How Skills for Care’s upcoming ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ will support social care organisations to retain their staff.
In the summer, the new ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ will be released to support the sector in planning its workforce needs over the next 15 years and set out a plan for ensuring the sector has enough of the right people with the right skills.
In addition to setting out a clear and unified plan with recommendations to move the sector forward, the strategy will be accompanied by a variety of useful resources that touch on crucial issues, such as staff retention, and the factors that impact these issues.
According to the data, adult social care suffers from a ‘leaky bucket’ – providers are recruiting new staff while losing their existing team members at a similar rate, which makes it challenging to address the growing need for more staff across sector.
One of the primary issues that will be addressed by the new strategy is leadership. Without quality leaders, care organisations will always struggle to maintain a happy and motivated workforce that is led by the right values and retains its team members long term.
Registered managers are amongst these more influential leaders in social care. They play a huge role in shaping the culture of their organisation and the careers of their colleagues. It’s our belief that by setting out recommendations to support registered managers to develop their organisations and careers, the workforce strategy will be instrumental in supporting leadership across the sector. In turn, we’re confident this will lead to improved retention.
Career development and opportunities for progress are another crucial consideration when it comes to retaining staff. Without progression, staff can suffer from a lack of motivation or hope for their future, which can cause them to consider leaving. The new workforce strategy will help to address this by supporting social care providers to structure their staff’s career progression and training opportunities, which will support them in retaining staff.
The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated how challenging working conditions can become for social care staff, which is why the new workforce strategy will place considerable focus on supporting providers with their staff’s mental and physical wellbeing. Burnout, physical injury and mental ill health are common problems across the social care workforce. The strategy will set out recommendations to help providers recognise, manage and mitigate these wellbeing risks, which will support them in creating safer workplaces that retain staff.
Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) is an important consideration when it comes to staff retention. Ultimately, staff are more inclined to remain working at an employer that respects their unique characteristics and makes them feel recognised and included. Social care as a whole is highly diverse, which makes this a particularly important area of focus. The workforce strategy will provide a shared vision that is inclusive of all and offer practical guidance on how to achieve a fairer, more equitable and pleasant work environment.
In summary, we’re confident that the new ‘Workforce strategy for adult social care’ will offer a unified and coherent direction of travel for the sector, in addition to a great deal of support for building and retaining skilled teams. We’re also hopeful that the amount of effort that has gone into the strategy will highlight to social care workers that we’re committed to improving their working conditions.
Find out more at www.skillsforcare.org.uk/About-us/A-workforce-strategy-for-adult-social-care.aspx.
@skillsforcare
skillsforcare.org.uk
