Leading learning disabilities charity FitzRoy recently got in touch to tell us why joining EdgeWorks™ Funding Alliance is key to improving their Recruitment and Retention, as they look to buck the trend of high staff turnover, vacancy rates and competition for quality staff. FitzRoy also shared an insight into how they are rolling out access to more than £100,000 worth of training and qualifications provided directly by our Funding Alliance partners. Read on to learn more.
Background
Most employers within the Health & Social Care (HSC) sector would agree that Recruitment and Retention pose the biggest challenges to their organisations. In fact, figures published in the Skills for Care “The State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce 2021” report shows that in 2020-2021, the turnover rate of directly employed staff working in the adult social care sector was a staggering 28.5%: equivalent to approximately 410,000 leavers over the year. While many of those that leave their roles remain within the sector (63% of recruitment is from within adult social care), it still means that around 152,000 left the sector in 2020/21. And those workers that are leaving had, on average, 8.9 years of experience and 79% of the workforce had been working in the sector for at least 3 years – and correspondingly received thousands of pounds worth of essential qualifications and training.
A mounting problem
More recently, Skills for Care estimates that on average, 6.8% of the roles in adult social care were vacant, which is equal to approximately 105,000 vacancies. This is further exacerbated by the exponential growth in the need for care workers – unless a solution can be found to the constant churn of staff within HSC, this figure is set to explode in the coming years. The population of the UK is ageing, with the number of over 65s projected to increase from 10.5 million to 13.8 million between 2020 and 2035. Based on this growth and with one adult social care job required for every six people aged 65 and over – by 2035 the sector may need 490,000 extra jobs – 29% more employees!
How EdgeWorks™ is helping FitzRoy with recruitment and retention
Faced with mounting pressure on recruitment and retention, our long-term client FitzRoy recently overhauled their employee package with a focus on developing integrated career pathways, including access to fully-funded accredited qualifications. As a member of EdgeWorks™ Funding Alliance, FitzRoy has been able to offer access to induction (Care Certificate), Level 2 and Level 3 qualifications to their national network of services using just a single team administrator to manage the roll-out and support. By partnering with EdgeWorks™ Funding Alliance, employers can get access to the qualification learning and assessment, support team including tutors and assessors, plus a comprehensive manager dashboard to provide all of the tracking and reporting. By accessing our ‘digital first’ learning platform EdgeWorks™ Care Academy, FitzRoy are able to quickly roll-out their new programme nationally and avoid having to contract with multiple suppliers on a region by region basis, a problem that often drains valuable time and resources.
Invaluable feedback
Following the launch, we asked FitzRoy to share some of their thoughts on how working with us has been beneficial and their comments were really quite revealing and provide a useful insight for other providers facing similar challenges. Reading their feedback has given us a completely fresh perspective on why it is so important to provide HSC professionals with ample opportunities to gain accredited training and qualifications – and how doing so can completely transform your organisation too. A key message from their feedback was “the ability to offer quality training and career development makes the organisation much more attractive when advertising vacancies”. Our key takeaway from FitzRoy’s summary is: ‘staff who feel equipped to do their jobs well and who have a clear professional development pathway, are happier and approach their work with a more positive attitude. This then reflects in their work and in turn makes those they’re caring for and their families happier’. And in the end, if your clients are happy, everyone wins.
Learn more
We asked FitzRoy if they would give us some initial feedback on why working with EdgeWorks™ Funding Alliance is so important and they have kindly agreed to let us share their document with other interested providers – so please do get in touch if you’d like us to email you a copy.