Addressing Care’s Biggest Current Challenge
Supporting our Franchise Owners to attract, recruit and retain fantastic staff
Published: 24/02/2022
Every business faces industry challenges – both ongoing sector challenges, and those driven by market forces such as the pandemic, or Brexit.
With a franchise behind you, there is a team working full-time on supporting you to address and overcome such challenges in your business.
Over the past few months, the team at Right at Home National Office have focused a huge amount of support on addressing the biggest current challenge in the care industry: staff recruitment.
The Challenge
Like many other industries right now, there’s a shortage of people applying for jobs in our sector.
Recruitment has been a common challenge across social care for a long time; the perception of being a care worker was not a positive one – low skilled, poorly paid, often poorly supported.
However, RaH is a brand known for its commitment to supporting its staff. We’re very proud to be an accredited Five Star employer, based on the outcome of independent and anonymous feedback from employees, benchmarked against other companies.
That’s why our team have been leveraging the full weight of their support to turn the current situation into a positive opportunity to shine the spotlight on our sector, giving the incredible talent across our network a voice to showcase what it’s really like to work for a good company that is focused on delivering quality care.
The Campaign
In December we launched a wide-ranging recruitment campaign, incorporating a broad variety of online and offline content, that our franchise offices could easily roll out in their local marketing strategy. Highlights include:
Proud of My Profession – a library of digital and video content of our care teams talking about why they love their jobs and their colleagues.
New Year, New Career – multimedia content, with messaging focusing on job security, which could not guaranteed in other hourly-paid sectors such as retail, leisure and hospitality through the pandemic.
Careers In Care – wider education: editorial, social and website content highlighting the varied roles and career progression opportunities within the care sector. This included a new Careers Brochure demonstrating some of the progression routes that can be taken with Right at Home and the support on offer to help our employees get there.
Our National Office team also devised an innovative interactive Careers Quiz to help people who are considering a career in homecare match their skills and personality to the best job fit.
Heather Wehrle | National People and Brand Development Manager, RaH UK"We've empowered the incredible talent across our network, using their voice to showcase what it means to work for a company that is committed to delivering quality care."
Creating Future Care Leaders
In addition to these highly responsive support resources, we are also employing a long-term strategy: to build our own highly skilled, motivated leaders of the future, by developing and nurturing talent from within the network. Stories like Natalie’s are common across our network:
“I started with Right at Home as a CareGiver in 2012. Since then, I have completed my Level 2 and 3 in Health and Social Care and have received a wide range of internal training, shadowing and mentoring to allow me to progress to Field Supervisor and then onto Care Coordinator. In October 2021, I was promoted to Deputy Manager.”
As an affiliated training provider, we have built a Coaching and Mentoring programme to upskill our managers and aspiring managers, and support the long-term retention of CareGivers.
We’re also soon to release a Training Brochure, showcasing the range of opportunities available and the importance that we place upon career development.
Championing Change
As a brand we also champion for change in sector-wide challenges – such as social care funding and the post-Brexit sponsorship process for health and care workers – achieving regular coverage in the industry press such as Homecare Insight, as well as on BBC regional news and national press.
We’re particularly well positioned to represent quality-focused care providers via our CEO Lucy Campbell’s role on the board of the Homecare Association.
Covid has gone some way to shifting perceptions of care workers, and we’re passionate about continuing that change. As our National People and Brand Development Manager, Heather Wehrle, told Wales Online: “The pandemic has more than demonstrated the vital role we play in the communities we serve and how we are able to protect the NHS by caring for people at home. At the peak of the pandemic, CareGivers were for the first time recognised by the government as the heroes that they are.
“CareGivers are highly skilled professionals with a multitude of skills and abilities; from working with GPs, reassuring family members and providing the highest quality care, to writing accurate reports, administering medication and liaising with Occupational Therapists.”
Supporting Franchise Owners
We work in collaboration with managers and franchise owners across the network (via a Recruitment and Marketing Steering Group, and wider consultation and feedback from our franchisees’ regular 121 support calls). Working collaboratively with volunteer partners from within the network makes sure that our support incorporates franchisees’ ideas and directly addresses their experiences, whilst freeing up owners who are under operational pressure to focus on the day-to-day running of their business.
We have also invested significantly in boosting our support capacity at National Office: recruiting a second full time Talent Attraction Consultant to support the network with Recruitment; plus 2 new Digital Marketing Coordinators; and a Campaign Coordinator to further strengthen our marketing support to franchise owners.
These experts work strategically at a network-wide level, and are also directly accessible for 1:1 support calls. In a few weeks’ time they will be taking to the road, delivering Regional Recruitment & Retention Clinics.
The guidance in these sessions is shaped around data gathered from the network, and therefore focuses on specific development points, while also allowing groups of owners to share best practice and generate new ideas.
What do our Franchise Owners say?
Grantley Lynch | Owner, Right at Home Medway"The recruitment marketing support has been superb. You can choose to use what you prefer and tailor-make it for your own business. A recent example of this was the creation of a recruitment brochure that we can send out to prospective applicants or take with us to recruitment fairs. There was also a soft version which was added to our website which really helped us stand out from the crowd. Whilst you do not have to use any of the vast array of material on offer, if you do it allows us as business owners to focus on what is really important to run our business."
Comments from franchise owners from the independent Five Star Employer survey:
“Recruitment is always a challenge, but we are constantly given ideas and prompts on how to recruit effectively.”
“Right at Home’s inhouse Talent Attraction Consultant is first class. She has a great no-nonsense, practical approach to everything. Always encouraging, I love working with her and my recruiter feels the same.”
“From previous experience, the recruitment support offered by RAH is far superior and more detailed than anything I have seen. I haven't needed to use the offering much at all, but franchisees should really appreciate this service, as it is very supportive and comprehensive!”
