The challenges of recruiting and engaging carers and the importance of communication and training

Barry:
I'm Bary Sweetbaum, I'm the managing director and founder of Sweet Tree Home Care Services.

Shaked:
What brought you to the home care sector?

Barry:
I was involved in the hotel and restaurant management sector. My mother in my early twenties got cancer and as I went through the journey of cancer with her, I started to understand what care was all about and how important it is. And I realized that actually so many of those same traits that passion for caring and making customers satisfaction and all of that in the hotel and restaurant sector is equivalent in the care sector, but with a lot more meaning. And you can change lives.
After a few years in hotel and restaurant management, I decided to switch my focus to care and went into the NHS.

Shaked:
Why do you think it's so hard to recruit carers today?

Barry:
Caring is a very hard job. People work very long hours often under often difficult circumstances
and quite emotional circumstances.
When they go into care, they go into care because they really want to make a difference and often they can't make the difference they went into care to deliver. They find that the systems and structures of the environment they're working in make it too complex, too difficult, too time pressured.
What it's all about is making that difference. At Sweet Tree, we, for instance, have a three hour minimum visit time. And what that does is it makes sure that our carers have the time to go in, see our clients, help make that cup of tea, do what's needed, have that social interaction and then move on to the next client. But they've made that difference and that's fundamental important to carers

Shaked:
How do you make sure that the carer and the front care they actually feel and know that they made a difference?

Barry:
I think it's really important that the carer and the client are both communicated with extensively. So in Sweet Tree, we call the carer after their first visit to the client, say, how was it? Did it go well? Did the care plan that we gave you before the start of the visit reflect what you needed to do?
Likewise, we call the client and say to the client, How did it go? Did the care do what you needed them to do? And it's not open, transparent communication that makes such a difference. I think it's fundamental to remember that people are people. Personalities are different. Just because one carer may not work with one client, doesn't mean they're a bad carer. They still have that passion for caring. But it may just be they don't gel with that client and that can be okay. In those circumstances you suggest change and you ensure satisfaction on both the carers side and your client side.

Shaked:
Do you think training impacts the engagement of carers with the company?

Barry:
Hundred percent. The training is fundamental to making sure when that carer goes out and deals with circumstances they may not be familiar with, they have reference points to call on. They can see and understand that there are similarities in the care they’re providing to other circumstances and deliver that care to the highest quality possible.

Shaked:
You just got recently an outstanding rating from CQC, right?
In terms of training, what do you think you do differently that really make you stand out from the competition in terms of care engagement, the way you communicate with them, I guess it also involves the career path they have in your company

Barry:
When COVID set in, Sweet Tree knew that that was going to be quite disruptive to the care sector, and the first thing we did was train our carers and make sure our carers knew how to stay safe. The gratitude of our carers who knew that we cared about them, we knew they were going home to their families made a huge difference to them. And that's why we maintained the care team throughout all of COVID. We are therefore up for the COVID Response Awards this year as well and Outstanding Provider Award.

Shaked:
What's your mindset and methodology in order to achieve a high engagement with your carers?

Barry:
I think the most important thing to achieve engagement is to share values with the carers.
If you put the client first, the carer will put the client first and that's why people go into care. In terms of the methodology for communication, it's a very open and transparent methodology. My mobile number is on the internet for every one of our carers to see. They can call me 24 hours a day, seven days a week if they wish, and I'm always happy to receive that. That openness is fundamental to that relationship with the care team.

Shaked:
We can see that from the top ten complaints of carers from 2022. Six out of them were around lacking of communication and with the organization.
How do you approach and deal with that?

Barry:
There are really two forms of communication of the nature you're referring to. One is the business end of communication. What happens when I'm at a client's home and I need help? At Sweet Tree that's never a problem. At Sweet Tree we have people on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. We are always in the office. making sure that informal communication is relevant, interesting and welcome, is important and I think there's lots of different channels that we could and should be using for that. And as organizations like mine become more sophisticated in their use of social channels, that will be a big development in the way we work with our care team.
CQC While we can debate whether their methodology is always correct, their intention is correct. There's no arguing with it. We all want a safe, caring, need driven environment for those we support.
So the most important thing is to be really focused, to lead the organization in a way that delivers those things, which we all know are right.

Shaked:
How do you instruct your other managers to act on a daily basis in order to achieve that?

Barry:
Employ people who want to be in an environment that is dedicated to caring for the client and the support worker. Employ people who are passionate in the morning when they get up to deliver that care. We pay the London Living Wage as a minimum. It goes up from there. But pay isn't everything as everybody knows. We also want to help the Carer’s family live better. We are looking at putting in health programs so we’ll give our carers access to GP's instantly, so they don't have to spend half a day, and lose half a day's pay waiting for their GP. They can see a GP or speak to a GP instantly.
So we're really trying to improve the quality of life of the carer and their families. If you look after business alone, you'll never succeed. You have to look after the people and then the businesses.

Shaked:
Do you see a trend of Generation Z individuals coming to the care sector?

Barry:
You see the younger generation, if you like, wanting to work in the more specialist areas in the learning disabilities environment, in the brain injury environment. We have a care farm which is a 15 acre farm in north London. We have a lot of our younger carers saying they really love to work in that occupational day opportunities environment with the clients that they look after. And that's a unique environment where
they can make an enormous difference. And I suspect we're the only care provider out there with such a wonderful facility.

Shaked:
People are expecting a certain experience from their employer. They do everything on a daily basis, very easy, very smooth, very instant.
How does technology can help us provide the same experience inside of the organization?

Barry:
You can provide communication tools that they can use and benefit from, like instant access to care plans, instant scheduling, self scheduling, Uber type scheduling, that you can do all of those things and they will understand and manage that level of technology.
Technology in the care sector is way behind technology in the wider world. There is a huge amount of technology that I know we would like to deploy within the care sector that isn’t accessible to us.
The more advanced technology becomes, the more that person who's unfamiliar with technology will be able to use the technology. We have to make technology a facilitator instead of an obstacle.

Shaked:
When I want to learn something today and also my mom, my grandma, they go to YouTube, they go to wherever, to Instagram, and they see a quick video and they learn it. And still like in a lot of sectors, we need to bring everybody to teach them something, then you do the exam and then you expect them to remember it for another month.

Barry:
The Sweet Tree Training Academy has a very live portal where we have over 100 training programs accessible to all of our workforce at any time on a variety of subject matters. So we had to build it to enable mobile phone technology. The vast majority of our carers are doing their training on their mobile phone.

Shaked:
Your key tip for new care providers that want to enter this sector as well.

Barry:
The thing that's made Sweet Tree successful is our absolute dedication to the care we provide and the people who provide that care, both carers and in their community and those in the office.
The business model takes care of itself. If you look after the people, you look after the mission of caring for the client, you look after the person who's delivering that care. Everything else is okay.