Once you have good people working in your organisation, you want to keep and develop them. Having staff who like their jobs and do them well will reflect in the quality of care that they provide. It is also good for productivity and ensuring the future sustainability of your organisation.
Recruitment takes precious time and resources and having high staff turnover can make it harder to attract new people. It is worth investing in staff retention and paying attention to the different factors that can affect it – including pay, working hours, working culture, environment, career paths, and having line managers who can effectively engage their teams.
Some of the key areas to focus on in recruiting staff are:
- Creating a positive place to work (culture)
- Good leadership and management
- Inclusive and effective workforce planning
- Embedding commissioning practices that support staff retention
- Embedding recruitment practices that retain staff in the long-term
- Promoting career development
- Offering positive benefits and terms and conditions
- Promoting staff wellbeing
- Appropriate rewards and recognition
You can better understand these factors and how they impact retention by utilising local workforce data and intelligence, including using the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS), but also, by empowering and acting on the views of your workforce and the people you support. Communication and engagement with your staff in the spirit of co-design and co-production should be the golden thread running throughout your retention strategy.
This guide has been developed by Partners in Care and Health (PCH) - a partnership between the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) – and Skills for Care in conjunction with councils and providers of social care. It is aimed at senior officers, employers or councillors with an interest in the adult social care workforce. It provides top tips and resources to support you in implementing staff retention measures.