#feelthelove: What being a true workforce partner really means

For years, recruitment agencies have largely been judged on one thing – can you fill the shift?

It’s an understandable measure. In care, an unfilled shift can create enormous pressure for providers, their teams and, ultimately, the people they support. Having access to good, reliable people when you need them matters.

But I’ve always believed recruitment should be about much more than filling gaps on a rota.

Because if the same organisation is constantly struggling to fill the same shifts, or continually losing good people and having to replace them, the empty shift isn’t necessarily the problem. It could be a symptom of something much bigger.

That’s where I think our industry needs to change its thinking.

At Care Connection Partners, we want to work with care providers as their workforce partner, looking beyond the immediate requirement and understanding what is happening across their organisation.

Why are certain roles proving difficult to recruit for? Why are good people leaving? Are there particular times, shifts or services where problems keep arising? What does agency usage tell us? And, importantly, what will that organisation need from its workforce six or 12 months from now?

For me, that comes down to four things – recruit, supply, retain and plan.

Recruitment is obviously part of it, but finding permanent people shouldn’t necessarily begin when somebody hands in their notice. Understanding future needs, attracting the right candidates and developing a pipeline of people can put providers in a much stronger position.

There will also always be a need to supply good temporary staff. People get ill, take holidays and move on. Services grow, occupancy changes and unexpected situations happen. When a provider needs someone at short notice, we need to be there for them.

But temporary staffing should be one part of a wider workforce strategy, rather than the whole strategy.

Then there’s retention, which I think can sometimes be overlooked when we talk about recruitment.

There’s little point continually finding great people if an organisation struggles to keep them. Sometimes one of the most effective recruitment strategies is understanding why people leave and doing more to retain the talented, committed people you already have.

Finally, we need to plan.

Some of the best workforce decisions are made long before a staffing crisis happens. Looking properly at vacancies, turnover, sickness, agency use, compliance, future growth and recruitment pipelines gives organisations an opportunity to anticipate what is coming rather than constantly reacting to it.

There’s another part of this approach which might sound unusual coming from somebody who runs a recruitment business – I don’t want our clients to become more dependent on agency staff.

If we work with a care provider and help them recruit more permanent people, retain more of their existing team and plan more effectively, they may ultimately need fewer temporary staff from us.

I’m absolutely comfortable with that.

I’d much rather Care Connection Partners was valued because of the difference we make to an organisation than because that organisation has become dependent on us.

That’s what being a workforce partner means to me. It’s about understanding the organisations we work with, knowing their pressures and their people, and being prepared to have conversations that go far beyond how many shifts need covering this week.

It also comes back to something that has been part of Care Connection Partners from the beginning – #feelthelove.

For us, that means putting people first and building relationships based on trust, care and doing the right thing. I believe those principles should apply just as much to the relationships we have with our partners as they do to the people we place.

So, yes, when somebody needs a shift filling at 4pm on a Friday, we’ll be there.

But if we can work together to make those 4pm Friday phone calls happen a little less often, I think we’ve achieved something much more valuable.

• Deborah Stock, Founder and Managing Director of Care Connection Partners