How homecare company retains its staff through valuing them, encouraging their careers, and providing fair contracts

Liz:
My name is Liz Blacklock, I am a registered nurse by background. I own a domiciliary care company based down in Hampshire called Lapis Care.

Shaked:
I know that you have very good retention rates at your company.
What do you do in order to retain your staff in such a great manner?

Liz:
We value them. We encourage their careers. We we pay for a shift, and I think that makes a lot of difference. And also we pay, but we we give contracts, we've always done that, and I think it's not a contract with “oh you’re involved... you’ve got 7 hours but you have to work 70 to get your money”, you know, you're working 37 hours a week, you're working 37 hours a week. You know, people have lives and it doesn't revolve around, you know, work.

We are electronic, they have everything on their devices so they can access care plan at any time.

We have an open door policy for the management of senior team, you know, they know they can come in the office. This is your base, and if you have 10 minutes, you need it, you need to spend a penny or... come and do it.

We encourage learning all the time, experience and knowledge give you confidence and that can only help you, and it can help the client

Shaked:
Six out of ten complaints are about internal communication, not about wage.
What do the carers actually need? What they demand, and what you should provide as an employer?

Liz:
A future, a conversation, I think communication. We've sometimes fallen into the poor
communication bucket.

I won't lie, you know, particularly, in the last couple of years when we've all been, you know, nose to the grindstone, we're just revealing all this out at the moment, actually, salaries as opposed to, you know, hourly rate. So it might not have been the highest, but actually by the time they've done the maths and worked out it’s actually fairly comparable.

I think just being approachable and just, and saying thank you.
Knowing that they're going to be listened to and if they report a concern that we actually take it seriously.
We had that recently as well, someone blew the whistle and we listened to her and it actually kicked off a whole snowball of events.
But the point was she hadn't been listened to in a previous company and she gave me and my middle manager the biggest bouquet of flowers at Christmas because we listened to her and we took her seriously.

And, you know, like I said, we have this open door policy.