If you are running a care home, then you know your care staff plays a key role in the delivery of high-quality and safe care. When your staff is motivated, then key metrics such as care staff productivity, quality of care, resident satisfaction and medication safety – all improve. We have often seen that simply pushing for more productivity doesn’t help care homes improve health outcomes. Instead it can hurt the morale of the staff and negatively affect their productivity, thus hurting the quality and safety of the care offered at the care home.
So, how do you motivate your staff to improve quality of care and lower costs?
- Integrating well-being into the design of work – First and foremost, ensure that your employees are working in safe and hygienic conditions. During the COVID-19 times, maintaining a high standard of hygiene is a necessity to keep the residents and care home staff safe and healthy. Train your housekeeping staff and caregiving staff on usage of PPE, sanitisation tools and hygiene practices (respiratory hygiene, hand-washing, social distancing and more). Sleep and stress are the biggest detractors to care staff performance. If you notice signs of stress, talk to your care staff. Here’s an informative read on caregiver stress and how to help your care staff overcome it. You can encourage them to quit unhealthy habits that are taking a toll on their mental wellbeing by sharing useful resources such as ebooks and educational videos. Remember healthier care staff perform better, cost less and cause fewer errors.
- Embrace technology – Many tasks and processes in a care home can be automated to improve staff efficiency. Instead of your staff spending a significant amount of time on manually reviewing the MAR sheets at the end of every week or double-checking the dosages on MAR sheets or even organising rotas, help them upskill. A lot of processes in care homes are designed keeping in mind the tradition and has got nothing to do with quality care or patients’ needs. Relook at how your care home processes are designed and make necessary changes so that your staff doesn’t spend time on pointless work. With digital tools, you can improve your care home efficiency and employee productivity. Many care homes in the UK are shifting from traditional MAR sheets to eMAR – a simple software that can be installed on mobile devices to help the care home staff record what medicines have been administered – the dosage – time – route (plus more) – digitally instead of using a paper-based MAR chart. To book a demo, visit here
- Empower your staff – From leadership and team working skills to being able to make the right decisions at crucial moments, help increase the job satisfaction level. Monetary benefits like appraisals and incentives can help the care home staff meet their basic needs. For most care workers, the biggest motivating factor in their work is purpose – that is to care for the residents and make their lives better. With autonomy and accountability, you can help them achieve a bigger purpose in life.