Measuring wellbeing and resilience to support recruitment and retention

Recent figures from the Department of Education suggest that Social Workers are leaving their jobs in record numbers.

‘High stress, high demand and high burnout’ were reported as being the main causes of the recruitment and retention crisis as social workers struggle to cope with more challenging caseloads following the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

Recent workforce statistics report turnover rates for children and family social care workers in England had increased by 9% since 2021; there are now officially more leavers than starters and one-third of those who left had been in post for less than two years (GovUK, 2023). High workload, stress and poor work-life balance are among the most common reasons for wishing to leave social care work (GovUK, 2022; Ravelier et al., 2022; Unison, 2022). As well as the costs of recruiting and training new staff, high turnover among social workers will compromise the continuity and quality of service provision and increase caseloads for the staff that remain. There is evidence that the situation has deteriorated further and adult social work is experiencing similar challenges.

However, we do know that for the most part, social workers find their work meaningful, feel valued by service users and are proud of their profession (Grant & Kinman, 2014; YouGov, 2020). Some organisations are able to retain workers while others struggle and in some parts of the country there is an over reliance on agency staff which affects continuity of help for people drawing on services.

Social Work is a challenging and emotionally demanding job and to thrive it is essential that social workers are supported by compassionate and emotionally literate leaders in a resilient organisation. A supportive organisation will help create a workplace climate that builds the capacity for resilience, reducing the risk of stress and burnout and promoting optimum social work and social care practice.

A Research in Practice-led consortium has recently been commissioned to help councils improve retention, specifically through producing resources to help employers meet the Standards for Employers of Social Workers in England. This will draw on the work we developed in partnership with Research in Practice - the Social Work Organisational Resilience Diagnostic (SWORD). This is a framework designed to help organisations create the working conditions known to support organisational resilience and wellbeing that, in turn, is likely to improve satisfaction and retention among workers.

Now in its fourth year of implementation, the SWORD takes a developmental approach to improving organisational resilience across child and family and adult social care work. The framework was co-produced with diverse groups of social care practitioners, from trainees to senior leaders, and is based around five key dimensions found to underpin organisational resilience in social work: secure base; sense of appreciation; learning organisation; mission and vision and wellbeing. Also identified in the research process were some critical ‘golden threads’ found to be particularly influential in creating the conditions required for organisational resilience in the sector:

• A strong commitment to maintaining values and building trust.
• Effective management of change and uncertainty.
• Consulting employees in decision-making and change processes.
• Having effective communication structures.
• Managing cultural diversity successfully.
• A commitment to developing emotional literacy.

The resulting SWORD framework identifies the knowledge, skills and attributes that can help those responsible for managing the workforce build an organisational climate that fosters sustainable resilience, with a view to improving wellbeing and professional effectiveness.

The framework includes a diagnostic survey and tool that identifies social care workers’ perceptions of the conditions found to underpin resilience providing leaders with targeted guidance on multi-level interventions with potential to enhance resilience in the five dimensions shown above. The associated workbook offers targeted, evidence-informed tasks and strategies to support organisational improvements and develop conditions to better support social care worker wellbeing.

Many social care organisations across England have participated to date with findings showing that practitioners who rate their organisations more highly across the five dimensions of resilience tend to report less stress and more job satisfaction.

Crucially for retention, they are also more committed to their organisation and are more likely to see a future for themselves there. These findings have already been shared with participating organisations and will help leaders and managers to implement targeted interventions to improve resilience and wellbeing, with likely benefits for recruitment and retention.