Supervisions – Best Practice
Yes it’s that time again, supervisions are due! Let’s rally the troops to discuss how they are getting on at work. How effective are your supervisions? Are they sometimes an offloading platform or does it often end up being about pay rises or unrealistic expectations?
Imagine the amount of time wasted during supervisions discussing general things that could be covered in other ways. You have just had a supervision with a staff member and now have to write it up. How much of the conversation was really relevant, did it veer off at times into a finger pointing exercise or playing the blame game?
Using innovative new ways to conduct supervisions can actually result in much more focused feedback for everyone involved. The thing is, people need to be able to think about the supervision points in a relaxed way, for instance, when they are at home with a cup of tea instead of over a desk facing their manager. Then they can really think about those supervision questions we are all so familiar with. This way staff and managers complete the main part of the form in their own time, as they have access to the form once the supervision is showing as due.
Once the staff have seen what the manager would like to discuss they can complete their section of the supervision relating to what they want to discuss, goals they want to reach, training they feel would be helpful to them etc. This also improves the quality of information being provided.
Once the information has been recorded by the supervisee the manager receives an alert that x has completed their supervision template which is now ready for you to review and the face to face or remote supervision can now take place.
As opposed to talking together and then writing up the whole supervision at the end, or worse still trying to write up a supervision record whilst talking, you can now both simply discuss the questions and answers that have already been populated on the supervision form. This reduces the supervision time by more than half.
The only thing the manager will need to update will be what actions you both agreed to implement as a result of the meeting. HR tools that enable this process to happen like the one used by our clients (see https://youtu.be/wYPnBnuBgMM) make your supervision process quicker, easier and more transparent. Also they enable your supervisions to be more structured and ultimately result in more time to focus on caring for service users!
To make it even easier for you, ensure that any system you use also sends you automated reminders when supervisions and appraisals are due, assisting you to remain compliant in this critical area. Remember to include regular agency workers in your supervision and appraisal process, as sometimes they can be overlooked, which will go against you in any CQC inspection.
I have included a FREE Management of Supervisions course to assist you further. To access this course simply click the link below and log in to the Care Consort demo platform then scroll down to the Training Course section and choose the Management of Supervisions course.
I hope this FREE course is helpful and the video below will show you how Care Consort has transformed the supervision process for many care organisations.
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