A care home’s success is built on many things, the buildings, the facilities, the activities, the level of care, and the list goes one. At the core of every single aspect is one solitary criteria: Staff. Without great staff, no care home can be outstanding. The very back bone of every care home is the men and women who turn up every day to give their best and to provide outstanding levels of care.
What are the signs of good staff?
Permanent Staff
A lot can be said about the retention rates of staff at care homes. It’s a great indicator of an outstanding home, if the staff want to stay and enjoy their job, then the residents will always feel this affection coming through. Permanent staff have the advantage of really getting to know each resident over the course of years. They can build up that knowledge and relationship to understand the emotional journey that residents will invariably go through and be able to support them when the time is right.
The Write Staff
It takes two minutes to search for https://eastleighcarehomes.co.uk/locations/somerset-care-homes/ and to see what people are writing about the care homes. It then takes mere seconds to find what the staff are writing about their days. Great staff will be sharing heart warming stories, they’ll be extolling the virtues of what they spend their days doing. This is invaluable. If staff members are voluntarily and without any need talking positively about the home, then you can tell what it really means to them.
Feedback Mechanisms
It seems illogical that anyone in management would not listen to the people on the shop floor. Yet in so many businesses, the bosses seem to know best and push decisions down. A good care home will have the processes to do the opposite. There will be the turn of the floor staff to push suggestions up to management. A suggestion box is the least you would expect to see, a monthly feedback meeting would be ideal. It needs to allow for fresh ideas to be aired, listened to and the right ideas acted on.
Staff Development
As all care homes are only as good as their staff, then the staff are only as good as the continued training and development they are receiving. Not only will this be motivational and aspirational for the staff members themselves, but the effects and the outcomes of the training sessions will be felt directly by the residents. The introductions of new techniques and new initiatives will only bring more interactions and activities for the residents.
There are many ways to look at the staff of any care home, but to judge them accurately we need to factor in a lot more than just their attendance and their resumes. A well-rounded member of staff is worth a lot more than their weight in gold.