Key Issues for Caregiver Workforce Management

In the current work climate, strategies for managing carers must take into account these challenges:

Staff Shortages

The healthcare labor crisis makes it harder to recruit and retain talented carers. Some employers are competing on employee benefits and pay rates; others are relying on their most talented support workers to pick up the slack. The ideal carer workforce management strategy will boost recruitment and retention rates while simultaneously helping employers make the most of their working caregivers.

To effectively manage this, employers must also focus on creating a supportive work environment that emphasises career development and employee well-being. Investing in training and continuous education can make a significant difference, showing carers that their growth is valued. Furthermore, transparent communication about job expectations and the availability of resources can strengthen trust and loyalty among staff, making them feel more secure and appreciated in their roles.

Absenteeism

Last-minute cancellations and no-shows can disrupt your NDIS provider business. Your care management system and strategy must include ways to reduce absenteeism and find replacements quickly. Set up a backup system with trained staff who are ready to fill in when needed. Make sure carers have an easy way to inform managers about potential absences early. This allows for swift adjustments and ensures continuous service. Using care management software can also help you manage absentees and maintain an effective backup plan, keeping your business running smoothly.

High Turnover

Losing your top talent can hurt your caregiving quality, workplace culture, and employees' morale. Employers need to prioritise retaining caregivers, whether through improving employee benefits such as flexible scheduling and enhanced family leave or offering opportunities for career growth.

Burnout from Caregiver Responsibilities

Caregiving can be a high-stress, emotionally taxing job that impacts caregivers' mental health and well-being. Many caregivers experience compassion fatigue at some point in their careers. Without enough support, this can turn into carer burnout.

Carer burnout can lead to reduced care quality, a negative workplace culture, and poor mental health among workers. It exacerbates existing challenges, such as high turnover.

Burnout is a particularly high risk among carers who are also taking on a caregiving role at home. Many employee caregivers struggle to balance their professional caregiving responsibilities with providing care for an elderly parent or child with a disability.

With more and more carers from the sandwich generation, the reality is that your caregiving workers often finish their caregiver shift only to go home to provide caregiving support for both dependents and aging loved ones. This can exacerbate fatigue, as working caregivers feel that they never switch off from their caregiving duties.

How to Effectively Manage Your Caregiver Workforce

While there are plenty of challenges for carer workforce management, the right strategies will help you reduce turnover, tackle burnout, and improve scheduling. They will enable you to better support your employee caregivers — whether you have a human resources department or not.

Employee Assistance Program

An employee assistance program can benefit your support workers and back office team of non-caregivers alike. It will give them the tools to better manage their health conditions, compassion fatigue, or the emotionally taxing nature of caregiving.

Make sure your program meets your workers' needs. Encourage employees to share ideas on how your program can better support them, and don't be afraid to use community resources as well.

Better Work-Life Balance

When your NDIS support workers have the work-life balance they need, it will reduce stress levels, improve their well-being, and create a better quality of life. Your employees will also be less likely to search for new or additional jobs, which means lower caregiver turnover for your business.

Many carers value flexible work options. Remote work isn't a possibility for caregivers, but you can offer other benefits. Give your workers control over their work hours by allowing them to set their availability and bid on additional shifts.

Empower your NDIS support workers to create a work schedule that fits around their other responsibilities and daily activities, whether that’s caring for an elderly parent or trying to manage studies, childcare, and other work. And, as they bid on shifts, you'll find it easier to find cover for no-shows and reduce absenteeism.

Access to Resources

When your caregivers experience less stress at work, your whole organisation benefits. Your employees will be more motivated and better equipped to provide quality services. In turn, clients receive better care and costly human error rates fall.

You can support your caregivers by providing access to the resources and patient documentation they need. For example, a carer mobile app will enable your team to view care plans during home visits. This will reduce their stress levels and ensure that they feel supported at work.

Another way to support your carer is to encourage them to take additional courses that will boost their confidence and knowledge in their role.

Streamlined Administrative Tasks

A heavy administrative burden can increase stress and make your working caregivers' jobs less rewarding. Review your administrative processes to help your caregivers spend less time on paperwork and more time delivering care. This will both improve caregiver morale and enable your team to care for more patients in less time.

Use templates for progress notes so that caregivers can write them more quickly. Templates offer additional benefits such as improved quality standards and greater consistency.

Make use of intuitive support worker platforms and modern technology, such as voice-to-text. A slow or bug-filled interface can exacerbate caregiver stress.

Improved Scheduling

We've already mentioned the benefits of flexible scheduling for reducing job stress and improving carer retention rates. By building more efficient and caregiver-friendly schedules, you can further support your employees.

Well-designed schedules will reduce the time your carers spend travelling. This can lower stress levels and enable your team to visit more clients per shift. Make sure the schedule also includes regular breaks and shifts of a reasonable length.

Software That Makes Managing Caregivers Easy

Better managing caregivers offers numerous benefits for home care agencies. You'll improve caregiving quality, reduce scheduling costs, tackle burnout, and lower turnover rates.

With ShiftCare's NDIS care software, you can empower your caregiving workers. They'll be able to set their preferred availability via the mobile app and bid on additional shifts. Updating patient notes is easy, thanks to templates and voice-to-text technology, and your employees can access documentation on the go thanks to the cloud-based storage system. And with push notifications and SMS messaging, it's easy to touch base with your employees to see if they need additional support.

Discover how home health software benefits your business and your employees alike. Try ShiftCare for free.