Bournemouth Borough Council /
Retention Strategy
V4.4.1 /
Julie Liggett & Stefan Kleipoedszus
1/26/2015


Contents

What is the retention strategy?

New starters

Management and Support to staff

Reward and recognition

Engagement

Health and wellbeing

Stress management:

Caseloads:

Working arrangements:

Workforce initiatives

New ways of working:

External partnerships:

Balanced workforce:

Reduce numbers of leavers:

Learning & Development and Progression

Progression from unqualified to qualified and beyond

Enhance the NQSW support package – ASYE Programme

On the job training / CPD

Growing Managers and Specialists

Support for new and existing managers

Implement, monitor and evaluate

Concluding points

What is the retention strategy?

Bournemouth Borough Council has been able to maintain front line children’s social care (CSC) services despite national financial cutbacks and against the backdrop of significant increases in demand. In order to sustain existing quality of services this strategy puts forward initiatives aimed at improving retention and attendance of caring and skilled children’s social care staff so that Bournemouth Borough Council has a stable and experienced workforce. This was identified as an area for improvement in the OFSTED inspection in May 2014. In particular it is critical to reduce the current CSC vacancy rate of and sustain the sickness rate at a level below 4%. This strategy defines how it is intended to achieve this. It shows what we have implemented so far to improve retention and how we can continue to improve.

The strategy aims to:

Reflect initiatives proposed in Skills for Care’s recruitment and retention strategy 2014 – 2017, which was prepared on behalf of the Department of Health’s recruitment and retention group. Although the document was aimed at the adult social care workforce there are nevertheless valuable suggestions both in Skills for Care’s strategy and in related schemes which can be adapted for children’s social care.

Embed the Local Government Association’s Standards for the Employment of Social Workers in England, May 2014 which; amongst others; places an emphasis on the following points relevant for this strategy:

  • Effective Workforce Planning
  • Safe Workloads and Case Allocation.
  • Continuing Professional Development

Our aim is

  • to make sure that people feel valued and supported, through promoting positive cultures with the right values, attitudes and aptitudes
  • to establish a ‘learning culture’ rather than a blame culture where staff feel confident to express learning needs and areas for development at an early stage in a spirit of supportive cooperation
  • to encourage staff to raise issues of concern to improve overall practice
  • that management act immediately on those concerns and give feedback to staff on progress
  • to improve the efficiency of social work by removing unnecessary bureaucracy

The Council recognises the importance of staff having job enjoyment, high morale and a sense of being valued. Central to Bournemouth Borough Council’s retention strategy is a commitment to ensuring that staff is offered appropriate support to carry out their roles, opportunities for development and progression and a fair reward and recognition package.

This strategy complements the Council’s recruitment strategy and Children’s Social Care Workforce Development Strategy. It commences from the period immediately after a member of staff has been recruited and explores initiatives for supporting and developing them in their daily working life and retaining them with Bournemouth Council through the various milestone points of their career.

New starters

In order to ensure that staff feel valued as soon as they join the Council we will manage and support new recruits as soon as they have accepted an unconditional offer of employment. The actions listed below will contribute to this.

Establish a thorough induction programme which should comprise both corporate and Children’s Social Care Service requirements. Diarise a regular induction day for new starters which covers:

  • Welcome to Bournemouth Borough Council and the Children’s Social Care service
  • Address from the Chief Executive and Service Director and opportunity to meet them both and ask questions
  • Working in Children's Social Care at Bournemouth Borough Council - what is Children's Social Care in the Bournemouth context?
  • Management’s expectations
  • Staff’s expectations
  • What our core business is
  • Where their individual work fits into the bigger social care picture
  • Being valued as a worker in the Children's Social Care Service
  • Familiarisation with Codes of Practice and Policies and Procedures

Commence the induction programme prior to the start date with concise information sent in advance along with short e-learning modules to enable preparation for employment.

The induction programme must be dovetailed with a robust probationary process including:

  • Clear standards and performance indicators
  • Supervision weekly when first employed tapering to fortnightly as appropriate and then monthly after six months
  • The opportunity to get to know the service by spending time in the different parts of the business
  • Early identification of knowledge/skills gaps and addressing these with coaching and training
  • Introduction of probation for transferees from other local authorities

Provide the opportunity during the first days in employment to identify development needs and make bookings onto future relevant training programmes.

