Four ways you can use ASC-WDS to see how you compare to similar providers

Our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) provides a wide range of benefits for social care providers – from managing training records to providing access to funding.

Our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) provides a wide range of benefits for social care providers – from managing training records to providing access to funding.

While many providers are aware of how the service can support with managing staff records, keeping on top of training needs, and accessing funding, you may not be quite as familiar with the service’s benchmarking functionality or how best to use it.

ASC-WDS provides a unique opportunity to compare your workplace to similar workplaces, based on metrics for pay, sickness levels, staff turnover, and qualifications. The benchmarking data is anonymously presented and updated each month.

The service allows you to compare your workplace against providers in your local area who provide the same service as you, as well as against providers rated ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Right now, the benchmarking functionality is available for CQC regulated care homes with nursing, care homes without nursing, and domiciliary care providers, and we’re working to make this available for other types of care provider in the future.

You may already know your own pay, sickness, and turnover rates, but being able to benchmark your workplace against others can help you sense check how you’re performing and aids workforce planning and decision making. To help you make the most of this opportunity we’ve put together a guide to four ways you can use ASC-WDS for benchmarking.

Pay

ASC-WDS allows you to compare your average pay rate for care workers in your workplace to pay rates of other providers. This may help to guide you in making decisions around pay scales.

If you discover that your average pay is higher than similar providers, highlighting this can also give you a competitive edge when recruiting for new staff.

Sickness

Being able to compare sickness rates between your workplace and others can be extremely helpful in workforce planning.

Being aware of average sickness levels can help you to make contingency plans to cover for any absences due to sickness. Having a clear insight into how your sickness levels compare to others could also frame your planning to tackle issues including wellbeing and health and safety.

Staff turnover

Your staff turnover rates have a major impact on your organisation. They influence your performance financially, operationally and contribute to staff morale, so it’s useful to have comprehensive insight on this metric.

Using ASC-WDS to benchmark your turnover rates can let you see how your staff retention compares to others. Some users have told us they use this insight to track progress against objectives related to their organisational improvements. A higher than average turnover rate may indicate that you could improve your processes or working environment.

We recently conducted research to analyse the variables that influence turnover rates, published in our latest ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report. It evidenced that levels of training and qualifications, contracted hours, and experience in the sector all had an impact.

As with pay, if your turnover rate is lower than other organisations you can use this intelligence to show potential new employees that your organisation is a place where staff choose to build long and happy careers.

Qualifications

ASC-WDS also allows you to benchmark the percentage of your staff who have relevant qualifications at a level two or above.

Knowing how you compare with others could help you set goals for the learning and development of your staff, and identify good practice based on similar providers with a high CQC rating or low turnover.

The percentage of your staff who hold relevant qualifications is also a metric that you’ll need to know to complete your Provider Information Return with the Care Quality Commission.

For more information on benchmarking and all the other benefits of ASC-WDS, have a look at our ASC-WDS webpages.

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