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If you’re looking for good caregivers for your social care business, there are a range of factors you need to consider. 

First of all, the needs of your clients and your business should steer your search. What skills will your employees require? Is it mostly those skills necessary for the delivery of personal and household care, such as washing, eating, cleaning and shopping or more specialist skills such as providing medical support or palliative care? The service you provide needs to be safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led, there are guidelines on the Care Quality Commission’s websites as to the standards you need to provide, and they could help you focus your recruitment search. Also, when looking at the skill set your employees need, do any require the experience and skills commensurate with becoming a team leader, manager or trainer?

Skills and requirements

Once you’ve identified the key skills and requirements of the roles you are recruiting for, then put together a detailed job description. In doing this, there are a number things you need to consider such as qualifications, the necessity for a driving license, particular language skills or specific experience caring for those with disabilities or dementia. Putting time in to the preparation of your recruit drive will mean you reap the benefits later with the most suitable candidates possible. So put due time and consideration into this task to save you time and resources later on, recruit the wrong person and you’ll need to begin your search all over again.

Characteristics

When assessing candidates, there are some character traits you should look out for in your staff. Patience is certainly a virtue, and it helps to have it in abundance if you’re working as a carer. Patient people are more likely to help people maintain their independence for longer and provide them with a better quality of life. It will also help if your carers empathise with those they are caring for, seeing things from their perspective and drawing on these insights to inform their interaction with their patient.

Hand in hand with empathy comes an ability to be intuitive and read situations correctly, understanding what’s really going on. However, carers also need to be persistent at times, not giving up easily if a patient doesn’t seem interested in getting up or receiving care. Sometimes a little stubbornness will help get the job done and ultimately improve the quality of life of those for whom they are caring.

Trustworthy and responsible are also crucial requirements, as your employees will be responsible for another person and be entering their private space, that’s why ensuring all the appropriate checks and references are in place is so important.

Due process, checks and vetting

In recruiting carers for your social care business, it’s imperative that you follow all industry standards, vetting and checking those you are going to employ as necessary. Not doing so could threaten the safety of those for whom you are responsible and ultimately affect the long term success of your business.

Help is at hand

If recruiting your new staff is too complex and time consuming a task then help is at hand. Engage the services of a specialist recruitment company to find the permanent and temporary staff that meet your requirements. They can even manage all of your agency requirements. To find the right carers for your business, contact a company such as Employ Social Care, and benefit from the expertise of a recruiter with over 20 years’ experience in the domiciliary and residential care sectors.