PROMOTING FINANCIAL WELLNESS
CASE STUDY:
NEXT STAGE LTD
How one care business turned its 58% labour turnover
rate around through creative staff engagement
“EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT HAS
BEEN ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL”
T
hat Britain is on the cusp of a
care crisis is a well documented
issue. The sector has long
laid victim to austerity cuts
that have stifled vital services to the
vulnerable people reliant on support
to achieve a quality of life that the
majority of us may take for granted. On
the operations side, care organisations
of every kind – from elderly services
to youth support – are suffering a staff
retention and recruitment issue that has
seen a troublesome shortfall of talent
and manpower needed to tackle the
ever increasing care requirements of an
ageing and service-reliant population.
So severe is the recruitment issue that
one study this year estimated that the
24
sector will face a shortfall of a million
workers in 20 years if nothing is done to
circumvent the problem.
What then, in the face of limited
funds and social challenges, must care
organisations do to make emotionally
and physically demanding work that
comes part and parcel of a carer’s job
appealing to potential recruits? More
especially, how might they buck the
troublesome revolving door trend that
has seen many qualified workers leave
not only the employer themselves but
the sector entirely?
Alex Handley, recruitment manager at
Next Stage – a service that provides
practical and emotional support to
vulnerable people with the aim of
helping them lead independent lives
– says that improved investment in
staff can circumvent the retention and
recruitment issue and improve the
outcomes for individuals they support.
Indeed, prior to enlisting a company
benefits and employee engagement
scheme to address the problem, staff
attrition rate at Next Stage stood at an
underwhelming 58%.
“Driving sustainable staff engagement
in this sector is problematic, and it’s not
hard to see why,” he says. Key workers
undertake emotionally and physically
demanding work, and sometimes receive
little thanks for their trouble. “We knew
that these engagement issues needed to
be tackled urgently in our organisation,
and that a programme putting our staffs’