Brighterkind has been shortlisted for a national “Excellence in Learning & Development Award” for its programme to build a team culture of customer service as well as caring amongst its 4,000 colleagues in 70 homes throughout the UK. We are the only care sector organisation to make the shortlist for the 2018 award, in a competitive scheme run by Personnel Today.
Antony Smith, Head of Culture and Training said: “The brighterkind proposition is predicated on a high standard of care and of service providing a good resident experience, which underpins a brand promise we express in the line Love Every Day. There has long been a caring ethos amongst teams in care homes. Alongside that we needed to embed a customer service culture, that is more usually associated with hotels and hospitality than the care sector, with people pulling together as a team in every home and in our offices.
“To reach the people working in the care homes on a regular basis and to keep the training evolving and relevant to each home, we came up with the concept of having volunteers to be cultural champions in each home, which we call Pacesetters. The volunteers may be managers, nurses, care assistants or work in the kitchen or laundry. What matters is their commitment and energy. They are trained, equipped and supported to deliver short activity-based training modules to colleagues in their home. This solution means that the programme is driven by members of the team in the home for their colleagues.
“We talked to colleagues in our homes to arrive at a set of values that are central to everything we do, day to day. They are: keep it simple; sort it; do it from the heart; choose to be happy, make every moment matter. Colleagues live these values, because they are theirs, not handed down to them.”
“We develop a leadership training programme, to equip managers to promote an inclusive approach in which people are encouraged to speak openly and to have ideas; are encouraged to use their initiative and take responsibility for what they do; are listened to and feel they are supported. “
The effectiveness of brighterkind’s programme to embed a customer service culture can be seen in performance measures. More than three quarters (77%) of all of its homes are rates as good, outstanding or an equivalent rating under the different regulatory systems, up from 50% when the business started in 2014. In research across all of its homes, 98% of customers said they were satisfied with the service provided by the care team.
brighterkind has also introduced net promoter scores to measure advocacy. The net promoter score is a rigorous measure based on customer responses to the question: “How likely would you be to recommend the organisation or service?” The net promoter score is calculated by taking the number of respondents who would very strongly recommend (rating the homes as 9 or 10 out of 10) and subtracting those who scored the organisation 0-6. The net promoter score across all Brighterkind homes is 50. To put this into context, a UK consumer benchmark study last year gave an average NPS for hotels of 1; for supermarkets, it was 20. Some sectors and many individual businesses have a minus NPS
The winner of the award will be announced in November. A full list of shortlisted organisations can be found on the Personnel Today website.
To see brighterkind's current vacancies, please visit https://careers.fshcgroup.com/jobs/
