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Briefing: Workforce planning in a place

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The adult social care workforce in a place is large, diverse and dispersed across many roles, services and organisations. Only seven per cent is directly employed in a council. Here you will find learning to help you to feel more confident and equipped to develop your future workforce for your place.

Introduction

As the impetus for major positive change in social care grows, so too does the recognition that it cannot be achieved without enabling and equipping the social care workforce to work differently. We need to embed new ways of working that ensure the people who access support can take more control of their lives and live the lives that they want in their own homes and communities. 

The adult social care workforce is a key enabler to making that a reality for people. However, the workforce needs to have the conditions to thrive at work, taking care of themselves, as well as promoting the independence and wellbeing of the people they support. 

Councils have an important role to play in bringing people together to plan for and develop a workforce that can thrive and work differently to achieve these outcomes for residents. 
 

A new approach to workforce planning

The adult social care workforce in a place is large, diverse and dispersed across many roles, services and organisations. Only seven per cent of the social care workforce is directly employed in a council, 79 per cent are employed by independent providers, seven per cent are employed within the NHS and around eight per cent are employed by direct payment recipients.  

There is a growing recognition across councils that to be effective in planning for and developing our adult social care workforce for the future, we need to include the whole workforce in a place. This is a relatively new way of thinking about workforce planning in adult social care and there can be a lack of understanding, experience and confidence in how to do that. 

We often hear that people feel overwhelmed by the scale and complexity of the task. The skills and competencies needed to plan for a network of inter-dependent organisations within a place are different to those needed for a traditional single organisational approach. Creating spaces for people to come together to discuss what workforce change is needed and how to achieve it can feel difficult.  

We support councils to lead and facilitate the development of workforce planning in a place. In the workforce planning hub we will share the learning – as well as learning from outside of the sector – to help you to feel more confident and equipped to develop your future workforce for your place. 

In this briefing you will find: 

  • a strategic workforce planning framework to support those who do not yet have a workforce plan for a place, or those who wish to revisit their workforce plan
  • a section on understanding the workforce implications of key strategies to ensure greater alignment
  • a section on understanding workforce data and intelligence in adult social care to inform workforce strategies.

Further resources and tools will be added to the Workforce planning hub over the coming months. If you wish to support us in the co-development of these resources or suggest what other resources are needed, please contact us at [email protected]
 

Strategic workforce planning framework

Workforce planning in a place is a relatively new approach for many councils. As such, we are still learning what good looks like. Through the support we provide to councils we see many different approaches and examples of workforce plans. One size does not fit all.

The strategic workforce planning framework draws on the best of what we see as well as learning from outside of adult social care. It is not intended to be prescriptive, but rather to help you to think about what you will want to include within your workforce plan. 

We encourage you to be selective in what you include, the reality is that if it is too long or too detailed, people will not read it or use it to drive change. Your plan should contain enough detail to enable people to understand where you are trying to get to and why, where you are now, and the priorities that will enable you to achieve the changes you are aspiring to. You may want to supplement it with a more detailed implementation plan.  

We have a range of other tools on our portal that will help you navigate the steps to develop your plan. There are links to these tools in the framework.
 

Strategic framework for XXX place

What to include in your plan and why:

Understanding the workforce implications of key strategies

Strategic workforce planning enables us to step back and look forward to understand the workforce we will need in the future and how to develop it. There are often lots of different strategies that exist within a place that have implications for our workforce. 

We need to take the time to understand what they are and describe them for our workforce in order for people working in adult social care to see the direction of travel, what it means for them and what change they need to affect. 

If we do not align our workforce plan to these other strategies it creates a risk that we focus on the wrong things which don’t have the impact we need to deliver our strategies.

What strategies should we consider?

This will vary from place to place depending on what has been developed. The list below sets out a range of relevant strategies that could exist where you are and that you would seek to consider in the development of your adult social care workforce plan:

  • Adults social care strategy – sets out the future aspirations and challenges for adult social care and long-term plans for how people will be supported.
  • Commissioning strategy – sets out the commitments made by the council and its partners to supporting people to live and age well. Commissioning strategies are usually informed by people who live in the area and providers who are commissioned by the council to provide care and support.
  • Market position statements – market position statements set out the supply and demand of services for particular cohorts of people. They help to signal business development and transformation opportunities. They are regularly refreshed so are a good source of information. 
  • Transformation plans – councils often have transformation programmes for adult social care that affect workforce change. They set out changes to delivery models, processes and ways of working.
  • Place based strategy or community strategy – helps you to understand the demographics, strengths, challenges, aspirations and priorities for the local population.
  • Council corporate people strategy – this is the long-term plan for people employed by the council and helps you to understand the workforce profile and priorities for the directly employed workforce. While it’s important to ensure synergy for the adult social care workforce employed within the council, it’s also important to remember that your adult social care workforce strategy is for the whole workforce – employed independently as well as is the council – and to create space to develop a new strategy that involves and includes providers.
  • Integrated Care Partnership strategy and workforce plan – sets out the place-based ambitions for improving people’s health and the implications for the health and social care workforce.
  • Care Quality Commission (CQC) reports relating to local provider organisations – in adult social care, people and performance or quality usually go hand in hand. Positive CQC reports can help to identify providers with great employment practices that it can be helpful to learn from.
     

Who should be involved?

You will want to understand the implications of your key strategies from the perspective of different people working in different roles and organisations across social care. From care staff to commissioners, assessment staff, social workers, occupational therapists, people working at your front door, people working in hospitals, managers, leaders. 

