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How to Make Care Staff Feel Valued and Appreciated

Staff retention is one of the biggest issues facing many care businesses. The issue reflects a mixture of people moving between providers and those leaving the industry altogether.

Surveys show that care staff tend to enjoy their work – particularly the human interaction and the knowledge that what they do makes a difference to people’s lives. So why do they leave?

Pay rates are, of course, a factor and the current cost of living crisis isn’t helping. Recent figures put the vacancy rate for home care services at 13.5%.  

Every business is facing multiple cost pressures. In the care sector this makes it difficult to tackle staff retention by offering pay rises or more generous benefits.

What Can You Influence?

In these difficult situations it’s usually best to focus on the factors that you can influence. 

The National Care Awareness Survey in November 2021 reported that training and development was one of the four main areas where care managers and staff believed improvements were needed. The other three were salaries, government funding, and recognition and reward. No big surprises there!

There’s a clear link between providing structured, accredited training and staff feeling that they’re valued, supported and appreciated. Areas highlighted by the survey were mental health training, empathy and time management. Care workers also said that recognition and professional qualifications were important. 

Managing the Cost of Staff Development

Training and development have associated costs – both in time and money. But so does poor staff retention and the endless cycle of recruitment and induction. There’s also a potential reputational cost if care services are found not to have adequate numbers of suitably trained staff.

If there were simple or easy solutions to staff retention, you’d already be deploying them. But there are practical and pragmatic steps you can take. Redcrier offers a free consultation for care managers to help you assess your current situation and needs, we can also take some of the burden of training management off your shoulders.

And when it comes to delivering accredited training aligned to CQC standards we have multiple options, including highly flexible and cost effective training delivery through eBox online learning.

Call us on 01823 332200 to find out more. You can also find helpful guidance through our resource centre.

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