Care Setting Recruitment - Play The Long Game
I need to preface this article by stating that I am NOT able to assist with short-term recruitment issues. I am always trying to look ahead and this article looks at my attitudes towards recruitment that started in 2018 and have culminated in a lot of success during an extremely difficult period in social care.
On Friday 19th November I had a chat with my locality manager from Skills for Care regarding a project my team have been working on that could have a lot of benefits for the care sector (more to come on that in 2022, hopefully). She initiated the chat by asking me about recruitment for my team and the problems I've faced and was surprised when I told her I, currently, have no problems.
"That's something I really wanted to hear on a Friday afternoon," she said, happily, telling me that a lot of care managers that she had spoken to this week had lamented their recruitment and retention issues and were struggling massively with both.
I've seen a lot of "tips and tricks" for recruitment during this current crisis in social care. A lot of them are quite generic and/or obvious and, to be honest, if you're absolutely desperate for staff then you're probably already doing those things and still struggling.
In my opinion there are three things that you can do to improve your staffing situation:
I want to focus on point one - recruit a lot smarter. The good news is that this will significantly improve your staff team and it also massively assists points two and three. The bad news is that this is something that isn't a quick fix to your staffing issues and, indeed, could even worsen them initially.
In early 2018 I arranged a care team meeting. At that meeting one of my senior carers subtly brought up a member of the team who was caught up in what I've come to call "the cycle of depression/anxiety". I am sure that most care setting managers have had team members with this - they have mental health problems and when they're bad they come to work, don't feel well enough to work, so they go home sick. Then whilst they're at home they become anxious or depressed about how they are going to be perceived in work for going home sick and leaving a shift short. So they either phone in sick for their next shift or they come in, become more anxious and go home sick again. Eventually they get a sicknote from their GP because they feel that this justifies their time off sick and they can come back almost "reset" from their previous sickness. But, sometimes, coming back triggers their anxiety because they are worried about people talking about them because they were off sick and the cycle can continue.
In this meeting the senior carer talked about this team member having "the face" - when she comes into handover and everyone can tell that she's going to be going home sick because of how she looks. This started a discussion about how frustrating it was for the team working with someone like that.
"I'd rather start the shift short staffed," this senior carer told everyone, "because at least then we don't have her dragging the shift down and we don't have everyone on tenterhooks, waiting for her to go home sick."
"Let me get this straight," I asked, "you would rather work short staffed from the start of the shift than have her come in and try to do some work and then go home sick?"
"Yes," everyone in the meeting agreed. They all said that everything works better being one team member short than having this team member come in, depressed and anxious, not wanting to be there and obviously wanting to go home. They all said that there were some people working in the team who dragged the shift down with negative attitudes and they would rather work short-staffed than have them on shift.
As an aside, it needs to be noted that this member of the team was given a phenomenal amount of time, effort and support from the team and me. She eventually struggled so badly with her mental health that she had to leave.
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That meeting was the start of something that transformed recruitment, onboarding and inducting at Castleford House and has set everything in motion for us to go into this current recruitment crisis in social care in such a strong position that we currently have no vacancies for any positions in the team at all.
I could write a book about my recruitment, onboarding and induction techniques and maybe I will in the future. It's worth noting that my processes are not new or ground-breaking, they are amalgamations of techniques and guidance that I have picked up over the last few years from attending workshops, listening to podcasts, reading books, learning from others, listening to the team and going with my gut/instinct.
However, if I had to give a few short tips for recruitment, I would say that you primarily, absolutely, MUST NOT recruit for the sake of filling a vacancy. No matter how desperate you are. No matter how long the vacancy has been empty for. No matter how much work you have turned away because you have not been able to recruit for this vacancy. If you fill a vacancy with the wrong person it can be more damaging than having that vacancy in the first instance. I am CONSTANTLY quoting Holly Tucker from "The High Performance Podcast" (a must-listen for anyone), where she says "I would rather have a hole than an asshole", which sums up what I've just said - if the wrong person fills the vacancy then it could be more damaging than having the vacancy in the first place.
