Staff recruitment, retention and management case study: winning ideas for any employer
Posted on 8:57pm, 16th March 2010 • No Comments
See whether you could use these ideas as successfully in your workplace ….
At the start of their programme, Leicester City Council’s Home Care Service (HCS) had the same awful recruitment and retention problems as their counterparts in other local authorities. People need people (a UK-wide report produced by the Audit Commission and Social Services Inspectorate) suggests 76% Home Care Services face recruitment difficulties and 38% retention difficulties; annual staff turnover in these roles is 32%.
The main technique used by HCS managers to transform their service was the simple, powerful one of “listening” receptively to the words and behaviour of job applicants and staff. It’s a technique that requires managers to exercise real empathy and humility (probably why it’s not commonly practised!). Managers then used what they’d learnt to make radical changes in the service’s recruitment, training and staff communications practices.
The HCS budget couldn’t stretch to paying better hourly rates but managers and staff worked creatively together to remove other sources of job dissatisfaction and boost the role’s attractiveness to applicants from all sections of the community.
HCS’s rewards for starting the programme included the unparalleled success of its new recruitment campaign in attracting sufficient numbers of high quality recruits. Thirteen vacancies were filled. The programme launched key service improvements such as HCS staff taking on new responsibilities for managing care patients’ medication, the creation of better systems for safe discharge of hospital patients into the community and the development of improved procedural guidelines for the commissioning of home care services.
How HCS improved its performance ….
Better recruitment practices
(1) HCS rebranded the job, having discovered from jobholders that one reason why the job didn’t appeal was because the general public and their clients saw “home care assistants” as low status personal servants.
The new job title (“social care assistant”), job description and person specification linked jobholders more closely with the team of health professionals (a group having much higher social status). A new uniform chosen in consultation with staff helped reinforce the job rebranding – its design also made it easier to recruit Asian women fluent in the community languages spoken by so many of HCS’s customers.
(2) HCS changed the main channel of its communication with potential applicants, from communicating almost exclusively in writing to communicating through social interaction. As in any marketing exercise, HCS came to realise how counter-productive it is to require your target “audience” to communicate with you in ways they find daunting and difficult.
Instead of expecting potential applicants to put themselves forward after reading full written details about the job, candidates were invited to informal coffee morning sessions giving them a chance to discuss the job with people already doing it and to meet their potential workmates. Candidates wanting help in completing application forms had natural opportunities to ask for advice during their chats with current jobholders.
Better retention and staff performance
(1) HCS is now classifying social care assistants as “essential car users”, allowing them access to the same car-leasing scheme enjoyed by senior staff in other community-based roles. The car-leasing scheme involves signing up to 3 year contracts, providing jobholders with added incentive to stay with HCS.
(2) HCS has negotiated permits with the police allowing jobholders to park on double-yellow lines when they are at work. The permits reduce the stresses on staff as they work through their daily visits to clients living in the many city areas without enough car parking spaces.
(3) HCS holds Home Care Forums that allow jobholders to propose and work on improvements in service delivery (some of these initiatives have already been described) and to speak openly about any matters of concern to them. Jobholder representatives from each of the different teams meet higher management, their particular line managers not being present – this approach allows for greater openness in discussion.
(4) HCS provides comprehensive “user friendly” training programmes to equip staff with advanced vocational skills (eg understanding dementia), ‘life skills’ necessary for community-based work and more general employment skills (eg computer skills). The depth and range of the training provided enables staff to work to higher standards and with less stress. The training also opens up doors to promotion, assisting HCS in its efforts to retain staff over the long-term.
Summary
As you can see from the above, most of the ideas developed by HCS didn’t cost money and some saved it (eg the “essential car user” scheme reduced the amount and costs of staff turnover). These are ideas many other employers could adapt to improve their own recruitment, retention and staff performance practices.