While there is pressure for Government to do more following a successive chain of broken promises, there is still plenty that providers can do to help themselves. No matter how big or small, all providers can deploy a range of solutions at various levels of complexity – tailored to your organisation’s resources. The first step in any retention process is to focus on understanding the data, both sector-wide and within your organisation.
Impact of market conditions
Last year, the sector reported a turnover rate of 28.3%, compared to a UK average employee rate of 15%. While social care turnover has reduced since last year, this is likely supported by a spike in international recruitment activity which has produced better early retention results. Whilst this might be the case now, the sustainability of international recruitment is arguably questionable. There are also varying impacts that poor retention is having on different workforce demographics. Young people, for example, make up only 8% of all staff, and worryingly, the turnover rate for under-20s in 2021/2022 was reported to be 53%. Supporting and inspiring our workforce of the future has never been so crucial.
Hft’s Sector Pulse Check 2023 highlighted the decrease in domestic applications, especially among small organisations. Despite the increase in international staff, vacancies have only decreased by 13,000, so the staffing gap continues to be nearly unmanageable to close. A focus on domestic recruitment must continue and for it to be successful, the right building blocks need to be in place to create the foundations for retention success.
Why are your people leaving?
Our findings from exit interviews of over 2,200 leavers revealed that almost half were moving out of their career in social care into other sectors. During the pandemic, the sector ‘borrowed’ workers from other industries. These have since reopened and often pay more and can start people in their roles soon after an application is successful. Seemingly, people are returning to where they were, such as hospitality and retail – which, alongside healthcare, are the top sectors candidates apply to alongside making applications to social care. This is a missed opportunity. Understanding why people are leaving your organisation is the next step in building strong retention practice and finding solutions to fix the issues.
Our data also found that family, domestic or personal reasons were those most consistently cited for exit over the past three years. Likewise, relationships with managers or management style was rated amongst the top three reasons for leaving across all three years of data. A career change or working hours were interchangeably rated third and fourth.
Personal reasons could arguably be outside of an organisation’s influence, which is often the case. However, even when this is cited as a reason for leaving, there are common factors that could have influenced employees to stay – if managerial relationships were better or more flexible working arrangements were adopted. There is also a link with working hours and shifts – often a change in family needs means working hours and shift patterns are no longer suitable. How are you considering whether this is a reality for your leavers, finding ways to foster better relations and offer flexibility?
Key to facilitating conversations about an employee’s happiness at work and intentions to stay are through regular catch ups and one-to-one meetings. Our data found over a third of people hadn’t had a meeting with their manager by week eight of employment. When asked whether they felt valued, a third did not. Finding the time to meet with staff and demonstrate their worth to the organisation may well prevent early exit of new starters, especially those new to working in care.
It is also worth considering pay as a reason for leaving. We have seen this reason increase by 1% each year, and while people are not leaving on mass because of pay, it does feature as a reason for people being hesitant to apply to social care. According to Skills for Care, in 2022, care workers needed to be paid around 60p more than the National Living Wage to see an improvement in turnover rates.
Retention solutions
Now that we have reviewed the problems facing the sector, and you have considered how they may be impacting on your organisation, you have a stronger foundation to look at the retention building blocks. Using these blocks, whether they’re large and intricate, or small and sturdy, will ultimately assist in delivering better retention outcomes.
Looking at retention often means looking at the recruitment process. How are you setting out your stall in job adverts? What are people saying and hearing about you? What do candidates understand about you as an organisation? Getting this right doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise. Give an open and honest view of your care setting in the recruitment process. Offer previews, open days and a tour during your interviews, if appropriate to do so. Engage with your local community and take part in events such as Care Home Open Week. Tell stories about the people you care for and support, to give a clear view of what it truly means to be a part of the social care industry.
Another key building block is to review your employee benefits offering. Your workforce will want different things – so ask your current teams and candidate pool exactly what they want. Whether that’s reasonable flexibility in working hours, support with travel arrangements or on-demand pay to name a few, have an open dialogue with your teams. Not only can this help with attracting candidates, but it also assists with making sure that people stay once they are hired, including your under-represented workforce demographic.
The next block of your building needs to focus on your onboarding experience. Even after people have made it through your recruitment process, how they are treated at the beginning and during their employment will have an impact on how long they stay – not just with your organisation, but ultimately within the sector. Provide a meaningful and well-thought-out induction, ensure regular communication as part of one-to-one meetings, discuss opportunities for training and development, recognise and praise good work, assign buddies and mentors and conduct both retention and stay interviews.
Futureproofing your workforce
If you think your building is complete, you need to keep surveying it for cracks and faults. Like any building, it needs repairs and maintenance as time goes on. Better recruitment and retention within your organisation are not achievable from making improvements once and never doing them again. You need to keep looking at your data and be aware of what others are doing – what are the push and pull factors? Communication within your teams should be prioritised to ensure that people feel valued and heard.
Positively, our research cites that the part of their role that employees enjoy the most is contact with the individuals they care for and support. This was by an overwhelming majority, with over 55% putting it at number one. Similarly, type of work was consistently a top reason for attracting employees to the role. As a sector, we can and do attract people with the right values – especially when we are adopting values-based recruitment.
Better retention doesn’t come overnight. It takes a lot of listening, data analysis and an openness to doing something different. That said, considering your building blocks for change will, in time, go far in having a positive impact. After all, we all have an opportunity to shape the future success of the social care workforce – so doing something now can only help to pave the way to a brighter workforce.
How is your organisation adopting values-based recruitment? What steps are you taking to retain staff? Leave a comment on this article or join the conversation to share your thoughts.
Dave Beesley is Social Care Talent Director at Cohesion. Email: [email protected]
Web: https://cohesionrecruitment.com