Are you looking for new ways to gain control of your processes, reduce mistakes and make service delivery more efficient? You wouldn’t be alone if you said yes. 44% of CEOs who took part in our Care Trends Report 2024 told us they currently have insufficient modern technology to support the running of their care organisation.
It takes time to create processes that you feel are the best for your clients and your organisation. And with all the complexities that come with social care, you want to know that once you have defined your processes, that your teams are following the right steps and actioning processes accurately so your service can run smoothly. Especially when onboarding employees who are new to your organisation.
This is where workflows could offer some of the support you’re looking for.
So, let’s explore exactly what a workflow is and why it can be an asset to your social care organisation.
What is a workflow?
A workflow, quite simply, refers to the series of steps you need to take to get a task done. Workflows can be used to help guide your staff through actions, helping them understand exactly what needs to be done and in what order to get that process completed.
Why building workflows can help direct staff in social care
1. Standardisation and Consistency
As you already know, delivering care often involves lots of people and procedures; from your care workers and coordinators to your managers and admin teams liaising with external services. And we all have our own ways of doing things. But sometimes when people follow their own processes, steps can be misunderstood leading to mistakes being made. And it can leave you struggling to maintain consistent standards, especially if you have teams across multiple locations.
Workflows help by removing this risk of variation. By guiding your staff through the same pathways towards the final goal, workflows help to ensure you are delivering consistent outcomes, regardless of who is driving it.
For example, when a referral becomes a new client, a workflow can step in to tell your teams the exact steps they now need to take to complete that users onboarding. So instead of fixing any missed details down the line, you get quicker, standardised service delivery first time.
2. Enhanced Efficiency
Social care can be complex, and it takes careful coordination to get a task from A to Z. And it’s no secret that this complexity can bring jumbled or time-consuming processes. Something you don’t want in such a bustling service.
Workflows can help increase the accuracy and efficiency of your organisational processes because the steps required to gather information or complete tasks have already been outlined for your teams to follow.
A workflow, for example, could assign a due date for a person’s care after automatically linking their care plan to the original assessment. This helps prevent vital information being forgotten or lost amongst all the admin that often comes with onboarding a new client. And it means that instead of miscommunication between teams, each person involved in the care process instantly knows exactly what they need to do and when it needs to happen, ensuring a smoother delivery of your service.
3. Reduced Errors
Let’s dive deeper into something we briefly mentioned already. Without a standardised pathway, there can be a higher risk of error because your teams can accidentally miss important steps of the process. And any mistakes that occur then takes time and effort to correct, something that could have been avoided had a proper workflow been followed.
So, for instance, when a client starts receiving care from you, your teams need to make sure their needs are regularly reviewed so their care plan can adjust accordingly. But changes could get missed if your busy teams have their own ways of manually monitoring each of your service users plans or referencing reports. Instead, workflows can automatically schedule when that plan needs reviewing, assigning it to the correct team to be updated on the set due date.
4. Compliance and Auditability
When you haven’t got workflows for your important processes, it can be difficult to track the progress of a task, who was responsible for it or if it was completed on time. And with all the regulations that you need to comply with, you need to be able to prove exactly how your service is safe, effective, caring and well-led.
With workflows, you can ensure that your teams are consistently adhering to the requirements needed to provide high quality care to your clients.
For example, your teams may need to record an incident of distressed behaviour. A workflow could then send a message or email to the team leader letting them know of the event, so they can then take the next appropriate steps. And with the clear step by step guide you get from workflows, you can accurately document how you are staying compliant when an inspection comes around.
And we understand that your care organisation will most likely have its own unique requirements and processes. That’s why we built Care Cloud with workflows that you can customise so you can guide your staff on the path you want them to go down, specifically catering to your process needs.
Find out more about our complete care business management solution, Care Cloud, today!