Meeting the needs of the senior care workforce means more than compensation and financial security, according to the results of a Transcend Strategy Group and MAC Legacy survey.
Improving processes, efficiency, communication and clarity to mitigate burnout can position long-term care companies as employers of choice among nurses and aides, according to the report.
“Many say they wish their leadership would get in with their team more often to better understand the daily aspects of the work and make better decisions that help them work better,” the authors wrote.
Respondents to the survey said that they need to be supported with the tools and processes they need to do their work.
Employer-provided educational opportunities ranked highly in job satisfaction. Many long-term care facility and home care employees said, however, that the quality of employer-provided education was not up to par with that provided to workers in acute-care settings such as hospitals.
The home care sector is struggling to recruit and retain workers, according to the survey, in which only 32% of respondents said that they would consider joining the home care workforce. One barrier to recruiting is potential workers’ perception that individuals’ homes are unclean or unsafe, according to the survey. Forty-five percent of survey participants said they wanted to know how their personal safety could be ensured if they worked in home care.
“Getting more people into home care careers will require reframing what it means to work in it. This requires a combination of tackling perception barriers while also building up the positive messages about these promising careers,” the authors wrote.
The authors suggested that providers emphasize that “care in the home is the cutting edge of healthcare innovation.”
Burnout is a prime reason that caregivers, especially RNs, leave the field, according to the survey. Home care can be an alternative to the same old grind and a means of meeting the needs of the workforce, according to the research.
