In a series of blogs supporting 5 videos recently recorded, 7 UK Care Provider CEOs discuss their Workforce observations and learning through hindsight. Introduced by John Pollaers and coinciding with the release of his Australian Workforce Strategy Report, their feedback is both candid and instructional.

Helen Sanderson pretty much wrote the book on Person Centred Care in England. After 10 years’ leading the UK’s early development work and 10 years’ as the Expert Advisor on Person Centered Approaches, she decided to put her money where her mouth is, firstly in consulting and training and then as a Home Care Operator. Helen is very open about her personal challenges in a new environment, and even clearer on the critical ingredients for keeping clients and staff.

Self-Managed, Shared responsibility
Helen describes her Wellbeing Teams as being small - 10 or 12 people maximum, with a definite geographic boundary. The teams work in a multi-tasking environment where service delivery is part of all roles along with a variety of specialist tasks assigned to support the team:

• Scheduler to build the roster that supports clients’ and employees’ needs;
• Recruitment Coordinator as appointments are team decisions;
• Meeting Coordinator;
• Story Teller for community and related engagement;
• Coach and Wellbeing leader.

Staff Engagement and Happiness
In the USA, the ‘workplace’ is the 5th largest cause of death in the community. ‘Dying for a Pay cheque’ inspired two central themes for Wellbeing Teams — Autonomy and Tangible Social Support.

Different start – Candidate Experience as important as Client Experience
The next topic Helen discusses is to find a different way to bring people into the sector and a different way to pay attention to their needs:

• ‘We intentionally look outside the sector to avoid ‘recycled’ candidates and inheriting poor practice that will not cut it in a Wellbeing Team’
• ‘We recruit for values, make it a joint decision and monitor candidate experience for all, not just the successful’
• Any new starter in a Wellbeing team goes through a 4-day induction.  “1 page profiles” as a basis of team building
• Helen focuses on identifying work and development opportunities for her staff.

Biggest lesson
Helen’s biggest lesson over the last 15 years in Social Care: If you are not being Person Centred with your staff you cannot expect them to be Person Centred with their clients.
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Whilst in its early days, Wellbeing Teams are based on a proven model, localised where necessary, but retaining the values, engagement, autonomy and social support that deliver ownership of client and team outcomes.

Whilst recommendation and referral are critical in an empowered consumer market, Martin Jones, MD of Home Instead Senior Care, is focused on the long game as they seek to become the UK’s ‘Most Admired’ service provider by ‘changing the face of ageing’. With 200 offices in the UK, Martin is joined by Gail Deveraux–Batchelor, one of their franchise owners, for both a national and local perspective.  The Workforce strategy, whilst based on 3 key points has clear connections to their commercial and growth agenda:

Self-reliance and local engagement
The introduction of ‘Choice into Social Care’ was hugely disruptive.  From the early stages of the UK’s Person Centred Care they saw a responsibility to support all players through a change process.

• Clients and families;
• Staff and where appropriate their families;
• The regulator- significant national and local interaction about the regulators need to change;
• The local community (through education, engagement and information).

 
Talent, Training and Enablement
To change the face of Aged Care you must change the face of the Carer:

• Find the right ones and empower them. Know what you want in staff and what staff need to deliver services. Caregivers are the life blood of your business.
• Build-in additional touch points with staff.
• Finding quality people is hard; keeping them is harder.

 
Education
The Home Instead Institute was created to provide training to theirs’ and competitors’ staff, as well as the public. Through education operational standards are lifted, the value of Social Care is elevated in the community, which attracts new talent to the sector.

• Enable caregivers
• Career paths clarified / identified for all learners
• Community engagement /change the perception of a career in Care

​As an example of Community Engagement, 40,000 people from a variety of backgrounds - retail/business/banking/government - received free dementia training.

Home Instead is a successful business with low staff turnover and a strong reputation for service, quality and compliance. Whilst a franchise model obviously encourages local management and responsibility the central theme of CDC, putting the client at the heart of decision making, requires empowered staff at the front line, dealing with client needs, engaging with and drawing staff from the local community. 

​In a consumer driven market with frontline staff being the regular and principal touch point for service users, providers have to manage employee related risk in both traditional and emerging areas of their business.

Misconduct Risk
The commitment to protect service users in the sector is clear and undiminished. The processes to ensure this, however, are often found wanting and scrutiny from the regulator, media and community has never been greater. Reputational damage in a competitive marketplace haunts provider for years, especially in the local community near an incident. Misconduct extends beyond high profile incidents seen in the media to include indifference, neglect, culpable behaviour and dishonesty impacting on clients/residents.

Performance Risk
User Experience is the new battleground in the aged, community and disability sectors. Empowered clients, with choice, and increasing expectations continues to move social care into a consumer driven competitive marketplace. The engagement and relationships built by frontline staff, combined with the quality of the support provided are pivotal for success in today’s care sector. Ensuring employees are suited to roles requiring the delivery of care, support and compassion is fundamental to effective staff performance in social care.

Frontline capability now translates directly into Bottom Line Performance

Some Facts
We took a sample of over 15,000 frontline care applicants screened during the past year. Using the standard Care Advantage assessment for counter-productive work behaviours - Hostility, Integrity and Dependability, we found the following:

Some Quick Wins
Are our applicants ‘right’ for the sector?
Care Advantage screens specifically for job fit in the Social Care sector. It identifies those candidates with the values, empathy and personality necessary for success in a human services environment. It compares your applicants to a benchmark of proven good performers in the same role and identifies those with a strong job fit. Benchmarks exist for around 40 roles in the care sector including personal carers, disability support, home care assistance, Registered Nurses, Clinical Managers.

Can we identify the level of risk with our applicants?
Care Advantage also screens for counter-productive work behaviours, specifically hostility, dependability and integrity. Flagging high-risk profiles allows providers to avoid or increase scrutiny of applicants.

How do we Avoid Missing Good candidates?
Most Care Advantage users screen applicants high in the recruitment funnel, when the candidate first applies. The screening platform has been designed, and priced, to allow employers to review high volumes of frontline applicants in an effective and rapid manner.

Identifying strong job fit and lower risk candidates early in the recruitment process provides significant competitive advantage by reducing misconduct and performance risk whilst improving efficiency and speed of recruitment processing. As the assessments are based on personality, the screening identifies all good job fit, lower risk candidates, regardless of work history, enabling our clients to find the ‘Hidden Gems’.

Governance
With 'Standard 8' of the, now legislated, compliance regime starting next year, there are a number of new requirements. The majority of these involve the ability to demonstrate that the organisation possesses a governance framework that recognises the organisation’s purpose, its legislative, policy and ethical obligations, as well as its workforce and employment responsibilities. Care Advantage allows users to demonstrate an effective framework, as part of a contemporary recruitment process, that identifies candidates able to support service users in a person centred and safe manner.

Contact us to discuss your situation.