Staff Retention in Social Care – Why is it Important?
A study carried out by Skills for Care examined around 140 care providers who have staff turnover rates of less than 10%. This is well below the national average churn rate in social care which is 27.3%.
The study found several common practices and policies that contributed towards their strong staff retention rate. The obvious is fair pay, career progression, recognition, and good working conditions. Here is why staff retention is so important:
- Cost of staff turnover – Staff turnover in the care sector can be expensive when it comes to recruitment expenses, training and the reduced productivity that takes place during the transition period.
- Continuity of care – Long-term relationships between care staff and the people they care for form familiarity and build trust, which has a positive impact on the service users’ outcomes and satisfaction.
- Impact on team morale – A high turnover rate can have a negative effect on the morale of the remaining staff, which can lead to a decrease in overall team performance and their attitude towards the job.
While getting recruitment in care right is essential for the growth of a care service, retaining your staff is equally vital when it comes to maintaining stability and functional knowledge.
6 Tips for Retaining Care Staff
To retain your care staff, you need to make sure you are aware of the best ways to do so. Here are 6 effective strategies for retaining care staff that you should consider:
- Competitive compensation and benefits – Offering a competitive rate of pay, performance-based incentives and bonuses, and an inclusive benefits package can make you stand out from other care services, attracting great candidates and retaining skilled care staff as a result.
- Career development opportunities – No one wants to go into a job that has no progression opportunities, so make sure you provide avenues for career growth through training, certifications and other prospects for promotion within the care service.
- Offer a supportive work environment - Creating a positive and supportive work environment and culture that adopts teamwork, encourages communication and recognises employee’s efforts will have a positive impact on the team’s attitude and morale. Avoid blame for mistakes, focus on openness and seeing everything as an opportunity to improve.
- Make work-life balance a priority – Do your best to acknowledge the demanding nature of caregiving by ensuring your carers have access to a flexible schedule and time-off policies, so they can maintain a healthy work-life balance. This is great for mental and physical wellbeing.
- Recognise and award achievements – Implement recognition programs to ensure exemplary performance and efforts of care staff don’t go unnoticed. This will have a positive impact on overall job satisfaction and boost motivation within your team.
- Carry out employee surveys and feedback – Regularly asking for feedback from your care staff through surveys or open forums will allow them to raise concerns so you can address them, identify areas for improvement and demonstrate your commitment to their wellbeing.
Care Worker Retention Bonus
The role of retention bonuses is significant and all care services should consider implementing them. Understanding retention bonuses is the first step. These are financial incentives that are provided to employees as a reward for staying with the care service for a specified period. You can tailor the bonus to each member of staff, so they align with the unique needs and challenges faced by individual carers. For example, bonuses can be based on performance, years of service or specific accomplishments.
Performance-based bonuses link a bonus to the performance of an individual or team. These motivate and create a sense of achievement amongst your employees while encouraging continuous development. Team-based bonuses can also be used to promote collaboration and commitment to the goals of your care service. Whatever your bonus scheme may be, make sure you are transparent and communicate things clearly to your staff, so they know what they need to do to reach their goals.
Most care providers are under lots of financial pressure and don’t have much available capital to spare so retention bonuses might seem impractical. But when you consider the costs of recruiting staff from scratch, or filling shifts with agency staff, retention bonuses for care workers start to make much more financial sense.
Increasing Staff Retention in Care Sector - Other Key Factors
While the above points are guaranteed to retain your care staff and keep your team happy, here are some other key factors in promoting care worker retention that you can consider.
Provide Emotional Support
Caregiving can be a tough job and can have an impact on your employee's mental and physical health and well-being. To show them that you care, your care service should offer counselling services, peer support programs and/or access to mental health resources. This will help your team cope with the emotional challenges of their roles which will boost their performance and aid retention.
Celebrate All Milestones
Taking the time to celebrate milestones can also make your employees feel supported and can motivate them to work hard. Whether it’s to do with their career, work anniversary, a personal achievement or accomplishment, or even a birthday, taking notice of these milestones/occasions and taking the time to celebrate them can significantly boost morale within the workplace.
Get Caregivers Involved
You can enhance job satisfaction by getting your caregivers involved in making decisions within your care service. For example, allowing them to have a say in policies and practices that directly affect their work life can make them feel important and supported. It also allows them to share their opinions to improve the functionality of their day-to-day tasks and routines, and the lives of their service users.
Mentorship and Professional Development
Establishing mentorship programs will offer guidance to new caregivers, reducing the timeframe of reducing productivity when welcoming new members of the team. It’s also an investment in the ongoing professional development of your staff. This ensures that your employees stay motivated, engaged and up-to-date with the most recent compliance and best practices.
Promote Diversity and Inclusion
Fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace that values people’s backgrounds, religion and different perspectives will create a sense of belonging amongst your care staff and will help them feel respected. Everyone should feel like they are being treated equally and that they get a sufficient amount of respect and dignity that they deserve.
Foster the right culture
Alongside creating a workplace that embraces diversity, try to foster a culture that focuses on learning from mistakes, instead of trying to find who will blame. A learning culture firstly encourages people to come forward early with issues they’ve spotted, even if they are wholly or partly at fault. This means you can nip stuff in the bud before it becomes more serious.
Having this kind of culture means people don’t try to hide or cover up mistakes. Consequently they feel less stress, are less worried about what might go wrong and feel more confidence to speak openly about improvements they think should be made. This can help people feel more empowered and a greater sense of control in their work, which in turn can help improve retention across your teams.
Care Worker Retention – A Digital Solution
As you can see, retaining care staff is essential for the success of your care service and can have a positive impact on the rest of your employees and your service users. There are so many positives to offering the right support, environment and incentives to your team. We hope that you have a better understanding of the importance of retention and how you can promote it within the workplace.
With over 30 years of experience in digitising care services across the world, we at Access know how much software can improve the lives of health and social care teams while improving the functionality of a service. With the ageing population in the UK, the demand for care is increasing and the expectations from carers are growing. So finding the best technology for your care service is crucial.
Care Management
For example, functional and reliable care management software can offer more flexibility, improve processes and save time and money. Mobile apps that can be used to access rotas, medication management systems and policies and procedures offer convenience while boosting safety. The link between a mobile app and a back-office system provides confidence and reduces the stress of care work, as incidents, missed medications, late visits, etc. will automatically trigger alerts.
Putting all the information care workers need in the palm of their hands makes their lives easier and makes them feel more empowered to deliver the high quality care they desperately want to. Watch the short video below to get a taste of the impact digitisation can have for care workers and those they care for:
For more information on our care management software, don’t hesitate to contact us and speak to a helpful member of our team.
Recruitment
Software can also be used to create a seamless recruitment process. Triumphant social care recruitment relies on multiple channels and using the right care recruitment and screening software can boost your success. Finding the best candidates in a community requires careful coordination and planning. A good recruitment platform will support an effortless but successful recruitment process, as it attracts the best candidates for your service and completes fast, automated compliance and background screening.
If you are looking to improve your recruitment process and would like to give our recruitment software a try, book a demo with us today.
Online Learning
Finally, there are so many benefits associated with online learning. Learning and development within the care sector are essential and should come hand in hand with any caregiver's role. However, this can be expensive and inflexible if not done correctly. The best method of health and social care training is a combination of in-person and online learning. Using a reliable eLearning platform offers an engaging, flexible and up-to-date method of training that saves time and money while encouraging progression.
You can learn more about our wide variety of health and social care eLearning courses here. If you would like to give our eLearning platform a try, contact us today.