It seems like we’re all focusing on recruitment at the moment. Treating it as the magic bullet to our workforce and service delivery challenges.
But I would argue that for truly effective recruitment in the health and social care sector – and great client outcomes – we need to go back a step.
We first need to intimately understand the needs of the individuals we serve.
We need to dig deeper and go beyond simply having our individuals’ needs at the heart of our organisation’s vision and mission.
Thoroughly understanding the needs and goals of the individuals you serve is where effective workforce and service delivery models start.
It’s figuring out your ‘what’ before your ‘who’:
- What are your client’s needs?
- What is it they truly want to achieve when they seek out your organisation’s care and support?
- What does your organisation need to do to actively and fully respond to these needs?
Only then, once you are crystal clear on what your clients need to thrive, can you identify your ‘who’:
- Who are the people with the required skills and capabilities that can help your clients to achieve their goals and address their needs?
First what (your client), then who (your people).
So, where have we been going wrong?
In a nutshell? We have been doing the reverse.
Even though we know the client comes first, most health and social care organisations start with their ‘who’:
- They assemble a team of rock stars to deliver care and support to their clients (the ‘who’).
- Then, they design their service delivery model based on what their team is qualified and skilled to provide for the client (‘the what’).
Don’t worry, I did this too. It’s a hard thought process to change.
Especially when you’re a big fan of Jim Collins, the author of ‘Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t’.
I’ve been soaking up his genius advice for the last six years including the following gem from his trailblazing book above which states,
“First who … Then what”.
He explains that before you rev up that business transformation engine, you need to first assemble the right people on your bus.
That’s the ‘who’ part.
Once you’ve got your dream team, then you collectively decide what you’re going do and where you’re going steer that bus.
That’s the ‘what’ part.
It makes sense on paper, and potentially for start-up businesses, but in my humble opinion this strategy is just not cutting the mustard for health and social care organisations.
So sadly, I need to break up with your advice, Jim.
Why is putting client needs first so important?
While we health and social care professionals are highly skilled with mountains of passion to create a better and more equitable world, we need to go back to what our clients actually need if we are to have any success with this goal.
If there is a disconnect between what the individuals you serve actually need and how your service delivery models and workforces are set up, then you’ve set yourself an impossible task.
If you don’t fully understand and use client needs to drive your service delivery and workforce planning, the following starts to happen:
- you don’t achieve the level of impact your clients are looking for
- you waste your time and resources, and your client’s time and resources
- you move further away from achieving your organisation’s vision and mission
- you become disillusioned that you can’t affect the change you so dearly want to make as a health and social care professional.
And the final outcome? The community you serve won’t get the most benefit from your efforts.
So you need to take the time to understand what your clients need to thrive.
Here are seven steps you can follow to figure this out.
Seven steps to figuring out your client needs
Note: The challenge is to answer the next seven questions without naming diagnoses, professions, or roles.
It is often useful to do a quick audit of your routinely collected data to decipher:
1. What issues do your clients face?
It is often useful to do a quick audit of your routinely collected data to decipher:
- What is the range of reasons clients come to your organisation? (try to avoid using diagnoses here – remember, health and social care professionals often provide care and support to address the consequences of an impairment rather than trying to fix the impairment itself)
- If this is too difficult, you could instead consider the question, why do they seek out your care and support?
2. To what extent to these issues change over time? How?
- Do you know when and if your clients start to present to your organisation or service with different needs?
- For your current clients, how are their issues changing over the span of their life or over the duration they spend in your care?
- It is useful to consider the extent to which you have systems in place to track client issues over time.
3. What goals are your clients trying to achieve?
- Do you keep a record of the goals your clients are trying to achieve?
- Are you able to quickly, at a glance, know the most common goals your clients present to your organisation with?
4. What are the obstacles your clients face when trying to overcome their issues and achieve their goals?
- Consider all the things that are standing in the way of your clients’ issues being overcome and goals achieved.
5. What are all the things you, your staff and your organisation can do to address these obstacles and enable clients to achieve their goals?
- What are all the activities, therapies, interventions and so on you could undertake to address these obstacles?
- Your response to this question will help you to identify all the elements that comprise an ‘ideal’ service delivery and care model. One that truly reflects your client needs and goals.
6. What is needed to implement your ‘ideal’ model?
- Now that you know what activities are needed to fully meet your client needs and help them to achieve their goals (your ‘ideal’ service delivery and care model), you need to look at how best to implement these.
- This is where you should critically reflect on your current service delivery and care model versus your ‘ideal’ model:
- Is there a gap? If so, what could and should be done to bridge the gap?
- In particular, what gaps exist in your current systems, skills, knowledge and team capabilities? Notice I have not said to think about what gaps exist in team composition. The challenge here is to not jump immediately to filling a gap in your service with a role, rather, take time to consider what is needed to realise your ideal model rather than who. For example, it may be that you could provide some extra training to some staff so they have the skills, knowledge and capability to deliver your ideal model.
7. Finally, now you know what your ideal model looks like, if there are skills missing that you simply cannot source from within your organisation or upskill your team to perform, then recruit.
- The advantage here is that when you recruit, you will know exactly what skills and capabilities you are looking for in your new staff member.
- This will enable you to potentially identify and choose from a range of different professionals or workers who could fill the gap you have. Thus increasing the pool of applicants you could target.
The change you’ll see
Not many organisations do the work above. They don’t dig deep into client needs and use that insight to improve their services and client outcomes.
But the brave ones who do?
They become more responsive to client needs, achieve better outcomes, and in doing so their staff are happier.
So, if you’re ready to intimately understand what your clients need to thrive and – more importantly – if you’re brave enough to reorganise your services and workforce accordingly, then maybe we’re a perfect match!
Need some help doing this work?
If you need help implementing your ‘First what, then who’ strategy, we can help.
At Unplex we work alongside you and your team to turn your complex problems into solutions you can implement. We do this so health and social care organisations can deliver more and better care to the individuals they serve.
We’d love to get to know you – if you haven’t already, jump onto Connect – UNPLEX and join our newsletter. If you’ve already joined, and are looking for more support, send us an email at hello@unplex.com.au and we’ll be in touch!