regular picture of what staff are going through is essential if organisations are going to respond in a meaningful way.”


Insight is provided to employers, giving them access to structured data which can support workforce planning and operational decisions.


Walfinch Oxfordshire Home Care was among the providers piloting Click Pulse ahead of its launch. Kam Gill, Managing Director, said: “Being able to hear honestly from our team on things like pay, training and how they feel in the role and then benchmark that against the wider care sector, is exactly the kind of insight we want to act on.”


Further development of Click Pulse is planned, including expansion into other sectors. As adoption grows, aggregated and anonymised data could contribute to a more consistent and timely understanding of workforce pressures across the sector.


https://flourish.co.uk


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www.tomorrowscare.co.uk


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