Workforce sustainability, through innovation
Recovering from the pressure and anxiety of the pandemic is the immediate priority.
We apply the same principles – innovation and investment in front-line staff – to support our health and care workforce through recovery, as we do to drive wellbeing and retention.
Recovering from the pressure and anxiety of the pandemic is the immediate priority.
We apply the same principles – innovation and investment in front-line staff – to support our health and care workforce through recovery, as we do to drive wellbeing and retention.
Recovery Champions
This is a time for support, recovery and preparing for the new normal.
Care Worker Wellbeing and Retention
In our experience, it is rarely about pay
The sustainability of our Care sector is certainly linked to the ability to rapidly improve retention rates, as the 37.6% average turnover of care workers[1], rising to 42.3% for domiciliary providers, is neither sustainable nor acceptable:
- Our most recent survey[2], in partnership with Care England, confirmed that personal factors, such as insufficient communication skills (61% of respondents), lack of resilience (52%) and even motivation (57%), contribute to care workers leaving their jobs, albeit very often to go to work for another care provider.
- According to our respondents, investing in personal development of front-line staff (79%) is one of the most effective actions to maximise retention, more effective than maximising pay within limits of affordability (60%).
- Going forward, the top three actions that care organisations in our survey intend to take, to maximise retention, are: improving culture and leadership styles (91%), investing in personal development of front-line staff (77%) and exploring new ideas and innovation (77%).
International Recruitment
We are investing time and efforts in developing new models of international recruitment, in particular from Southern and Eastern Europe. However, Brexit is, for now, too big a challenge and we need the dust to settle before launching our international recruitment solutions:
- There are tens of thousands of highly qualified, highly skilled international care workers, often overlooked, who aspire to develop their lives and careers in our country.
- With 110,000 vacancies in our care system at present, and rising, it is hard to think that we will be able to fulfil our workforce needs without attracting care talent from abroad.
- However, we urgently need an immigration system fit and proper for international care workers – not just nurses!
Improving retention means looking at every facet of the work experience, including organisational values and culture, support during the first few weeks and months of starting a job, career planning and development.
If the Adult Social Care Workforce grows proportionally to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population, then the number of adult social care jobs will increase by 40% (650,000 jobs) to around 2.55 million jobs by 2035.
There is an urgent need to consider an international recruitment option that works for the social care sector.
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