Five learning and development resources to support retention

Supporting learning and development opportunities for your team can play a vital role in helping with staff retention.

In fact, 87% of employers told us that offering learning and development opportunities improved staff commitment, while employers who have a turnover rate of less than 10% told us that investing in learning and development was one of the key reasons that they managed to retain high levels of staff.

At Skills for Care we’ve developed a number of our own tools and resources to support with providing learning and development for the social care workforce, and we can also point you to third-party resources and our endorsed training providers.

As part of our #RetainToGain work we’ve rounded up some of our key resources to help you to support learning and development opportunities for your team.

1. Guide to developing your staff

First things first, our ‘Guide to developing your staff’ is a great place to start to help employers and managers to plan their learning and development offering for their teams.

This guide covers how to get started with planning learning and development – such as identifying skills gaps among your team and setting a learning and development budget; ideas for different ways that you can develop staff, ranging from on-the-job, off-the-job, and social training opportunities, and how to evaluate the impact of learning and development.

Read the guide.

2. Learning from events

Our ‘Learning from events’ digital module aims to support managers and leaders to conduct learning reviews. The purpose of a learning view is about learning from adverse events and taking lessons of what could be improved for next time.

Our short digital module supports managers to conduct these learning reviews to help their staff to continually develop in their roles, grow in confidence, and use their experience to keep improving.

Find out more about the module.

3. Digital learning for managers

Our ‘Digital learning for managers’ online modules have been developed to support new and aspiring managers to continue to grow as leaders. The short series of modules cover topics including communication, decision making, and entrepreneurship.

These modules provide a useful tool to help team members grow into leaders and managers, allowing them to progress in your organisation, which can help you to retain staff. Ensuring your managers are fully up-to-speed with best practice can also support retention as staff are more likely to stay in a role where good management is in place.

View the modules.

4. Endorsed providers

Providing regular training courses for your staff allowing them to refresh existing knowledge or develop new skills across anything from providing care and support for specific needs, to developing their digital skills, or growing their leadership qualities, can help to keep staff engaged and motivated in their role. This can help you to retain your staff for the long-term.

It’s important to make sure that any training you provide is from an esteemed provider. That’s why we’ve created our database of Skills for Care endorsed providers. We have a large set of endorsed providers covering a wide range of topics, so you can be confident in the quality of training being delivered.

View our endorsed providers.

5. Care Certificate assessor course

The Care Certificate is one of the first training processes anyone new to social care will undertake. But the Care Certificate can also offer an opportunity for long-serving social care staff to continue to develop their skills and experience.

Care workers can undertake the Care Certificate assessor course to allow them to become an assessor for the Care Certificate. This can provide an opportunity for your experienced staff to take on a new responsibility and support the induction of new staff.

Find out more about the course.

Find more information and support about retaining staff on our #RetainToGain spotlight.

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