Cutting through to the people who care
A chance encounter while working in Shrewsbury led us to meeting Shropshire Partners in Care (SPiC), a network for care providers that was facing a major challenge in supporting its members.
One of SPiC’s objectives is to raise the profile of adult social care and draw the right people into taking up positions where they’re badly needed. An objective they told us would only become more challenging as our ageing population grows, with the number of jobs predicted to rise by more than a third by 2035.
The starker truth is that an adult care position is one of the most difficult to fill. Applications are low and the quality even lower. Listening to the SPiC team, it was clear that a lot of people don’t appreciate what a career in care demands, but also what it can offer. They’re often looking for a stop-gap until something ‘better’ comes along. Many will leave before they’ve even completed their training.
It’s hardly surprising given that the sector pays notoriously low and is plagued by bad press. Let alone the perception that it’s “all about wiping bums”. A hard sell indeed for even the best recruitment teams.
Getting to the root
We set out exploring how we could help. There was already a national recruitment campaign — Every day is different — which care providers could utilise. But the SPiC team recognised that a one-size-fits-all toolkit of posters and social-media messages could only go so far.
The care sector pays notoriously low and is plagued by bad press. There’s a perception that it’s “all about wiping bums”. A hard sell indeed for even the best recruitment teams.
What members needed was to get to the root of the barriers to recruitment, and also realise the advantages and how to tap into them. They needed to understand how to connect with the people who care enough about caregiving.
So why do people become carers? What keeps them caring? What makes a great carer? Working in care isn’t all doom and gloom. Far from it. It has a lot to offer people who enter into it with their hearts, minds and eyes open — not least a deep of purpose.
From the voices in our research, a passion and enthusiasm for people — and the wonderfully fulfilling relationships that grew from this — shone through the brightest.
As one carer told us: “To think I wasted all those years in retail when I could have been here. Working in care is so rewarding — there’s nothing quite like it.”
We got them thinking about the stories that focus on what really matters to people.
We found comments like this in abundance. Many told of the genuine job satisfaction from knowing that each day is an adventure where you get to make a difference — to the lives of individuals and their families. Others talked of a career for life with ongoing education, training and support.
But how could care providers find and appeal to these people? What was the red thread connecting all of these things?
Who cares?
Our next step was to design and facilitate a training workshop to help SPiC members unpack these things, proactively entitled ‘Who cares?’. Precisely the question they needed to answer.
Our goal was to show participants the way to defining and communicating what a career in care, and in their organisation, could be. We prepared a pre-workshop questionnaire to get a sense of participants’ needs, challenges and knowledge levels, which varied greatly. And to give them a chance to engage with us before the session.
We designed activities to encourage the group to explore what purpose, values, identity and working culture really are and why it’s vital for any organisation to begin there, at the core. We gave them a sense of how articulating and living these principles well can help to attract and retain the right people — those who share their beliefs and intentions.
What really matters
We went on to show the group how they might define the ideal candidate; building a picture of who they wanted to recruit and how to use that insight to target them. We got them thinking about the stories that focus on what really matters to people, and looked at what makes a good care story. Then, using a simple framework, we showed them how to gather stories of their own and tell them in a way that would appeal to potential carers in their area.
What’s more, we provided useful tools and techniques that attendees could make the most of within their own organisations. Something that the SPiC team could see was much appreciated.
“To ensure participants got the best out of the workshop, Neo tailored the content to help people really focus on the individual challenges they face around recruiting,” said Sophie Richards, project support officer at SPiC.
We also learnt a lot that day — about what it takes to be a good carer. Sometimes it’s the little things, like remembering 12 different tea orders a day. Handing out daily hugs to anyone who needs one. Or listening with keen interest and enthusiasm even if you’ve heard the same story a hundred times.
And the reason why they remember, hug and listen? Because they really do care.
It’s evident that Neo are skilled in enabling you to explore and consider ideas to grow your organisation and brand in a way that is thought-provoking and empowering.
– Nicky Jacques, chief officer,
Shropshire Partners in Care
Removing internal barriers
Our work didn’t end there. Knowing there are often internal barriers to putting learning into practice, we provided some one-to-one mentoring for participants.
With this individual focus, we were able to delve into deeper issues affecting working culture in care organisations. Often the way people are at work can undermine the very values intended to unite them around a shared purpose, which can send the wrong signals about what they do and why.
These issues, manifesting in communication barriers and unproductive behaviours, are often fuelled by hierarchy and difficult group dynamics. So we talked about the need for leaders to get below the surface and address the ‘elephants in the room’.
We left our participants with one final thought. If they could harness the potential of their teams to take shared responsibility for better ways of being and working, then this would surely help them achieve their original goal: to grow those teams with people who care as much as they do.
We also left the SPiC team feeling more equipped to support themselves as well as their members.
“With Neo’s support we’re developing our workplace to be one which creates a culture of consistency, appreciation and lived values,” said Nick Jacques, SPiC’s chief officer.
