The Top 5 tips for living with carers! – Tip #1

Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately, I’ve been tied up with other work and making sure I pay attention to my relatives who’ve been visiting.

Anyway, I’m back now and I’ve got a new series of posts for you!

I wanted to add some content focused on what life is like once you’ve got the care you need…So I came up with this:

The Top 5 tips for living with carers!

Tip #1 – Find the right dynamic between you and your carers.  

Getting a grip on this is the key to working well with your carers, you must understand what each of you want from the relationship and attempt to maximise mutual satisfaction. I know it sounds obvious, it’s just like any other relationship, but, you must actively take note of it because it is really important.

Firstly, let’s consider the things your employees are likely to find essential:

•          Reasonable pay
•          Proper training
•          Clear instructions
•          Honesty
•          A well defined job role
•          Equity with other employees
•          Good organisation
•          Good health and safety

Now let’s look at the things you would expect from them:

•          Punctuality
•          Reliability
•          Honesty
•          An ability to carry out the job effectively
•          That they treat you with respect and dignity

These are all very compatible and oftentimes, if one party expresses a trait the other will be inclined to offer something in return. If both sides have these needs fulfilled then generally the relationship will work well. I’ll give more instruction on how to make these things happen later, now let’s look at some of the things each party would like to get from the relationship.

Generally people go for a caring job because they like helping people and want to experience the good feelings that go with that. Carers often say they:

•          Get a feeling of fulfilment because they are helping someone in such a direct way
•          Like the social interaction
•          Like the variety of tasks
•          Find the hands-on nature of caring jobs more appealing than your usual desk job or call centre work.

Employers/clients/service-users etc like to have employees they:

•          Actually get on with
•          Can have a laugh with
•          Know will go out of their way to help them
•          And perhaps most importantly, know where the boundaries are!

I use the word boundaries in a very loose sense; it can mean lots of different things and apply to lots of different situations, some of which I will explain later.

The point to note here is that they will mean different things to different people and this dictates who is a good match for whom. Therefore, it is important to weigh up whether both you and a prospective employee will get what you want from the relationship before offering them a job.

Well…that’s it for tip #1…  

Auf wiedersehen,

George

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