If you find the right person for a vacancy then they must have the same values and ethos as you and your team. They must have the right work ethic. They must be able to integrate and fit into the current team. They must be wanting to work in the role and not see it as a stop-gap for something bigger/better elsewhere (unless they see that something bigger/better within your company). More importantly - you need to know one hundred percent that they are the right person for this role.
"Yeah, but I'm desperate for staff and need people to fill vacancies," you might say. Fair enough. But if you find the right person, get the right fit, then that person should (if you onboard, induct and treat them properly) stay for a long time, improve the team and make it a nicer place to work, making it easier to recruit and retain people for the team. There are no downsides.
I know that finding one person to attend an interview, let alone the right person, is so hard at the moment - one of the projects I'm working with Skills for Care for might, hopefully, see an improvement to recruitment and retention in social care in the near future. I did preface this article by saying that my solutions are not a quick-fix and, unfortunately, is something that is not entirely realistic in this current climate in social care.
But it's not too late to start this process. This took me three years and a pandemic forcing a lot of people to change careers to reach a stage where the team has almost no turnover and we have a waiting list of people wanting to come and work for us. Earlier this year another care company approached two of the team and offered them approximately £3.00 per hour MORE than they are on now to leave Castleford House and go work for them and they turned them down. Those are the people you want working in your team - those who aren't motivated by money and who genuinely care and value their emotional/psychological wellbeing and understand that you can help them with this.
I've seen posts on LinkedIn and other social media from care managers/directors/owners complaining that McDonalds, Amazon, Occado, Lidl and other environments are offering £13.00+ per hour to work there and saying things like "how can we compete with this?!?!?" and "how can we hope to recruit or retain staff when things like this are happening up the road?!?!?" Do you know what I say to that? If your team see those adverts and hand their notice in to go and work in those settings then let them do it because you don't want people like that working for you.
I appreciate how controversial that opinion is, but hear me out. Despite what the government say, social care is a skilled profession. It requires a certain skill and mind set that a lot of people don't have. In my opinion we need to shift people's views that care is a profession that just anyone can do, because that leads to the wrong people working in caring roles and that can lead to abuse - intentional and unintentional - to some of the most vulnerable people in society. And when I say "abuse" I don't just mean physical/emotional/psychological - I also mean things like neglect from staff shortages from people quitting with no notice or refusing to work certain shifts because "I've decided I can't work weekends" etc. I'm sure that all care managers have encountered those people before.
For anyone reading this who was maybe hoping that I was going to give you secrets about how to quickly fill your staff vacancies and get a lot of people interviewing for roles - I'm sorry, but I can't help you because I'm not in that position because I've been trying to build this team for a long time and am currently working with a team that is quite possibly the best in the country, maybe the world, and keeps getting better (I appreciate that is a controversial comment, but I genuinely believe it and try to instil this belief in the team, too).
I also need to add that the three points I listed above (better, smarter recruiting, building, and improving the culture, values and ethos and retaining most of your staff team) are all mutually exclusive and you need to be able to implement all three in order to make this a success. There is no point in recruiting better and smarter if you can't retain the amazing people you recruit.
I'll try to write an article about building a culture and ethos and values and another one about retention, because in my opinion retention is the single best way to avoid and/or get out of the current recruitment crisis. For now, despite your staffing problems, consider what I've said and maybe now is the time to start building that team for the future and, possibly, in a few years time you'll be in a position where you're turning new recruits away.
Empowering Families to Heal & Professionals to Thrive | Mindset Alchemist
2 年Music to my ears. So very very true ??
Co-founder at AxioGrow | Building in public | Talking about company values, culture + wellbeing
3 年Nodding along to everything you say here Ben. Building a culture like you’ve described can take time, but it’s worth it to see the results you’re getting now. Love the way you write too- very conversational!
The Mary Poppins of Social Care, now online too!
3 年Absolutely love this ?? Ben. We have to ask why are some homes succeeding and others not... and what we need to do to ensure all succeed!