Management and Support to staff

We give staff strong management and support to carry out their roles and to create a working environment which is supporting great performance. To facilitate this we already have HR policies for effective performance management. We need to ensure that these are implemented consistently. This includes:

  • Time set aside for appraisals and 6-monthly reviews
  • As set out in the Employer Standards ensuring that social workers can do their jobs safely and have the right physical environment and the tools/resources/equipment they need; ensure that such equipment is functioning effectively
  • Constructive manager feedback on role/progress
  • Supervision to be regular and of consistent quality across the Service
  • Taking action to support staff who experience health issues which affect their ability to attend and carry out work – dovetail attendance management with health and wellbeing initiatives as detailed later in this Strategy

Reward and recognition

The Council applies the national terms and conditions of local government. The introduction of the BG07 grading structure reflects the national payscales. Therefore the Council’s pay and non-pay benefits are commensurate with other local authorities in the South West.

We will look at supplementing these benefits with other innovative mechanisms for reward and recognition including:

  • External employee-related benefits such as national and local discount schemes etc
  • Key worker benefits such as housing arrangements. Promote the Council’s Community Finance Initiative which includes a ‘help to buy’ mortgage scheme
  • Recognition for best practice – nominated by peers
  • Management mechanisms to recogniseand rewardgood performance

Engagement

A staff engagement project was carried out in 2013/14 resulting in an Action Plan for all services including Children’s Social Care Service. Most of the actions have been completed or are underway and the Plan is kept under regular review. We can build further on this by working with other departments to address the two areas which caused staff the greatest concern ie:

  • Ensuring that Social Care staff are included in all corporate communication and information-sharing and that they are engaged in strategic developments
  • Hold regular meetings with teams to ensure they feel valued and engaged, also to encourage them to help shape the future etc
  • Consult with managers and new and existing staff about their experiences and what can be improved, or works well

In CSC staff will have the opportunity to give feedback to senior management and to be actively involved in the development of practice and implementation of the Employer Standards through engagement with the Principal Social Worker.

Health and wellbeing

Working in children’s social care is a stressful job. To mitigate this, a holistic approach should be adopted, focusing on the wellbeing and engagement of employees. This can be implemented by adopting the strategies below:

Stress management:

  • Equip managers to spot the early signs of stress
  • Encourage managers to implement the Health and Safety Executive stress management standards for work-related stress
  • Introduce resilience and wellbeing training to all staff

Caseloads:

  • Introduce benchmarks for safe workloads
  • Assessing individuals workloads regularly taking into account complexity and individual capacity
  • Limit caseload volume to ensure cases are manageable – especially for new staff; aim at securing an average caseload of no more than 18 across the service, with adjustments depending on the service area
  • Manage caseloads at a service/team level, recognising experience and complexity of cases
  • Ensure case allocation and workflow trends are discussed systematically by the Senior Management Team, and that any problems are immediately escalated to that team so that work is allocated transparently and only with prior discussion
  • Respond to areas for development raised in reviews and serious case reviews

Working arrangements:

  • Address any lone working issues - give staff mobile phones and ‘panic alarms’ if they have not already got them
  • Consider having a dedicated resource for clinical supervision of social workers
  • Review flexible working and worklife balance arrangements to ensure that individuals are supported to manage their work and home commitments without adverse impact on the business and other colleagues
  • Actively promote the health, safety and wellbeing of staff as top priority

Workforce initiatives

The service has recently undergone core service transformation and therefore attention has already been paid to the way in which the business is organised, both within CSC and in the interaction with other Services such as Adult Social Care (ASC) and Children and Young People’s Services (CYPS). However there may still be scope for introducing workforce initiatives to aid retention, without financial impact.

New ways of working:

  • Explore the possibility of allowing staff to move to a less stressful role after a period. This could include secondment to projects, rotation of management roles. Such initiatives would require careful consideration and management if they are to be feasible
  • Internal transfer policy eg to move location or to move between teams including between ASC and CSC
  • Without compromising risk-management and governance arrangements endeavour to reduce non-essential paperwork and bureaucracy so that the focus of work is on direct interactions with families
  • Roll out mobile working and work towards increased autonomy and control for individuals, without losing governance and supervision

External partnerships:

  • Consider opportunities for cross local authority (LA) secondments & cross LA approaches to career opportunities. Shared training including post-qualification – see section below on Learning and Development
  • Explore regional collaborative options to improve the recruitment and retention of qualified staff by promoting the South West as an attractive lifestyle option

Balanced workforce:

  • Review the skill mix to ensure the right balance of practical experience with NQ SWs
  • Use the balanced skill mix to offer mentoring opportunities between experienced and less-experienced staff
  • Reduce usage of agency staff, so permanent staff do not feel disadvantaged in comparison and to make sure staffing levels are sustainable

Reduce numbers of leavers:

We need a greater understanding of why people leave, in order to ascertain the kinds of measures which could help retain them. To gain this knowledge:

  • Managers to take ownership and responsibility when people say they are thinking of leaving
  • identify and address issues with a view to encouraging them to stay, if appropriate
  • Address rumours and perceptions re “grass always greener” elsewhere
  • Offer Exit interviews to all leavers as a standard practice and analyse the findings to establish common causes of leaving which can be addressed

Learning & Development and Progression

There are various elements of L&D which could assist with retention:

Progression from unqualified to qualified and beyond

A social work progession framework is now in place in Children’s Social Care, which begins from NQSW through all Social Care levels to give people a clear career path and opportunities. This includes a standardised set of Job Descriptions and Person Specifications. A similar exercise is underway for unqualified staff.

