Presentation: How technology can boost staff happiness and wellbeing (with Advinia Healthcare)

With a growing social care workforce crisis, care organisations need to rethink their approach to all aspects of recruitment and retention - especially given the squeezed labour market and competition from other frontline industries.

So what can providers practically do to meet these challenges? And what role can technology play in boosting happiness and wellbeing in care workplaces so that staff stay for longer and become more likely to recommend their employer to friends and peers?

We were thrilled that our lovely customers, Claire (Head of HR & Recruitment) and Becky (HR Project Manager) at Advinia Healthcare, could join our Co-founder Oli on stage at The Residential and Home Care Show to discuss these hot topics.

Here are four ways to boost staff retention and attract more candidates with technology covered during the session:

1) Give staff greater flexibility with ‘self-scheduling’

We're really big on 'self-scheduling' at Sona, but what do we mean?

We're not suggesting that tomorrow you start writing a roster and ask your staff to turn up whenever they want. That’s not going to be viable in the short to medium term.

But if you know what staffing levels you need to be safe or what staffing levels you need to excel, perhaps an employee working 36 hours a week could be scheduled in for 24 of those hours and free to pick the other 12 from the remaining shifts available.

This change enables providers to offer staff more flexibility on hours without giving managers scheduling headaches or additional admin.

It's something we enable through our shift filler feature and has been successfully implemented at Advinia, where 49% of all vacant shifts are claimed through the app.

"Colleague morale has increased as they can easily pick up extra shifts as they want to," Claire observed.

2) Systematise employee recognition

92% of employees in social care say they would feel more positive about work if they received more recognition from their managers.

It's not that managers don't appreciate their staff. The problem is that it's easy to miss an opportunity to say well done during a busy work day.

Creating a foolproof process can ensure that praise is shared more regularly. Again, technology can make this much easier. Dedicated software for digital communication puts every team member within instant reach - a simple 'thanks' can be sent with a few taps and can make all the difference.

At Sona we're going a step further and will soon be launching a dedicated feature which makes employee recognition a central part of a manager's everyday tasks (get in touch if you'd like to learn more).

3) Get real-time feedback

Care management systems have become vital for keeping a close eye on patients'/residents' behaviour and data and acting before issues arise. For example, you'll know when a resident’s losing weight before they become malnourished.

You can identify these sorts of trends and use tech to monitor the people you're caring for. Why shouldn't there be similar systems in place for staff too?

Rather than the traditional, long, employee survey you might issue quarterly or biannually, quick pulse surveys can give you real-time insights into how your staff are feeling.

Being able to identify drops in an individual, or even a whole team's, morale early on can help prevent them from getting burned out and going on sick leave or quitting.

4) Enabling financial as well as mental wellbeing

Rising costs and soaring inflation are huge sources of worry for many right now, and that's bad for mental well-being. 86% say that financial concerns have a negative impact on their mental health.

Helping employees with their financial welfare is a vital part of any workplace well-being strategy. It's also a proven way to reduce staff turnover and improve shift take up (shift fill rates are up to 20% higher if the employee can draw wages down before payday).

The good news is that there's a growing number of great tools out there to support staff with their finances.

Advinia has partnered with Wagestream to enable staff to track their earnings in real time and transfer earned wages across ahead of payday. Over 20% have a Wagestream savings account so they can put money aside straight from their salary.

Becky and Claire agree that it's one of the most impactful things they've ever implemented - you can learn more about their experience by viewing the talk video or reading the presentation below.

Additional resources

Video: our session with Advinia at The Residential & Home Care Show

People tech at Advinia - presentation

Ready to go further?

• We’ve compiled a wealth of helpful retention resources in our Rethinking Retention report, which you can download here.

• Book a demo with us to speak to one of our knowledgeable and friendly team

• Ask us a question on live chat (bottom right-hand corner) or drop us a line: hello@getsona.com