The Richmond Fellowship Scotland

With about 3,700 employees spread across Scotland delivering support services to people with a range of needs, including the elderly and those with learning disabilities and mental health problems, leaders at The Richmond Fellowship Scotland (TRFS) have learned that listening to employee voice can pay huge dividends.

TRFS works Scotland-wide and its staff support service users in the community, in their homes or in the organisation’s care home facilities. While such roles come with an immense sense of purpose it can be a difficult job.

“It’s not always an easy day,” says executive director Teresa Dellett. “You can be working with challenging individuals, whether that’s an elderly person with dementia or a young person with autism and challenging behavior, it can be tough, but nevertheless rewarding when you make a difference to someone’s life.”

Post-pandemic, turnover across the sector had risen to 32% (TRFS has an internal KPI of 18%), putting “a big strain on staff and managers”. It was clear something needed to be done to radically rethink recruitment and retention.

So, TRFS set up a working group, mainly made up of operational staff, and sent out a staff survey asking for ideas for improving retention. This led to an action plan for change, tackling a wide range of recruitment and retention activity, everything from advertising strategy to interview and onboarding processes.

“We used champions from the working group to spread the word,” Dellett explains. “As a large organisation with most of our staff out working with people and not using computers, it can be hard to reach people so we need to be creative in ways to get feedback.”

Employee voice is “absolutely imperative” when it comes to any kind of change, with frontline staff often providing the best ideas. TRFS is not unionised but runs an employee forum that meets quarterly, with regional as well as national meetings.

“Part of our mission is about making improvements,” Dellett explains. “We want to hear things that are going to help us be a better provider and a better employer.” Another suggestion that came out of the forums was to introduce a buddy system for new starters, tackling early exits.

Forums are supported by engagement and staff surveys (although Dellett admits these can be “hit or miss” with frontline staff), regular team meetings and executive leadership spending lots of time on the ground. Investing in manager training also helps them act as a support during times of change, and employee forum reps receive training to help them in their role.

Ultimately, taking a “you said, we did” approach helps build trust and confidence, Dellett believes. “It’s really important to be honest, that we go back to our teams and get input. That’s what people will buy into.”