We aim to introduce bespoke career pathways aligned with the Professional Capabilities Framework, supported through the introduction of a Social Work Academy. Initiatives include:

  • Formalised grow your own schemes to be explored to encourage unqualified staff in CSC to move into social work. Eg FSP/FSWs to be given the opportunity to attend university and become qualified social workers. To be carried out on a secondment basis through an annual recruitment and selection process
  • Offer of alternative career pathways to unqualified staff who do not wish to pursue a social work qualification
  • Joint working / liaison with academic institutions on trainees and secondments; addressing practical barriers to work experience
  • Provision of high-quality practice placements and encouragement of suitably talented final year students to join the workforce
  • Offer existing qualified staff the opportunity to train and become practice educators for student placements, supported by L&D team
  • Implement the Department for Education’s ‘Step up to Social Work’ programme
  • Ensure there is fairness in opportunities for progression
  • Consider incentives for a qualified Social Worker to stay even after achieving Level III. But recognise we need a spread of staff at all levels

Enhance the NQSW support package – ASYE Programme

A key element of ensuring high retention rate is to put emphasis on supporting Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSW) in their Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE)[1] as a successful and in depth program has shown to increase the retention of this staff group. We will do this by

  • Ensuring participation of all NQSW’s in the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment immediately after they started
  • Giving an entitlement for reflective supervision, protected workloadand dedicated time for professional development.
  • Delivering a rolling 12 month training program designed specifically for NQSW’s
  • Considering developing a ASYE Academy for first year of practice

On the job training / CPD

In order to ensure that there is a clear entitlement to formal and informal Continuing Professional Development (CPD) we have recently transferred-in an L&D team dedicated to social work training. To make best use of this resource and strengthen the CPD offer in Bournemouth we will:

  • Conduct a gap analysis to establish current internal development needs for those identified for progression within succession plans and prioritise development resourcing
  • Share learning and development opportunities with neighbouring local authorities
  • Explore opportunities for ‘action learning sets’, collaboration, peer support and peer review

Growing Managers and Specialists

If the council is to successfully ‘grow our own’ we need to consider the transition from experienced Social Worker into managerial and supervisory roles, commencing at Team Manager. This may be possible through the following mechanisms:

  • Work with Bournemouth University on a social work management development module building on the existing graduate certificate for professional education, offering opportunities to develop management/leadership skills
  • Conduct aspirational conversations with qualified Social Workers to identify those interested in the management career path / succession progression
  • Design a mechanism by which interested staff will be assessed for fit against the succession criteria – ensure this is linked to the appraisal process and any relevant performance data
  • Provide internal training to prepare those identified for future managerial roles.
  • Offer opportunities for acting up, shadowing

This will give all staff a clear pathway to progress into management. For those who don’t want to manage the Council should consider the following alternatives:

  • Opportunities to develop non-management specialists (for delivery of training, work on special projects) through the development of a Social Work Academy; or
  • Review the role of the Practice Managers to make better use of their skills and experience for mentoring and developing other staff
  • Ensure staff are informed in a concise and clear way of succession planning processes and new arrangements going forward

Support for new and existing managers

Good management is vital for helping staff to feel valued, enthused and motivated. In order to ensure that managers are both competent and effective the council needs to focus on management development and the importance of leadership skils. The following can be considered:

  • Evaluate whether the Leadership qualities framework is appropriate/suitable for CSC staff
  • Introduce initiatives for management and leadership competency – to give them the confidence to deal with core managerial issues and conflicting demands. This can include mentoring, coaching, peer-support groups
  • Access to further learning opportunities through the Bournemouth University programme

Implement, monitor and evaluate

A number of the initiatives contained within this strategy are already underway, while others are yet to be instigated. In addition the contents are not intended to be exhaustive and the Council needs to keep the issue on the agenda so that further opportunities for retention can be identified:

  • Consider inviting ‘champions’ for each strand of the strategy, who can keep colleagues focused on the benefits for staff retention
  • Monitor and evaluate the impact of the activities within the strategy – robust evaluation framework

Concluding points

The above strategy has been written in the context of a national shortage of experienced qualified social workers in Children’s Social Care. It is anticipated that numbers of newly qualified social workers will increase over coming years to go some way towards addressing the shortfall. However, in order to ensure that those individuals gain confidence and competence to remain in a social work career it is vital that the ideas within this document continue to be implemented to secure a robust workforce for the long term future.