IT expertise to streamline processes and create a more efficient system for care company

Andrew:
My name is Andrew McLennan. I currently run Eidyn Care, which is a domiciliary care company based in Edinburgh and Fife. So we have about 110 people across the two different locations.

Shaked:
What brought you to the care sector?

Andrew:
My background is in IT, so I spent the last 20 years working as a project manager and program manager. My wife became an oncology nurse looking after people that were dying, and eventually she became a palliative care nurse. One day she said, around the dinner table, she said everybody wants to die at home. And there just doesn't seem to be that facility for people to die at home, they're all coming to a hospice to die, They don't want to die in a hospice. They want to die at home. So I said to her, Why don't we set up a care home company that can provide that? You've got the care experience, I've got the IT and business skills experience, and we can support people to live at home. That was six years ago... Fast forward and we've now got two care companies employing over 100 people and looking after 150 clients.

Shaked:
What IT has to do with all of that and how it can contribute to a care business?

Andrew:
So when I joined the company just in its infancy in 2019, it was just a small, quite small company that was providing care. It was doing okay, but there wasn't the processes and procedures in place, there wasn't the systems in place. So we weren't able to track what staff were doing, we weren't able to find out how our clients were doing, we weren't able to have a slick onboarding process, so my job when I started was to streamline all of that, put all the systems in, and then ensure that everything was smooth and slick running. So we suddenly went from working in an office during COVID to having to go remote with our management team, all being remote on Microsoft teams, and working very much in a recovery mode to ensure that care was still being delivered or staff were being safe.

Shaked:
How impactful that is to have a streamlined process to really retain your carers, to engage them better, to have them your best advocates for the business?

Andrew:
Carers are such a valuable commodity, there's thousands of companies wanting very few carers and if you don't have a slick onboarding and recruitment process, you're not going to attract those carers. People will apply and it might be two, three, four, five days before they hear from the companies. When a carer applies to our company, they immediately get an automated text
saying Thank you for contacting us, Here's some more information about us. And you can actually click a link and you can go in to organize a telephone interview. So immediately they're already starting to feel quite warm and fuzzy about it. We send an automated text to them every day telling them about our culture, about our training, about all these different things that we do. So by the time that the recruitment manager comes and speaks to them, they're already aware about us, about our awards, about our training and all the different things that we do.

Shaked:
How can you actually measure that what you're doing create this impact for the carers?

Andrew:
It's easy when you're working in an office. You can go and tap Fred on the shoulder and ask him how he's doing, with the carers being remote It's a really difficult thing. We implement surveys every 3 to 6 months. We also used to do pulse surveys every two weeks. One week it could be about culture, another week could be about communication, another week could be about work life balance. So we can immediately gauge how things are and then we can change those things.

Shaked:
The image of carers today, the positioning is not as positive. How do you approach that in your...?

Andrew:
Career of a carer is such a hard, but very rewarding job. They're looking after somebody, they're giving them companionship, they're also being their doctor and their nurse. So it’s all of these different things, What we do is we have a career path which is structured in different grades, As you go through that process and we get up to a certain level, we measure all of these through appraisals and then we get up to the next phase bend, and that gives them a higher level of pay and also gives them that career path. I've got a carer, Megan, who joined with us in 2019. She started off as a quiet, timid young person. She had a bad experience in another care company. She's just been promoted to a manager level. She's gone up from a mentor to supervisor to assistant supervisor to a manager level.

Shaked:
What do you think in your perspective would be the kind of key factors for a carers retention?

Andrew:
Once we've got the people on board and they're trained, they go out and shadow shifts. In the end of the shadow shifts, they come back into the office and they speak with their team lead so we can give them extra training if they're still not feeling confident after that period of time, we check in with them almost on a daily basis, We use WhatsApp constantly, just checking in with people, saying How is everything? So it's very much, It's a two way conversation. So everybody feels quite family orientated. So after the first month we have an appraisal and another three months appraisal and a six month appraisal so they know where they're doing. And the other big thing is recognition. It's just always recognizing that they are doing a good job. on the WhatsApp, We might just say, Well done Kary, for doing a great job. We'll put some feedback we've had from a client, We'll put onto the WhatsApp so everybody can see the recognition they're getting.

Shaked:
Generation Z, They have different expectations today when everything is very fast, very instant, and when they come to work, usually things are less instant. How do you approach the expectations of the new generation in the workforce?

Andrew:
We try and set out their expectations at the outset during the training and during the onboarding process so they know what they’ll experience. Being out in the field is a difficult one, especially for the younger members of our staff and not being able to handhold them or know if they're in a little mood is very difficult, very challenging.

Shaked:
Key tip, things that you wish you knew earlier?

Andrew:
Get your processes and procedures in place, once you've got that, you've got a solid foundation of how everything else will work. Your staff are key and critical. They are the most important part of your business. Once you've got your, your foundation in place and just look after them as much as possible.