Induction Essentials

The second element of our staffing process is Induction, a really important stage, particularly in adult social care.  If you have not seen last weeks post “Interview Essentials”, making the interview part of induction, has many benefits – “Interview Essentials” can be found here.

So, you’ve now completed all the interviews, made your hiring decisions and your new recruits are about to start their first day.  How should you prepare for this?

If, during the interviews, you used an assessment process to discover how much a candidate already knows about the Care Certificate (and possibly more), then you will already have a good idea about the new recruit’s existing competence and safety to practice.

Such knowledge benchmarks also highlight any outstanding learning needs, meaning that you can tailor the new staff member’s induction and learning as efficiently as possible.  As I mentioned last week, there’s nothing more tedious for any care worker, whatever their level of experience, to have to repeat the Care Certificate, at each new employer.

So, the fast, robust and comprehensive assessments that are available on Click, our online learning system, ensure that this does not have to happen, along with evidencing that staff are safe, effective and well led.  We recently ran successful webinars on ‘How to carry out observations during lockdown’ which helped a large number of our customers.

Our built-in Training Matrix automatically updates as learners complete courses or assessments and as line managers add evidence and observations.

I still hear of care organisations using face-to-face training (pre-Covid, of course) and paper workbooks (aw, remember them?).  This cannot provide any new recruit with what they need, nor do these methods provide value for money for the employer. We have heard of people throwing away large amounts of paper as they do not have room for them. What a waste!

With our system, your new recruits can begin their induction programme within the recruitment process whilst waiting for DBS and reference checks.  By the time the checks have been completed, your member of staff will be ready to join the team.  Time and again, this induction method, alongside shadowing days has proved time-efficient, cost-effective and can dramatically reduce staff turnover.