How to foster a culture that engages carers to provide the best service

Ken:
My name is Ken Deary, I'm the chairman and owner of Right At Home UK.

Shaked:
May I ask what makes you guys unique in having such great success and great achievements, especially for looking at the employer stand of point?

Ken:
I think people and culture. A need to do everything right, but do it in a way that you’re empathetic to the people, and you look after your people. so we look after our clients
and we have to look after our staff the same way as we will look after our clients.

Shaked:
How can you foster a culture that can engage the carers, can make sure that they provide
the best service to the patients, to grow the business, because at the end of the day, no one mentors them. So how you make this experience different in order to retain those carers better?

Ken:
We have to have the right people at national office, the right training, franchise owners who are absolutely committed to being good employers, providing the best level of care, looking after their clients the best way they can.

So you need the people at the top to be totally committed, how you interact when you do the interview, you know, how do you follow up in that time between interview and them starting work? What's your initial training like? How do you get the message about we go the extra mile? So you have to get all that right.

You've got to get you training spot on, and then you're going to have to have all your paperwork absolutely pedantic about the quality of what you're doing.

You know, the vast majority of people in home care, and not just in our business, are wonderful individuals. This is a great sector with some wonderful companies and some wonderful people.

Shaked:
What are your best practices in order to communicate better with those distributed carers at the patient's homes?

Ken:
We've got about 4000 care staff. We'll have their weekly bulletins with all the best practice, we have training sessions all the time, we'll have webinars, we'll have communication sessions with all our franchise owners and the registered managers, and then we'll give them the information that they need to pass down to their caregivers.

So those local offices will regular one regular get togethers with the staff, so they talk through any of the issues, even down to, you know, daily calls, all about communicating all the time, you know.

Shaked:
What actions do you take? What tools do you use in order to help you to better communicate, better engage, and better retain your carers?

Ken:
We use social media all the time to communicate, etc. and we are in the process of building our own system for rostering, for care plans, for the care givers to see what's going on.

Shaked:
I'm thinking in the hat of like a new franchisee or a new provider, the one to kickstart his own business. What can they do in order to still foster good communication and good engagement with their carers?

Ken:
There's a number of apps out there that can help aid on communication with your care staff, so they're the important ones we’re doing everything.

I've just been in a session here today where there was quite a bit of criticism of some of the providers. Some of the providers aren't delivering what they said.
We went through the same process and a lot of disappointment, so we've built something that we feel we can communicate better.

Shaked:
What didn't work compared to what you needed, from the providers end?

Ken:
The aftersales care wasn't great. There's a lesson there for everyone, you know, you look after your clients and we didn't feel we were being looked after.

Shaked:
What would be best practices to implement a proper career development and career path for carers?

Ken:
The career path is important, but it's not for everyone, and we have a career pathway
that takes people who are interested in, in going all the way up to registered manager, it's a very clear set of training. But even people who don't have the ambition to go to same manager level, they want to be taught all the time, they want to learn, they want to develop, and that's really part important part of our culture.

Shaked:
One of the most significant complaints for carers is that they demand more flexible, consistent scheduling. How do you go about their rota and what would you recommend for others to do in order to provide them with this consistency and flexibility that they need?

Ken:
That is a lot down to a good coordination, and having good, strong systems.
It's a tough role as a co-ordinator, but someone who's a real people person and organized is just fantastic for the business.

Shaked:
Key tip from you for new providers, new franchisees?

Ken:
I'm privileged to be chairman of the British Franchise Association, so I see what's going on across. A lot of industries and all industries are having the same issue with staffing, well, particularly client facing staff.

You've got to think about regulations that are changing all the time, IT systems are changing all the time, Social media marketing is changing all the time, for someone starting fresh, that's a lot.

Have a good look at the franchising companies, they will have all those systems, they will give you the latest information on how best to recruit, how best to retain staff, what to do on social media...

Because jumping in without all of that into this sector will be quite difficult.

Shaked:
Staffing issue. What do you think causes that and how do you think we can deal with it and solve it, moving forward?

Ken:
You've got to remember that in another way that our actual business is growing all the time, demand is growing all the time, so what's happening is demand is outstripping supply to some extent.

Businesses can still grow, but not as fast, and it's those who are the best recruiters and look after the staff best in terms of retaining, will be the ones that grow for the future.

It's not all about wages because a lot more like your training, about your tech, everything that support you.