Why you should put mentorship at the heart of your carer training

Who inspired you when you were starting out in your career? A colleague, a supervisor, a mentor perhaps? Inspiration is a powerful tool and when paired with mentorship it can have a transformative effect on an employee. In an industry as strained as homecare, leveraging the power of mentorship in your carer training is central to your success as an organisation.

Just last month the CQC praised a care agency in York whose homecare workers provided outstanding care to their service users  and we all know the CQC is not easily won over. So who are the outstanding homecare workers at your agency? Are they playing an active role in your homecare training?

Transform your carer training through mentorship

No doubt you consider yourself lucky to have those few outstanding homecare workers at your organisation. But luck isn’t enough to ensure the success of your organisation. To provide consistently high quality care to your service users you need a team of outstanding homecare workers. That is where mentorship comes in.

Those workers who truly excel in homecare don’t just have a thorough understanding of policy, guidelines and theory. Nor is their outstanding work based on practical experience alone. They excel as they treat their service users with a level of respect and compassion that they would want to receive themselves were the roles to be reversed. That level of care and consideration can’t be taught through e-learning, it requires mentorship, feedback and coaching.

How can On.Board help with mentorship?

Our mobile learning and coaching platform On.Board provides a way for homecare workers to routinely connect with their mentors through digital feedback. Every homecare worker has a hub facilitated through On.Board – a small, core group of people who provide critical feedback. Delivering a guiding hand throughout their training, this mentorship helps spread the values of care and compassion that are central to good homecare, as well as enabling homecare workers to identify areas for improvement.

The benefits go both ways

Putting mentorship at the heart of your carer training doesn’t just benefit your new homecare workers but also those existing, highly prized homecare workers.

Research shows mentors are more satisfied with their jobs and are more committed to their organisation. This translates to dramatic increases in staff retention for both mentors and mentees. A win-win for your homecare agency at a time when staff retention is a major challenge.

To see for yourself how On.Board can help you incorporate mentorship into your carer training, click here for a free demo.