Reducing staff turnover in the care industry

Colin Stevenson, the founder of Notable Change International recruitment and consultancy services, tells editor Victoria Galligan the need for selecting the right candidate through an effective screening process to make the much-needed changes in the care industry.

Currently the care industry as a whole has an extremely high turnover of staff, especially true for the businesses employing care workers.

The usual recruitment process at the moment is: advertise for the role, sift through CVs, carry out credentials and qualifications checks or a reference check, interview, possibly offer a second interview, then a job offer.

If using a recruitment consultancy, employers are passed on applicants based on their CV and interview bias (if the consultancy likes someone and think they will suit the role, they will be passed to the employer).

If recruiting in-house, it is the same process. If the CV, face and interview fits, a position will be offered. 

This is how it is in most industries – but this inefficient method is costing the care industry a fortune in both time and money. Personality traits, both internal and external, mean a picture presented in the interview process may not be a candidate’s true self. Internal traits make up who we are, while external traits are who we would like people to think we are in order to get somewhere or acquire something.

As a result, many staff leave or are asked to leave their roles within a short period of time. From this we have a clear picture that something has to be done to ensure maximum time and money can be spent on service users rather than a failing recruitment process.

How does this happen in the care industry?

The interview process is the same, an applicant who does well in an interview shows their external traits, maybe exaggerates or even makes up traits to suit the position. What is hidden is their internal traits which will determine how they work, interact and most importantly care for the service users.

The applicant sails the CV sift, sails the qualifications, sails the interview and becomes employed by the company. However, soon the employer finds the applicant is over-dominant, which can mean they are hard to manage, or has a low-patience threshold with service users – and traits such as these usually cause work-based conflict.

A CV, two interviews and a qualification paper would not have recognised this. Hiring this person would have caused upset to the workplace dynamics, staff and service users, and inevitably the staff member would leave or be asked to leave as they were unsuitable for the position and the process will begin again – trying to look for a suitable staff member.

Notable Change uses a profiling system for applicants, finding out their internal and external traits after the interview process to ensure the applicant will suit the role and the care home dynamics through answering a series of questions that produces a report.

To make this even better, an employer can design their ideal candidate, using the model of their best member of staff or creating a profile with traits they wish their ideal candidate to have.

This ‘ideal candidate profile’ will be used as a template for future candidates, to ensure complete peace of mind, close the profitability gap and most importantly allow employers to spend the time and money saved on recruitment on the service users, without hiring the ‘wrong applicant’ for the job.

See notablechangeintl.com for more details.