The Top 5 Tips For Living With Care Workers – Tip #4 Good Relationships

Tip #4 – Building good working relationships

If, like me, you need a lot of support from your PAs, and even if you don’t, they will be a big part of your life and your relationships with them will have an equally big impact on it. Therefore, it is imperative you build a good rapport with them.  

Understanding the best way for this rapport to work is key to running a successful care package. I would sum up the perfect relationship with a PA as being:

Friendship coupled with understanding and sustained professionalism.

It would be extremely difficult to live with PAs day in, day out, if you weren’t, to an extent, friends with them, neither of you would feel comfortable. This is why interviews and trial periods are so important because they give you a chance to determine whether you will be able to get on with prospective employees.

One of the good things about having to live with PAs is that your interpersonal skills will, almost undoubtedly, go through the roof because you’ll have to deal with people whom you wouldn’t normally associate with. I’ve learnt to get on with pretty much anyone, no matter how different we are. You may not be pleased to hear that this will take considerable effort on your part. I would strongly advise taking the time to ask new recruits questions about their life, indulge in small talk so you both become more comfortable with each other.

At all times however, it is vital you maintain a professional barrier; you don’t want employees to think their shifts are social visits. This doesn’t mean you can’t both enjoy them as if they were, but you don’t want them to come in, make themselves comfortable and act like they own the place. The best way to do this is to be blatant about mixing orders into normal conversation. So, say for example you’re chatting away to an employee about something, but you want them to get you a coffee. All you have to do is to wait until they’ve finished a sentence and remark in a strong, purposeful tone “can you get me a coffee please?” then once they respond, immediately carry on the old conversation with something like “sorry, you were saying?”

Providing this is done tactfully people actually like it because by restarting the conversation you show your interest in it.  In fact, this is the second pillar of the relationship, understanding. Both you and the employee need to know what each other want out of the arrangement. One of the big hitters on an employee’s wants list, whether they admit it or not, is appreciation. If you take the time to be polite and really convey your appreciation when your PAs do things like cover an extra shift or do a bit of tidying it will go a long way to improving your relationship.

In terms of what understanding your PAs should show, there are a couple of different things. Firstly, they should recognise your predicament. If you are using Direct Payments you have a responsibility as an employer to make sure your care package is run fairly and efficiently, just like any other business. Your employees should however recognise that whilst you will do your best, you are also trying to live your life and so sometimes things slip through the net. Provided you get the important stuff, like paying people, done on time there shouldn’t really be a problem. The major issue I’ve encountered has been with me incorrectly calculating timesheets, and PAs do, understandably, get a bit irritated if you consistently pay them the wrong amount.

Secondly, your employees should understand their place in your life and do their best to fulfil their role. This involves them understanding that whilst you are more than happy to be friends with them, there are occasions when they need to ‘fade into the background’. The best way to ensure this happens is to make it clear from the very beginning, taking care to explain why it is important.

Moving on, professionalism should come as a result of friendship and understanding because you will have a mutual empathy with each other. It is your job to take into consideration each employees circumstances and therefore what is fair to ask of them. For example, if one of your employees works 40 hours a week for you, it would be unreasonable to ask them to do cover an extra 8 hours before consulting your other employee who does a 16 hour week. Obviously, this would depend on each person’s situation because the PA who does 16 hours may be a full time mum and unable to do any extra, but you see the principle.    

From your PAs perspective, maintaining professionalism essentially means remembering what they are there for, in other words, working based on their understanding. They should have a constant respect for your dignity and authority as their employer and pay particular attention to make sure they don’t impede your life by having an overbearing presence.

Tomorrow I’ll conclude this series with a piece of which I really did learn from the ’school of hard knocks’!

George

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