Real-time feedback for continuous improvement and staff engagement in social care
A look at Skills for Care's new Workforce Strategy
Building a resilient workforce
With demand for adult social care growing, retaining skilled staff is more important than ever. In 2022/23, there were 152,000 vacancies and turnover rates exceeded 28%. Skills for Care’s new Workforce Strategy prioritises “attract and retain” initiatives, emphasising that listening to frontline staff is key to effective retention.
Improving understanding of workforce wellbeing
In addition to listening to the workforce, Skills for Care's Workforce Strategy highlights that whilst the wellbeing of some parts of the social care workforce are understood, there is no regular survey to the broader workforce so significant gaps in understanding remain.
Continuous improvement in adult social care
In 2022, a King’s Fund report revealed a need for consistent improvement practices in social care. Many organisations still lack a unified approach, which often leads to short-term fixes without sustainable change. With the Care Quality Commission’s updated framework now relying on staff feedback for half its assessment categories, prioritising continuous improvement will not only benefit workforce retention but also support better care outcomes for service users.
Co-production in social care: making improvement a shared mission
Since the 2014 Care Act, the concept of co-production - where service users and service providers work as equal partners - has become a vital part of social care. Today, the philosophy of “nothing about us, without us” drives meaningful involvement at every level, transforming service quality and ensuring people’s voices are central to planning, development and evaluation.
Our recent blog highlights five key resources on the best ways for making co-production a reality.
Key resources for effective co-production
- Co-production: what it is and how to do it (Social Care Institute for Excellence)
- Top ten tips for co-production (National Co-production Advisory Group)
- Making it real: what it is and how to do it (Think Local, Act Personal)
- Co-production (NHS England)
- How does the health and care system hear from people and communities? (The King's Fund)
Recommended by Nesta
In September 2024, Nesta, an independent UK charity focused on innovation for social good, published Health and social care: the ideas, outlining eight ideas policymakers should urgently consider.
As part of its idea to Make NHS staff wellbeing a strategic priority: improving data collection and transparency, testing wellbeing interventions, and scaling the ones that work, Nesta states,
“There is currently neither a sufficiently timely nor actionable picture of workforce wellbeing, or a strong mandate to invest in wellbeing measures.”
ImproveWell is cited as an ‘intervention idea’ – an idea that could be scaled up to help make NHS staff wellbeing a priority. The platform is mentioned as one that could be complemented by the rollout of one of Nesta's recommendations; an NHS Workforce Wellbeing Dashboard to provide more timely feedback from staff.
Three ImproveWell success stories are shared in the report:
- improved staff retention and morale at the Southern Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland, with dramatic declines in turnover and more successful recruitment,
- significant jumps in the number of staff who feel they can easily share ideas (from 57% to 91%) and the number of staff who feel their ideas were listened to (from 57% to 72%) at the Burns Service, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and
- improved morale across the 38 teams who took part in the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Enjoying Work national programme. Weekly survey results showed a 41% improvement in the percentage of people who are experiencing no symptoms of burnout.
Improving CQC ratings through staff engagement and real-time feedback
In November 2023, the CQC started rolling out its new single assessment framework. The new framework will continue to use five key questions and its existing four-point ratings scale, but in addition six new evidence categories have been introduced.
Services will be assessed on their evidence and metrics around:
- People’s experience of health and care services
- Feedback from staff and leaders
- Feedback from partners
- Observation
- Processes
- Outcomes
Crucially, half of these new CQC categories rely on feedback. The CQC’s new categories are giving services an extra incentive
to prioritise staff engagement in a way that can be measured and evidenced – both in terms of showing they are listening to feedback and in terms of demonstrating they are improving how people feel about coming to work.
The other categories require not just a snapshot of sentiment or engagement, but a focus on continuous improvement.
Frontline staff often have the best ideas for improvements based on their experience of the challenges faced, which are constantly changing, so it’s important that organisations show evidence they are improving observations, processes and outcomes on an ongoing basis.
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Engage the workforce to improve staff and patient experience
Giving everyone a voice, ImproveWell makes it simple for organisations to capture continuous, real-time insight from the frontline to improve staff experience and the quality of patient care.
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How it works
ImproveWell creates a continuous touchpoint with the workforce - making change simple with 24/7 real-time feedback and insight
SENTIMENT TRACKER
Track and boost workforce morale and wellbeing with real-time data, by asking your team how their workday is going.
IDEA
HUB
Gather ideas for improvement, discuss or refine collaboratively, and keep everyone up to date with progress and implementation.
PULSE SURVEYS
Understand what matters and see where improvements are needed with swift and straightforward survey creation.
IMPROVEWELL INSIGHTS
Capture real-time feedback from patients or partner organisations via customisable online portals.
DATA DASHBOARD
Detect trends or pressure points; enable data-driven decisions; measure change; and publish reports to close the feedback loop.
Impact
Creating the right environment for wellbeing at work and continuous improvement, ImproveWell delivers:
INDUSTRY RECOGNITION
