How Giving Your Team The Freedom To Learn Could Help Recruitment And Retention

There’s a skills and recruitment crisis that’s hitting social care hard. Of course, this isn’t news to anyone.

Every care provider is looking at ways to attract more staff and to keep the ones they have – to keep them motivated in hard times.

The best businesses know that to keep a workforce engaged, happy and productive you have to let them grow – professionally and personally. These things matter more than just pay in the long term.

In the care sector, we have a requirement to keep our people trained to minimum standards. Given the turnover of staff and tight budgets, it’s understandable that many management teams can barely keep on top of mandatory training and have little resource to invest in more personal professional development.

The result is often bland training videos that do little to inspire let alone educate.

So, how can you use learning to motivate, inspire and retain your team without breaking the budget?

Give them Ownership
Put your learners in control of their education. Let them own their professional development and invest in courses that interest them. They’ll reward you with a more skilled workforce in the long term.

Give them Choice
You won’t learn if you’re being forced to do something you find dull. Give your learners a choice of different courses that meet the requirement, but are delivered in learning styles to suit them.

Reward them
Some people will always be more willing learners than others – its human nature. Reward everyone on completing their mandatory education, and when they learn something new.

Sam Easen is the Founder & CEO of Qintil, a lifelong learning platform that empowers people to learn with a single place to find, manage and share their education and skills. Qintil includes a powerful Learning Management tool for employers and a course store with over 2,300 courses.

Reader enquiries – Tel: 0333 5771 484 or visit www.qintil.com/care18