Spring is here! Birds are singing, flowers are blooming, and it’s a popular time to tidy up your career and reskill.
As we move into 2024, many home care businesses still face a caregiver shortage and high turnover rates. Attracting well-trained candidates to meet growth needs remains a challenge. To overcome this, some home care providers have made significant internal changes. These strategies include updating company culture, investing in automation software, and promoting career and personal growth opportunities among staff.
Reskilling caregivers is proving to be an effective strategy for closing the skill gap.
Reskilling involves training caregivers to take on different roles or responsibilities within your home care business. This essential caregiver training may not directly relate to their current job but can still benefit your company and align with the caregiver’s personal or career goals.
Here are some examples of reskilling:
Peer to peer learning takes the knowledge and the experiences of the employees in a specific organization. That is why your agency might have certain caregivers with rather high levels of proficiency in some spheres of caregiving. This way, you can build the skills you need without large expenses – make sure that such employees ‘teach,’ or mentor others. Peer to peer learning can be a one-on-one affair, or arranged in learning groups that could be in the form of a workshop.
This approach also makes it easier for caregivers to share and therefore the learning process is enriched with the different issues that may be arising. It also has an application area through which the caregiver can demonstrate what they have learnt in the safe environment of the simulated scenario. It is a way of nurturing and enhancing the caregiving competencies and the leader trainee’s interpersonal and people skills inclusive of, though not limited to, listening, feedback and communication.
Warning: Some learners are more qualified than others and can new come up with excellent peer to peer training sessions once motivated by promises of special attention or incentives. The benefits of this transfer of knowledge and caregiver training are many, and the overall cost of this method of training is relatively small compared to other methods.
Another rich source of reskilling is through mentorship but unlike peer coaching, it is slightly different. In a mentoring relationship, a seasoned caregiver is teamed with a novice one with the aim of offering him/her direction. This is especially useful in orientation, with a new employee assimilating in the organization easily.
Mentors are also able to impart on job knowledge and skills, offer daily guidance and direction to the mentees, and enhance the scope of skill set available to the mentees depending on the need in the agency. Mentorship enhances learning within an organization in that internal resources are put to optimum use. It also has the wonderful effect of improving employee morale for the long term.
The Workplace Happiness Survey conducted in the recent past revealed that 90% of the employees who had mentors felt more satisfied with their jobs and happier at the workplace.
It is imperative, therefore, to allocate time for the purpose of a mentor and a mentee so as to optimise on the success of this program. Encourage the mentor and acknowledge the efforts and lately make sure that the agency values the program.
In some cases, more than internal knowledge and experience may be required to meet specific training needs. Hiring freelance specialists or external training providers can fill these gaps. These experts bring the exact skills, competencies, and experience required to upskill your caregivers quickly.
Group sessions led by external trainers can enhance both hard and soft skills. They also offer an opportunity to bring remote team members together, strengthening connections and teamwork. Many agencies are increasingly hiring external trainers for stress management and mindfulness skills to prevent caregiver burnout. These are crucial skills in the demanding field of home care.
External caregiver training solutions can offer a fresh perspective and introduce new techniques and practices that benefit your team significantly. Although a cost is involved, the return on investment regarding improved caregiver skills and satisfaction is well worth it.
Promoting a bottom-up approach to learning empowers caregivers to take charge of their professional development. Through regular appraisals or coaching sessions, managers can identify the skills caregivers want to develop. This information can then be used to create personalized reskilling pathways.
Provide incentives and remove barriers to support caregivers in developing their own learning plans. Paid online caregiver training time, provide additional resources, and offer flexibility for attending workshops and seminars. Rewards or added benefits for caregivers who reskill on their own time can also be motivating.
Another effective strategy is to create promotion opportunities within your agency for those who successfully reskill. Gamifying the process by rewarding employees who achieve certain reskilling milestones can make learning more engaging and fun.
Technology-based caregiver training approaches to reskill caregivers has the added advantage of being flexible and inexpensive unlike face-to-face classes. Education through online platforms provides course that one has to attend at certain time, in that aspect e-learning is preferred since it can be done at any time. Most of these caregiver training courses are flexible and learners may take the courses at their own pace.
From the accredited online learning providers, students are able to access structured learning programmes that will lead them to recognized certification. Another type of programs that might be beneficial to the home care industry, are the short one-time training programs, like certificates.
These include: webinars and video conferences which afford a chance of learning from home and caregivers can also participate actively. It can also be another effective approach of creating your e-learning programs. These can include the short training resource for caregivers followed on the internet (microlearning) to complete, stand-alone webcasts. While developing such content does involve a certain degree of investment of time and resources in the first instance it turns out to be a highly valuable resource in terms of staff training and development on an ongoing basis.
Future students can access the manuals and quick reference guides after having been trained to use the online lessons and tutorials and ease on boarding processes. However, in the same manner, having such caregiver lms in place can offer another stream of income if it offered to other agencies or as a service to the home care business.
Making caregivers attend industry seminars, caregiver training courses and other industry events are always very fruitful. These events afford an opportunity to be updated with new trends, new knowledge by experts in the respective field and interact with people in the same field. Families can get information and experience that they can share with your agency when they become caregivers.
In the same regard, seminars and events are also associated with costs, presented by earnings on new knowledge and ideas which can be introduced to the team members. Make sure the caregivers who go to these events are able to share what they learned to the rest of the staff through inservices they conduct themselves.
Custom in-home caregiver training is another effective way to reskill caregivers. Instead of sending multiple caregivers to expensive external courses, consider sending one representative to share the knowledge with their colleagues. The above is also known as the “train-the-trainer” model because it is efficient and spreads the information a across the team.
Hire with the skills you need and experience within your agency of high flyers. The following rewards and incentives could be offered to those willing to take the mantle of in-house trainers; offer them a salary rise, offer them an increase in their paid leave, OR even offer them a promotion. It is particularly useful as in-home caregiver training sessions can be matched to your agency and be very applicable in practice.
A non-growing caregiver team in an unprogressive agency will not secure or maintain the best talent available in the market. This is key in assessing the current ability of the agency to meet future needs; the deficiencies are then closed through seeking advanced caregiver training in methods that allow caregiver reskilling.
In any case, developing a workforce reskilling program requires that the process becomes institutionalized as an aspect of your business management plan and ethos. Organizational leaders and managers are required to promote learning in day-to-day practice through job training and development; and performance appraisal.
Honestly, if you are seriously thinking of elevating your caregiving team or you just want to ensure that your caregivers do not cross professional boundaries, Learn2Care is a must-visit resource.
Here’s what we bring to the table:
So, what are you waiting for? Upskill your team with Learn2Care, and watch your caregivers become certified caregiving professionals.
Find your next read and expand your knowledge
Contact us to inquire about our state-wise training courses and take the first step towards upskilling your team with a 14-day free trial!