These people could be employed within the council, in private, independent or voluntary sector provider organisations, in the NHS or directly employed by people accessing care. To really understand what change means for your workforce, think about who can understand the impact of these strategies from this wide range of perspectives. 

What are we trying to understand and describe?

It is very likely that achieving what is set out in your key strategies will require change for your workforce. This could mean lots of things, you may need:

  • your workforce to develop new skills  
  • people to work differently
  • new roles to be developed
  • changes to the culture that drives certain behaviours
  • a workforce that is more representative of the people being supported
  • people to build new relationships with people working in other services or organisations
  • different quantities of existing roles.

If you don’t collectively understand this, how can you plan for it? And if you can’t describe it, how will people to be able to get involved and contribute to delivering the changes that are needed?

A clear statement of intent that sets out what you are working towards – you might call this your workforce vision, your statement of intent or your future workforce – gives you a clear frame of reference that you can keep checking back against as you develop your plan.  

For each priority or action, you can consider, how is this helping to achieve our workforce vision?"
 

How should we develop our workforce vision?

You mind find it helpful to organise a workshop to bring people together to take time and space to think through what the workforce implications of your workforce strategies are. The strength of doing this together is that people bounce off each other’s ideas and perspectives, generating a potentially richer and more aspirational picture.

Through our direct support to councils, we often find this type of workshop to be a powerful way of shifting thinking. People will often begin their workforce planning journey with a clear view about which parts of the workforce it should apply to, or what sort of activity it should focus on. With time and space to consider the workforce implications of the key strategies, they will often re-frame this in recognition of the scale of change needed. 

This matters because they have an important role to play in developing and implementing the strategy. If they have been part of the early thinking and decision making, they are more likely to feel invested in ensuring the strategy is successful.

Understanding workforce data and intelligence

Getting started


It’s important to look at the available workforce data to be able to understand your local adult social care workforce. This will help to inform your priorities for improvement. 

Collaborating with colleagues and partners to make sense of the workforce data and intelligence helps to facilitate a collective agreement on the priorities for improvement.

This is a practical guide to help you to understand what data is available, how to access it, how to make sense of it and what other sources of information will help you to develop a good understanding of your adult social care workforce at a place level as part of your workforce planning approach.
 

Workforce data types and sources

Place-based workforce data available to all councils 

Skills for Care publish a range of workforce data on their Workforce Intelligence Hub 'My local area.' 

You can filter this in several ways to meet your data needs. For example you can search for data by place, by sector or by type of role. You can also see how your place compares to others in your region or nationally. The data is refreshed and updated annually. You can supplement the data with local data and intelligence when available. 

As a guide, you may want to collate from the Skills for Care Workforce Intelligence Hub the following core workforce data set to give you an overview of the local adult social care workforce. 

  • Total FTE working in adult social care 
  • FTE (headcount) and % by sector and type of provision 
  • Turnover rate – number of FTE and % 
  • Vacancy rate – total number of vacancies and % 
  • Total number of leavers per annum 
  • Number of posts to be recruited to per annum
  • Proportion of people employed from within the sector (an indicator of churn) 
  • Average cost of recruitment per year calculated by multiplying the number of posts to be recruited to by £3642 (Skills for Care worked with providers to estimate the average cost of replacing an employee) 
  • Proportion of staff who are full time/part time 
  • Demographic profiling of your workforce
  • Comparative data within your region and neighbouring local authorities 
  • National comparator data

Other data sources

There may be additional workforce data, intelligence, and insight that you can draw on locally. Availability varies from place to place so these are suggestions to help you to explore what is available in your place:

  • Talk to commissioners who may have data about people employed by independent providers. They may also have useful data secured through engagement or consultation with provider organisations or service users.
  • It’s important to understand about the experiences of the adult social care workforce in your place. This will of course vary across organisations. See what has been identified through staff surveys, staff forums, drop in sessions, team meetings etc. Consider organising listening events or go and talk to staff in their place of work.  
  • Human resources and organisational development (HROD) teams usually hold detailed information about the workforce employed within the council – this could be workforce data and analysis and/or results from staff surveys.

Who needs to help us make sense of the data?

In making sense of a complex set of information to inform the development of the strategy for your future workforce it is helpful to draw on a range of perspectives. This will help to understand the nuances across different services and organisations.  

Facilitated workshops, that bring people together to review and make sense of the available data and to contribute their own knowledge, understanding and perspectives can be helpful. 

Participants could include:

  • front line staff
  • senior managers
  • operational managers
  • commissioners
  • transformation colleagues
  • HR and OD leads
  • provider organisations
  • system partners 
     

What are you trying to understand?
 

There are many things you may want to understand about your workforce so that you can develop a place-based collaborative workforce strategy for adult social care. It will be important for you to be clear about the questions you are seeking to answer.  

This may include:

  • how many people are employed in adult social care in my place
  • what can we learn from looking at data about workforce supply, recruitment, vacancies and retention
  • what level of supply and recruitment do we need to plan for 
  • to what extent do we need to grow our workforce over the coming years
  • how will the workforce need to change to reflect the changing population
  • what is going well that we can build on
  • what are our biggest challenges
  • what are the experiences of our workforce currently, what should we build on, what should we change
  • what is going to help us to attract and retain our workforce
  • to what extent do we have the right people in the right types of roles doing the things that will make the biggest difference  
  • should we be considering different types of roles, different ways of doing things, strengthening relationships?

When you have a collective understanding of the workforce, the challenges and opportunities and the implications for the workforce, you can start to consider what different ways of working will enable you to build the workforce you need for the future.