Boosting staff recruitment and retention across the social care sector

There’s an ongoing and serious crisis within the social care sector, and it’s not going away any time soon. Across the care home sector, workers are feeling underpaid, undervalued, overworked, and often overwhelmed by responsibility and complex client needs. This resulted in 131,000 unfilled/vacant social care posts in 2022/23. 

According to a survey issued by the Workforce Care Quality Commission (CQC) in 2022, 36 per cent of care home providers and 41 per cent of homecare providers out of the 5,500 participants said that workforce challenges have had a negative impact on the service they deliver¹. 

This is direct and concerning data from the frontline – and was commissioned post-pandemic, so the intense pressures of that time clearly haven’t subsided.

More and more social care staff are leaving the field and it’s becoming increasingly challenging to attract and retain workers. And of course, this ultimately means that care home residents’ needs are not always being met, which poses a threat to safety and wellbeing. 

The cycle of low pay, lack of training, and overwork seems to be unending. So, what can be done to address staff shortages, and are there any workable solutions to attract and keep care home employees? 

What are the key issues causing the care home crisis?

The key issue highlighted across multiple reports and surveys is overwork and understaffing paired with poor remuneration. This is not helped by inflexible working hours that don’t allow for work-life balance, travel times, or general self-care and wellbeing. An experienced care worker in a residential home for the elderly, for example, finds that they are facing burnout, struggling with the cost of living and lack of family time, while doing more for less. They decide to leave, thus creating an employment gap as that slot is hard to fill. This then becomes a widescale issue across adult social care. 

In a 2021/2022 survey also reported on by the CQS, unfilled vacancies were estimated at 10.7 per cent in 2021/22, demonstrating a 50,000 fall in filled posts across the whole of adult social care since records on this began in 2013.

Another issue is both a lack of and below-par standards of training – which impacts client/resident safety. With so much pressure on getting people through their hours and rota, there is neither the time nor money available to provide this and there’s no standardisation of qualifications, either. 

Trained nurses in particular are putting basic financial necessity over what once might have been a “calling”, so that level of specialism is now thin on the ground. And with agency staff often employed to plug staffing gaps, this leads to a situation where quantity is more important than quality. In one home reviewed by the CQC, the impact of unqualified agency staff meant those living there or receiving regular services were left unattended, so at risk of choking, falling, or other harmful accidents.

All of the above is more than enough to highlight why this is not a sector attracting swathes of nurses and support workers. Add a lack of staff support and toxic working cultures into the mix, and you have a perfect storm for crisis. 

Once someone is successfully recruited into the care sector, there are further challenges that may make this position untenable in the long-term. Mistreatment from troubled patients and disregard for staff complaints and needs by senior staff don’t help. 

There’s also the evidence of those from ethnic minorities who make up 21 per cent of the social care workforce experiencing regular racism as part of their everyday working environment.  

Of course, underpinning all of these factors is poor pay for often demanding and difficult jobs – and with no clear parity or progression, this is where the cycle of failure restarts again and again.

Commenting on what this crisis may lead to without change, Tee Aujlay, Head of HR Client Services at Howden said: “Recruitment into a care home team should never be about who, if anyone, is prepared to put up with imperfect working conditions. But until parity and equity is in place, the best people for the job will continue to look elsewhere for employment. We want to be a part of the driving force to change this, suggesting practical strategies that will make this a respected and more popular sector to work in.”

Solutions to solve the care home recruitment crisis

1. Flexible working

It’s often the impossible shift patterns that push a social care worker over the edge – none of which was helped by the pandemic situation in the earlier part of this decade.

As supported by The Flexible Workers Act 2023, we recommend the following:

• Offering compressed hours - this means the same number of hours but over fewer days, such as 8am to 6pm, or 10am to 8pm over four days, as a change to a standard 9am to 5pm over five days. This also has the benefit of providing longer shift cover.
• Offering the ability to change working hours - including early starts or late finishes to fit around personal life responsibilities.
• Offering part-time working or job sharing - often the solution to having nobody in the job at all, and it means the employer is seen as more open, cooperative, and aware of staff needs.

2. Employer support for their staff

As an extension to flexibility around shift patterns and hours, employers need to have measures in place to support staff before they face a crisis or ‘burn-out’ that could take them away from the workplace. This may be practical measures such as lunch vouchers or a petrol allowance, but equally important could be access to mental health support workers or a confidential phoneline. 

And then there is staff safety… making sure that care workers face a minimum of physical danger or upset is critical. This could be in carrying out day-to-day duties, or if they’re working with a client who may have unpredictable behavioural patterns. If the team feels protected, they in turn will be invested.

3.    Career development and training

To visibly demonstrate that care staff are not just there to mop up the mess or prop up the patients, we suggest that there’s a robust training structure as well as a career progression and development plan. This is not only useful to enable existing staff to feel valued but will attract a more committed calibre of recruits who prioritise such measures and want to be of real service to those they’re assisting. It’s easy for employers and employees to view care work as a last resort, but with a visible and authentic career pathway, it may possibly be a first and lasting choice.

4.    Making better pay a priority

Rather than salary being the elephant in the room, now is the time for care home operators and owners to recognise that low pay equates to minimum commitment and often poor self-esteem. The National Living Wage underwent an increase to £9.50 an hour in 2022 (£11.05 in London), but care home group HC-One backed this up with a £17m investment to thank their carer staff for their dedication throughout the pandemic and beyond, which mainly went towards boosting pay.

While you and your care home operations team may be keen to follow this advice, making the headspace to practically do this could mean taking time away from priority task completion. That’s why Howden’s HR services are both useful and practical. We partner with you to structure and implement recruitment and retention plans that work for you, your employees, and of course, those in your care.

What can we offer?

We can help by offering a leadership training course on a range of topics to help your managers. Training courses include recruitment and selection, equality and discrimination, and coaching sessions for individuals. Our consultancy hours can also help your managers with any tricky questions they may encounter. Additionally, we have ready-made HR policies available on our client portal, but these can also be tailored for your business and include modules on equal opportunities, flexible working, and health and safety.

Other services to consider are an Employee Assistance Programme. This is a key service to support those who are overworked and/or suffering with personal and work issues, or mental and physical health concerns.

We can also offer an HR audit, which is a complete review into a business’s HR capabilities and, where necessary, provides recommendations to improve them. It’s undertaken by one of our specialist HR consultants and covers key aspects of your HR procedures. We’ll provide a personalised report which highlight gaps in a range of HR areas. It also includes recommendations and a timeline of suggested actions and explains how we can support you with those actions.

For more information on the HR audit and how Howden can help you capture and keep the best team, contact us today by emailing [email protected]