November 25, 2015

What a difference a day makes

This was certainly the case when I had the pleasure to support the first round of support worker recruitment recently…and what a fantastic experience this was.

As many of you will have heard, we were awarded a contract for Liverpool North and South day support services which sits under our Home and Community directorate and has been aptly named our Making Days Service. As a result, we are recruiting a brand new team consisting of 2 managers, 5 team leaders and over 60 Support Workers. With the help of local newspaper features and social media, we have had a great response.

Head of Service Pam Booth tells me how this wouldn’t have been the case without the much appreciated help and support from fellow colleagues: Emma McGregor, Tessa Dunbavin, Jordan Smith, Karol Zwolinski, Bob Bell, Rita Lalley, Chris Barker and the newly appointed Julie Humphreys.

As we all know, we continuously try to embed the message of how “it’s not just about what we do, it’s how we do it”. Our vision and values are an important element of this, they help make up our culture as does our individual personalities, experiences and the way we all work together.

At present, we are working hard to adapt and improve our recruitment processes to ensure that there is equal focus on a person’s attitude as well as the key competencies we are looking for.

These interviews incorporated this approach and we attracted some great candidates who were bursting with passion to be part of our new service. After an introduction to PSS and our new service, they took part in group exercises / discussions (around quality, values and activities provided to meet needs of the people we support) and concluded with a 1:1 panel interview.

Joining Pam on the recruitment panel was our two new Making Days managers who experienced the interview process for themselves not long before. Our new south services manager Julie Humphreys, who is joining us with extensive work experience and a commitment to our values and person centred practices. Working alongside Julie will be our very own Tessa Dunbavin managing our North services. Tessa currently works within our Shared Lives Service but is excited to be part of something new and to help create innovative and positive experiences for people we will support.

We also had some great support and feedback from David Pealing who uses the Alderwood day centre along with David’s Dad Ray and fellow parents Eddie Crowe and Sandra Steen.

Pam explained how the project is extremely committed to involving families and individuals who use the services in everything they do to be able to help us shape the service moving forward.

David spoke enthusiastically about why the centre was important to him and how he enjoyed the many activities such as drama groups (delivered by professional actress Lindsey), swimming, gardening, bowling, cooking and of course football. Being an avid Liverpool Football Club Fan (I reluctantly promised to mention this being the Evertonian that I am), David explained how he would love to meet their new manager Jurgen Klopp. However, what David enjoyed most was being able to spend time with his many friends at the service including Nicki, Keith, Marlene, George and many more.

Ray and Eddie mentioned how many of the individuals attending the service had been doing so since they were young so they had grown up together in a very supportive community environment. This was evident when hearing about the level of active interest and involvement they all have. It was personally a pleasure to spend time with the people at the heart of our services.

The families noted the skills and experience they could see coming through as part of the discussions but more importantly the attitudes. Ray was particularly impressed with how people spoke about working with people with disabilities. One candidate in particular expressed her joy about having the opportunity to occasionally support two vulnerable adults as part of her customer service role and why she was pursuing a different career direction in care. This lady had no formal care experience or qualifications yet displayed all of the valuable attributes we would look for in a PSS support worker.

David told me how he had really enjoyed being part of the recruitment day. When I asked what he enjoyed most, he replied meeting the new people, how friendly and caring they were and that he liked how well everyone got on together. David also gave us great feedback about the communication skills he had observed – how well people spoke, wrote and made eye contact with him. He was already spotting some great potential in terms of future value awards winners.

It’s not just about the effort that our panel and staff put into the day, we also appreciate the time and effort all of our applicants take in applying for our vacancies so it is essential that they have a good recruitment experience (whether the role is for them or not).

We stressed the importance of people trying to relax and be themselves to allow everyone to get the most from the experience. Being able to facilitate and observe a lot of the day, it was great to see how supportive the candidates were of each other. I heard echoing comments of how people really got the impression of PSS being one big family and how for some, this had been the best interview experience that they had been part of.

Pam explained the aim was to continue to successfully recruit and train their new team to be able to start delivering the service from December this year. Together, they will be focusing on getting to know everyone individually, understand what already works well and what we can we do to make the experiences the best they can be for the people we support.

When I asked David what he wanted from his support worker, I think he summed it perfectly “someone who will learn about me”. I don’t think I could have said it any better.

By investing our time and effort into these processes, we ultimately hope to find the right PSS People with person centred approaches to help us build upon what are already fantastic services.

Jayne Gibson (People and Culture HR Business Partner)