The Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and managed by Skills for Care. It’s a free service which not only helps social care managers to better understand their workforce, but also supports DHSC to understand the workforce issues faced by the sector.
Thousands of social care employers use ASC-WDS to safely record and view their workforce and staff training data.
Once you’ve entered your data, you can access benchmark data on pay rates, vacancy rates and turnover rates. You can also compare your metrics with similar organisations, and organisations rated ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Here’s some of the key ways that you can use ASC-WDS to better understand your workforce and how you compare to others.
Learn more about pay rates
ASC-WDS allows you to compare the average pay rate for care workers, registered managers, and registered nurses in your workplace to pay rates of other providers. This includes other organisations in your local area, and organisations rated ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’. Having this information about your local market, and insight into what ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’ organisations are doing may help to guide you in making decisions around pay rates for your organisation.
If you discover that your average pay is higher than similar providers, highlighting this can also give you a competitive edge when recruiting for new staff.
Learn more about staff turnover rates
Staff turnover rates can have a major impact on your organisation. Recruiting is time-consuming and costly, so attracting staff who will stay with you long-term is an important part of your recruitment and workforce strategy.
Understanding your turnover rates and how they compare to other organisations may help you to identify what aspects may be impacting your turnover, positively or negatively.
Factors which can impact turnover rates include pay, access to learning and development, contracted hours, working location and workplace culture.
As with pay, if your turnover rate is lower than other organisations you can use this intelligence to show potential new employees that your organisation is a place where staff choose to build long and fulfilling careers.
Learn more about vacancy rates
By using ASC-WDS you can record your current number of filled posts and current vacancies. This will allow you to see what your vacancy rate is.
Knowing this figure can allow you to chart your vacancy rate over time and compare this to the national average and to other similar organisations.
We know that recruitment and retention remains a challenge for social care employers, and while the national vacancy rate decreased last year it does remain high at 9.9%.
Knowing how your vacancy rate compares to national trends and charting changes can help you to identify how your recruitment approach compares to others, what elements of your recruitment strategy are working well and where you can continue to adapt.
Influence social care sector government policies
Using ASC-WDS not only helps you to better understand your workforce, but by sharing your data in ASC-WDS you help Skills for Care to produce comprehensive reports and data insights which develop a greater understanding of the social care sector.
This month these data insights will be used to create our annual ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report which gives a comprehensive overview of the social care sector and workforce including on issues such as vacancy rates, international recruitment, learning and development, and demographics of the workforce.
These insights provide the Government and policy makers with a true picture of the social care sector and highlight the areas that most need support. Contributing to ASC-WDS means you’re contributing to the voice of the sector.
There’s lots more benefits to using ASC-WDS too. It allows you to keep on top of staff training records, ensures you’re eligible to apply for the Workforce Development Fund (WDF) and provides you with access to an exclusive Benefits Bundle including free resources and discounts.
