Investing in staff pay and training can address the workforce crisis in adult care and improve care home performance, according to new research published in the latest issue of the journal Human Resources Management .
The researchers looked at data from 36,460 establishments over a five-year period, during which they employed 1.9 million workers in total. They tracked the care providers’ HR practices and outcomes, including investment in staff training, promotion opportunities, job security, working hours, contractual arrangements, staff turnover and average tenure and studied the impact they had on the care home’s performance, as measured by its success in attracting new residents.
They found that care homes that increased investment in staff training, experienced a 4% increase in new residents; while care homes in which pay and conditions improved had, on average, a 3.1% increase in new residents.
Dr. Andreas Georgiadis , Associate Professor in International Business and Economics at Leeds University Business School, said: “Addressing the adult care crisis in England requires the government to support care providers to invest in their staff through offering better pay and working conditions and providing training.”
Dr. Andreas Kornelakis , Reader in Comparative Management at King’s Business School, King’s College London, said: “These findings show how short-sighted HR strategies based on cutting costs via low-skills investment and low-pay growth, are likely to be counterproductive and undermine the care homes’ longer-term operational success.”
The researchers also concluded that the effectiveness of improved pay and training practices is expected to reduce after a threshold level of collective staff skills, knowledge and experience is reached.
At this point, to improve performance further, other interventions are needed, for instance, improving operational efficiencies or the adoption of new technologies.
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