Walfinch, the growing home care franchise, is rolling out a new app that means carers can recruit friends and family faster – and get rewarded for it.

“Recruitment through referrals from existing carers is likely to attract higher quality staff,” says Amrit Dhaliwal, Chief Executive of Walfinch, which has 25 offices across the country. “Existing carers understand what the work really involves and are unlikely to put their own reputation on the line by suggesting someone unsuitable.”

What’s more, people recruited through personal connections stay with the business for 15% to 20% longer, according to Neil Eastwood, author of Saving Social Care and designer of the app, called Care Friends.

“We are offering the Care Friends app to all our franchisees for use by their staff, to boost recruitment and retention for care staff,” says Amrit. “We about to go live in our Oxford branch and are encouraging other franchisees to adopt it too.”

Referrals in three screen taps

The app, launched in partnership with adult social care workforce development body Skills For Care, means carers can refer potential candidates direct from their mobile phone in just three taps. The person making the referral earns rewards for each step of the process, not just for successful hires.

It also helps carers stay motivated and engaged, because they get extra bonus points for good performance, and they can easily track how many points they have earned and choose when to cash them in. The app offers a leader board to make referring fun and competitive among the team.

Amrit says: “The app has been shown to deliver better results than ads on recruitment sites and is faster than traditional referral schemes, so we know it is likely to benefit our network of franchisees and their care teams.”

Carer recruitment and retention is a problem across the care sector – but Amrit see this as fixable.

He sees retention as the basis for the whole sector to reduce the turnover rate for adult social carers, which is around 30%. “If we can reduce that to 15% we can impact the change in care capacity issues,” he said in an interview about retention by Matthew Kiernan at the Homecare Association’s Health Plus Care event in London.

For the satisfaction of running a business delivering high-quality local care services, with the support of an experienced franchisor, find out about becoming a Walfinch home care franchisee. The minimum investment for a Walfinch franchise is £27,000 + VAT, plus working capital of £60,000. We can introduce you to franchise funding specialists.

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