Home care lone workers need time. A Guardian/Insight survey asked two years ago what are the key challenges facing individual care workers, and the key challenges facing their employers. The challenges faced by employees and employers are linked. Forced by councils to bid at the lowest cost, home care providers struggle to pay and train their staff sufficiently to overcome skills and staffing shortages.
For individuals the key challenges are time limitations (73%), pay (67%) and training (56%).
For home care providers the three key challenges are skills shortage (63%), council commissioning (58%) and recruitment (55%).
Managing Time Spent on Visits
To win bids employers have to keep pay within budgets and the number of visits a worker makes per day within target. These feed through to employee dissatisfaction and difficulties in recruiting and retaining qualified staff. Unfortunately there are constraints within a system where bids are won on the lowest cost.
The Biggest Employee Complaint is the Lack of Time
Every home care client is an individual with different needs. They are not always good at organising themselves and some visits will inevitably overrun. Having information on how long each visit lasts reduces stress on staff, while allowing companies to optimise the number of visits per day.
Ok Alone keeps a check on staff, volunteers and clients when they are on their own. With Ok Alone you can map where home care lone workers are and where they have been, ensure they are safe and easily communicate incidents should they occur.
Lone worker monitoring doesn’t have to be expensive. You can see for yourself by entering your requirements into our pricing estimator. Get your estimate now.
The Ok Alone team writes informative articles about lone working. Through our articles, we aim to educate readers on the benefits and best practices of using our lone worker app, and how Ok Alone can help mitigate risks and enhance communication between workers and monitors. Learn about other areas including legislation, risk management, and legal compliance plus lone worker features such as man down, high-risk check ins and location monitoring.