STAFF DEVELOPMENT | 19
Staff development – the key to improving our services We have continued to invest in the development of our staff, and to expand and promote the provision of person-centred care services. Leadership in this cultural change is driven by the Homes’ Management Teams who have embarked on the accredited Diploma in Person Centred Care. Every RMBI Home now has at least one member of the staff team either qualified in or working towards this Diploma. In all our Homes, every member of staff has completed foundation learning in providing person-centred care. The interactive sessions involved in this facilitate discussion and debate through examples and understanding of people who experience care services. Through follow-on participative staff meetings, staff are encouraged to be actively involved in the design and delivery of local care practices to meet the needs of the individuals living at their particular Home. The learning and development of our staff on a wider scale remains our key focus. A review of learning and development commissioned by the RMBI in 2011-12 highlighted the need for staff training in an ever-growing range of topics, indicating that support for the local Management Teams could be better. The review also recommended the introduction of an Assistant Director, Learning and Development, and this appointment has now been made. This role will provide expertise to ensure that appropriate learning strategies are designed and then delivered consistently throughout all our Homes. Attracting and retaining a competent, stable workforce are vital, and during the year we have overhauled our recruitment and selection methods,
and candidates for all vacancies are identified and selected on the basis of their qualities and competencies and potential abilities. Once they are in post, we support their development and ensure they enjoy their time with us, and annual staff turnover at the RMBI is 12%. Although this represents a slight increase compared with the previous year, it is well below the overall staff turnover rate for the care sector of 22%. Historically, the RMBI has retained a large amount of manual administrative work related to staff. Following the launch of Snowdrop (an HR staff database system) some years ago, we are planning to expand and upgrade the system to ensure this continues to handle staff records efficiently. Further automation has been undertaken this year in respect of processing information about staff attendance. Two Homes took part in a trial of Kronos, a time and attendance system. This was enormously successful and we achieved about a 75% saving in time spent on administration and management approval systems, while improving the accuracy of information on working hours, and therefore pay data, for salary processing. Kronos was introduced to all our Homes during 2012. We plan
to introduce additional functions to the system so that all staff data and information on working hours can be transferred electronically across multiple staff computer systems. This will eliminate multiple data entry and therefore further reduce time spent on administration. Snowdrop and Kronos provide analysis tools to optimise staffing levels, and also provide valuable information on staff trends for both internal and external benchmarking.
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There is always somebody around if I need them.” A resident at Devonshire Court, Leicester