How to prepare your care staff for the challenging winter months

Winter is generally one of the busiest times for all businesses that operate in the care sector, having to deal with the cold weather and, as a result, seasonal illnesses. This, paired with the separate issue of staff shortages and the current economic climate, care businesses face a busy winter ahead.

Whilst some of these issues are out of anyone's control, there are a few things that care businesses can do to better prepare their staff to cope with the winter months…

Top tips for preparing care staff for the winter

Build a positive workplace culture

Company culture is the sum of your values and shared beliefs, usually set by your leaders and embraced by your entire team.

For care businesses, nurturing a positive company culture is crucial. Staff will more likely thrive in a supportive environment where their voices can be heard, and it’s up to you to build this culture.

A simple email or team meeting can kick things off, but let's face it, memories can be short-lived, and the essence of your values can fade with time. To truly make your values stick, it's not as challenging as it may seem. There are various creative ways to keep your team connected with your culture, such as:

• Printing your values on merchandise
• Embedding your values into your staff onboarding process
• Have managers quiz staff on company values when they're not expecting it

Over time you will build a team that works better together and will be more effective at helping your business to achieve its goals.

Support the wellbeing of your staff

Workers in the care sector have some of the most emotionally challenging jobs imaginable. Caring for vulnerable people themselves, they often prioritise other's mental wellbeing over their own.

Being the daily witness to the realities of poor mental and physical health can take an emotional toll on an employee that isn’t always addressed by the worker or their organisation.

For this reason, it’s crucial, particularly during the challenging winter months where illnesses are more prevalent, to offer your staff the support they need to cope with the challenges they face.

There are a number of ways to support care staff with their wellbeing including:

• Appointing a Mental Health First Aider
• Creating a positive workplace culture that encourages breaking the negative stigma surrounding mental health
• Create a wellbeing strategy
• Educate your staff on the importance of good wellbeing

Keeping up-to-date with workplace training

It’s no secret that staff turnover in the care sector can be quite high. With that in mind, it’s essential that all care businesses have a clear training plan in place to ensure that new staff can hit the ground running by grasping a clear understanding of their responsibilities as soon as they start.

Workplace training is essential for all industries, but the care sector in particular requires numerous types of training that can end up taking quite a bit of time, which isn’t ideal when facing the current staffing shortage. For this reason, many care businesses have opted to utilise e-learning to train their staff, allowing them to complete their training at a time and place convenient for them.

Here at iHasco, we’ve been providing the Care sector with high-quality e-learning for over a decade, counting some of the UK’s largest and most reputable care organisations amongst our client base.

With our wide range of online training courses for the care sector, we can almost certainly help you to fulfil your training needs!

With 95% of our clients in agreement that we make managing training within their business easier, we’re proud to be making workplace training simple. Get started today with a free, no-obligation trial or by requesting a bespoke quote.