A care home is as good as the caregiving team it has. It is the caregiving staff that residents interact with on a daily basis. These interactions determine the degree of satisfaction and comfort of residents in a care home. As there is a huge demand for skilled and experienced caregivers, it is important that care home facilities take steps to retain the right talent to offer the best quality care possible to their residents.
Here are a few steps that you as a care home manager can take to retain talented staff:
- Review the induction process: Do not treat the induction or onboarding process as a formality. Use this opportunity to make the new recruits familiar with your care home setting. It is also the best time to share the organisational goals and values.
- Review caregiver performance regularly: Conduct frequent meetings with the caregivers. Check whether they are coping with their workload and workplace. Ask them whether they are facing issues while dealing with the residents and also get their feedback on the current work process.
- Recognise good work and give constant feedback: Regular feedback helps in boosting the morale of the employees. If the caregivers are doing a good job, do not hesitate to praise them. Give the employees constructive feedback if they are struggling with something.
- Support development of the staff: Provide learning opportunities through suitable training, seminars, coaching and workshops to caregivers for their professional development. Giving your employees a path for progression is a key to make them stay for the long term.
- Understand the reason behind why employees leave: Find out the reasons behind why employees are leaving. This can be done through exit interviews, surveys, questionnaires and group meetings. These can help you identify problematic areas and take appropriate action.
- Create an environment where people want to stay: Caregivers want to work in a setting that appreciates person-centered care and genuinely believes in employee well-being. Consider these factors and make changes, if required.
- Streamline processes: By streamlining daily work, you can help care workers focus on person-centred care. One such area is medication administration which requires a lot of paperwork daily – caregivers have to manually fill in all the information and prepare reports for audit. This takes time and effort. By implementing electronic MAR charts, you can reduce the paperwork and streamline the process associated with MAR chart medication. Electronic MAR charts give caregivers easy access to information that they need at the time of medication round. Making monthly, quarterly and annual reports is easy with eMAR.
eMAR charts are a reliable way to reduce or eliminate medication errors. Unlike paper-based MAR charts, eMAR reduces the errors occurring due to factors such as :
- Illegible handwriting
- Confusing verbal instruction
- Ambiguous use of abbreviations
eMAR sheets further give easy access to all the necessary information while administering medications. Not just that, these sheets can be accessed from anywhere at any time. Only authorised persons can have access making the system secure.
Note: For care home managers
To know how eMAR can help your care home, book a demo today.
