On-track to grow by 300% in turnover!

On track to grow by 300% in turnover

Yorkshire Care Group has experienced 60% growth in its operational capabilities over the last 18 months, under the careful guidance of their visionary CEO, Angela Fletcher. Their goal is to achieve 300% growth over the course of five years and they consider themselves well on-track to hit this ambitious target. 

Their strategy consisted of overhauling their systems in order to gain full visibility into the business and investing in a next-generation solution that would enable them to acquire new locations with ease and forecast their staffing needs.  

Now we just assume the system is right, because we, as part of the implementation, we checked, we double checked, we triple checked. We're really confident that it's been built in a way that is accurate. Whatever we see on the screen, we trust that data is accurate. And then we can forecast, we can build our business, we can grow our business using those numbers.

Claire Bunker, Growth and Development Director

Having this ability to forecast staffing needs has meant that the organisation is always proactive in scheduling their shifts and assessing staffing needs. With Sona, they are able to keep their agency usage under 5% and their overtime hours under 10% - which suits their needs and budget perfectly.  

With such ambitious targets in mind, one barrier that could have encumbered the Yorkshire Care team was recruitment, but once their upwards trajectory was clear, they found that staff were much happier, which increased their retention. They were also recommending the group as a great place to work, which boosted recruitment. 

Effectively our no-call rate has reduced to zero, which means that the profitability of the business has increased to 100% of the expected revenue.

Claire Bunker, Growth and Development Director

Acquisitions are one of the main areas of growth for Yorkshire Care Group. Claire also went on to describe how their next-generation technology enables them to reach their full growth potential:

Sona has given us the confidence to grow. What it’s allowed us to do is not use resources and processes as a barrier, so whereas before we may have said ‘Actually, if we’ve got three opportunities [for acquisition], we’ll only take one because it’s going to take some time to bring it on board, we’re going to have to bring in our processes.’ We can now say ‘We’ll take all three,’ because we know we can take them and streamline them into our processes, no problem, and while we’re doing that, we can go and look for the next ones rather than have the team’s entire focus be on a laborious implementation process.

Claire Bunker, Growth and Development Director

In terms of time saved, Yorkshire Care has seen:

• Up to 2h on days off for carers who can use self-service features on the app to check their schedule, book holiday, or claim overtime
• 2-6h for each Team Lead on schedule management
• 70% time reduction when reconciling payroll
• 50% time reduction when invoicing

With such ambitious targets in mind, one barrier that could have encumbered the Yorkshire Care team was recruitment, but once their roll-out was in place, they found that staff were much happier, which increased their retention. They were also recommending the group as a great place to work, which boosted recruitment. 

Reducing staff churn by 14%

Prior to implementing Sona, we were having something like 22% of our shifts unfilled and had to be filled with overtime or agency. Now that figure is down to less than 5%. Our staffing levels have improved because our retention is better. People are now getting the shifts that they want, when they want them, so our numbers of leavers have dramatically fallen. Retention has improved. We’re giving the staff the flexibility they want to do the shifts they want but also fulfils our criteria as a care provider.

Nick Swash, Deputy CEO

Yorkshire Care has seen a reduction in churn from the sector standard of 32% to 18% at the end of March 2024, and they anticipate this will be down to 12% at the end of the quarter. They attribute this in part to Sona enabling the flexibility their staff needed, as well as to the excellent company culture they’ve built around communication, teamwork, and being a modern employer with exceptional standards. 

Staff wellbeing has benefited. It's improved massively. It's also improved the lives of managers that were dealing with rota systems before. Overall, and the individuals that we support, it's really benefited everybody because everybody now knows what's happening. There is that consistency of care.

Emily O’Callaghan, Registered Manager

The implementation that yielded results in less than six months

Once we made the decision to take Sona, we monitored the return on investment from it and we believe it took a maximum of six months. Effectively the first three were the set up phase and the learning phase. Thereafter, there was the transition phase for the people who were using the existing system. [...] Then we started to see the effects of Sona clearly. From start to finish, six months.

Nick Swash, Deputy CEO

Claire Bunker together with Cassie Vasey organised the Sona roll-out project in carefully planned phases. They started by surveying staff on every level regarding what they needed from a new solution, then researched the available options, and quickly zeroed in on Sona as a top contender. 

Once the decision was made, they selected a set of champions and brought them in for the first training sessions with their assigned Sona Implementation Lead. These champions were able to then spread the enthusiasm for change and help every member of staff adopt the new solution.

A large part of the success was also attributed to Sona’s next-generation design, as it made every part of the system accessible and easy to use. 

When I first heard about Sona - obviously I’m not great at tech - I thought ‘Oh another thing to navigate!’ but to be fair, it worked out really well. Once I saw it, sometimes with a little bit of help which was easily available, I found it very very easy. […] It’s saving me a few hours per week of my personal time because of how easy it is to track everything in my schedule.

Joy Lilley, Complex Support Worker (21-year career in Care)

Defeating fear of change and building a culture of aspiration

We've built a culture of aspiration and I think that's new. And Sona again helped with that because we said what could we achieve? Well, actually what we've got with Sona is so much better than what we had, but what can we have next? Rather than ‘oh, no, you've changed something and I've just got to get used to that change,’ it's actually ‘we've changed something and we'll change it again and we'll move on and we'll make it better and we'll make it better.’ And I think that as a culture piece is,  it makes it an amazing place to work. 

Claire Bunker, Growth & Development Director

The Yorkshire Care Group is now looking towards the future and hitting their 300% growth target. 

Over the past 12 months we have been developing and expanding our portfolio of businesses at Yorkshire Care Group. IT and software are integral for us to be ahead of the game and to enhance and streamline our services. Having great solutions, AI, and software means we’re able to expand and support our staff to be as efficient and effective as possible.

Angela Fletcher, CEO of Yorkshire Care Group