One line in Skills for Care's annual workforce report stopped me mid-page this week. I put the kettle on and read it again.
It's the state of the sector report that came out on 14th October, and Care Management Matters has a good write-up of the headline findings. Most of the coverage will focus on vacancies, and fair enough. But the line I kept staring at was about managers. I suspect plenty of providers will skim straight past it.
What does the new Skills for Care report actually say?
The workforce has grown for a fourth year running, and vacancies are at their lowest level in a decade, according to Skills for Care. Growth is slowing, though. Filled posts rose by 1.4%, the slowest annual increase in four years. The report also says there are fewer British workers in the sector and that international recruitment has fallen significantly.
Good news, then, with a catch.
Vacancies are easing, which sounds like relief. But a sector leaning less on overseas hiring has very little slack if something goes wrong in the middle of a team.
Why does care worker turnover fall when the registered manager stays?
Skills for Care found that care worker turnover falls from 28.3% to 20.6% as registered manager experience increases. That is a gap of more than seven percentage points. The figures show a strong link rather than proof of cause. Even so, the direction is hard to ignore.
And it fits what I see. A manager who has been in post for years knows which shifts are quietly miserable, which carer is one bad rota away from handing in notice, and which family will ring at half past five on a Friday. They fix things before those things become resignations.
A newer manager can be excellent, but they're learning all of that while the team watches, and a team that is watching tends to start doing its own sums about whether to stay.
Retaining registered managers in social care tends to get filed under pay, and pay does matter. Still, I'd argue the more useful question is what your best manager would need to still be here in three years. And your best manager has probably wondered the same thing.
Is pay still the answer to care worker turnover?
Pay is part of it, but Skills for Care's figures suggest it works as a package. Care worker turnover drops from 34.3% to 15.3% where employers combine competitive pay, guaranteed hours, training, qualifications and full-time employment opportunities. But it's worth reading that list twice.
Guaranteed hours, training and a route to a qualification are almost all delivered, day to day, by the manager, and it is the manager who has to make the promise believable when the budget gets tight.
A rota that people can plan their lives around doesn't write itself. Nor does a supervision that leaves someone feeling developed rather than monitored, and nobody gets a Level 3 sorted out by accident. And none of it happens in a service where the manager is permanently firefighting.
In many services the manager is how the pay conversation actually lands.
What happens to a team when the registered manager leaves?
When a registered manager leaves, the service loses its regulatory lead and often the person staff trust most. Cover can keep things safe in the short term, but a gap of several months is hard on the team left behind. In my experience the first warning sign is deputy managers and senior carers quietly updating their CVs.
I've watched a well-run home wobble for most of a year after one departure, and I still think about it.
Nothing dramatic happened. A few good people drifted off, an inspection came round at an awkward moment, and the people who stayed were tired in a way that no amount of agency cover quite fixed. The new manager, when one finally arrived, spent their first six months rebuilding what the old one had held together without anyone noticing. None of it had been written down.
I wrote about how thin this part of the market is back in July, in the registered manager problem nobody wants to talk about. Nothing in the new report makes that look overcooked.
What can a provider do before a manager hands in notice?
Start by finding out how settled your manager really is, which is a different thing from how settled they look. A frank conversation about workload, support from head office and where they see themselves next will tell you more than an annual survey. Then look at your own bench.
A deputy who is ready, or nearly ready, is the cheapest insurance a care provider can buy, though it only works if the deputy knows they are being lined up.
If there isn't one, it helps to know that early. Experienced managers are rarely sat waiting on a job board, and a good search takes longer than most operators expect when they start it in a hurry. Notice periods at this level are often long too, so a resignation on a Monday can mean a replacement that is months away.
None of this needs a grand programme. A monthly catch-up that is actually about the manager, not the occupancy figures, would be a start.
So would asking, once a year and meaning it, what they'd change if it were their money. Some of the answers will be awkward. Pay, probably, in a couple of cases. And the support they get from above, in a few more.
But I'd rather hear awkward from a manager in a catch-up than read it in a resignation letter.
Back to my kettle. The line that stopped me wasn't about vacancies or visas at all, just a single comparison showing what a manager who stays does to the number of care workers who leave. I'd want it on the wall in every provider's head office, next to the fire evacuation plan.
If you've a registered manager role coming up, or a quiet worry about one, send it over when you're ready and our health and social care recruitment team will talk it through with you.
