Recruitment and retention: a double challenge

I’ve been a nurse for over 30 years and during this time I have worked in primary and secondary care. I joined Victoria Nursing Group Ltd eight years ago as a Registered Manager and am now the Care Quality Director. I oversee the five care homes, all based in the South East of England. We provide nursing care for older people and those requiring step down rehabilitation care from the local NHS hospital trust in Sussex.

I am committed and passionate about ensuring our homes are great places to live and work. As with most care providers, we thought long and hard about various ways to address the challenges for recruitment and retention of staff. To do so, we have sought to introduce several positive initiatives, coupled with generous rates of pay and holiday entitlement, that must be a prerequisite to success.

For Registered Nurses (RNs), we identified that the provision of a comprehensive continuing professional development programme would be attractive and beneficial. This includes a wide range of face-to-face clinical sessions on topics such as managing diabetes and respiratory disorders, with a number including appropriate simulations and competency based assessments. In total an RN has access to around 25 hours per annum of these clinical training sessions and staff are paid to attend them when they can. Additionally, the RNs have access to around 20 hours per annum of online training and skills resources and we positively support any initiative brought to us for additional professional development suggested by staff. We try and arrange training on different days of the week to support rota patterns and those working night duty.

We strive to be a very inclusive employer and we are readily aware of the challenges RNs can face. One particularly important issue we wished to address concerned the menopause and the immediate and ongoing impact upon our staff. We were eager to properly understand this issue and so we now have a menopause champion who is qualified in menopause at work. Each home now has a dedicated resource pack that is regularly updated, and we have named individuals with appropriate skills to assist staff. We have openly stated that staff will be paid for attending any GP or specialist appointments associated with the menopause and offer cooler uniform options for those who desire them.

Our inclusivity commitment also translates to equality and diversity where we have worked closely with a local Sussex charity supporting the LGBTQ+ community and the challenges faced when working, or living, in a care home. We are also now working with a research unit at the University of Kent on inclusion in a care home setting and are assisting with the development of a set of resource tools for providers.

In terms of non-nursing staff, we also wish to find ways to develop skills and improve retention. As a result, we have now introduced a fully funded Nurse Associate training programme and our first staff member is benefiting from this now. We obviously wish to identify more candidates who can see the career progression opportunities offered by this and we are actively promoting it across the group.

Finally, we always make sure that we celebrate National Nurses' Week and Carers' Week, giving recognition to all our staff and the amazing life and work experience presented by working in care.