The Evidence: Workforce Stability Drives Care Quality
When colleagues feel valued and supported, they stay longer. This creates continuity – the same familiar faces building trusting relationships with the people they support. That consistency is what enables clients to feel confident, listened to, and well-cared for.
Workforce Progress (2022-2025): Colleagues
- Feel their work is valued: 92% (up from 80%)
- Would recommend as a place to work: 91% (up from 75.5%)
- Colleagues who feel listened to: 87.3% (up from 68.5%)
Client Outcomes (2025):
- 95% have confidence in their care team
- 93.8% rated their care as Good or Outstanding
- 92% feel treated with dignity and respect
How We Listen to Colleagues
VOICE: Employee-Owner Governance
Our VOICE employee-owner representatives meet twice a year at Board level, with the VOICE Chair sitting on the Board. This gives frontline colleagues direct influence over organisational decisions and ensures employee ownership is structural, not symbolic.
Coffee & Cake: Bringing People Together
Twice a year, we host Coffee & Cake sessions as celebrations where colleagues, Voice Representatives, and Senior Leaders come together. These sessions create opportunities for office teams and frontline colleagues to meet, connect, and strengthen relationships across the organisation.
Colleague Surveys: Making Decisions Together
When we need to make decisions that affect colleagues, we ask. This year, colleague survey feedback led to reinstating the Health Assured Employee Assistance Programme, strengthening mental health support across the organisation.
“Be Caring is a great organisation that respects and offers opportunities for everyone within it. They truly listen to their staff when matters arise.”
Georgina, Manchester Care Worker
Block Pay and Recognition
Our block pay model is how we create workforce stability and care continuity. By removing uncertainty around paid time and supporting flexible working, block pay:
- Provides better, more stable pay for colleagues
- Supports colleague retention
- Creates continuity of care – the same colleagues supporting the same people
- Enables stronger relationships between colleagues and clients
- Delivers better care for the people we support
This year we increased our annual colleague bonus to £400 per colleague – a £100 increase on last year.
What This Means for People Receiving Care
When colleagues have stability, they build the trust and familiarity that makes good care possible. Clients report confidence in their care team, feeling treated with dignity and respect, being listened to, and that their care package is right for them. This isn’t coincidence – it’s the direct result of having the same familiar faces, who know them well, supporting them consistently over time.
Here is what some of the people we support had to say:
“I feel listened to when my carers sit and talk to me. I feel like I can access help from my carers easily”
David, Leeds
“I was worried at first but from day one all my worries were gone. It doesn’t feel like they are caring for me, they are like friends popping in to check I am ok”
Barry, North Tyneside
“I enjoy having someone to come and get me out of bed as I would waste my days lay around. So it’s nice having some company to get me up and ready each day”
Margaret, Manchester
Values in Practice
Across Be Caring, colleagues continue to demonstrate how values translate into action during the festive season:
- The Be Kind Christmas Tree: Teams from Newcastle, North Tyneside, and LIFE supported people we care for who have limited friends or family through anonymous gift giving.
- Evry Gift Appeal: Colleagues ensured young carers across the region had gifts to open on Christmas morning.
- Care workers going above and beyond: attending choir services with clients, exploring Christmas lights together, helping people decorate their homes.
These aren’t “extras” – they’re what becomes possible when colleagues have the stability and time to focus on what matters.
Looking Ahead
In a sector facing significant workforce challenges, the connection between how we treat colleagues and the quality of care delivered has never been more important.
We welcome conversation with commissioners, partners, and sector colleagues interested in how employee ownership, block pay, and genuine colleague voice drive workforce stability, care continuity, and measurable outcomes for people receiving support.