Sona Webinar Recap | Closing the gap: Strategies for workforce retention in Hospitality
Here are the main takeaways from Sona’s webinar on closing the labour gap in the Hospitality industry.
Building a staff schedule couldn’t be easier.
Reduce payroll errors with real-time T&A.
Fill 50% more shifts with your own employees.
Ensure shifts are covered even if you're understaffed.
Manage absence requests and approvals.
Practical ways to boost team morale with proven examples from across the sector.
Find out what care employees say matters to them most at work.
Search and view employees with customised permission levels.
Key employment information all in one place.
Store visas, professional certifications and more with easy access.
Control personal and operational details of your staff.
Why are people leaving Social Care, and where are they going?
Take ownership of your payroll processes.
We asked 250 Social Care leaders about their attitudes towards digitisation and their plans for the next 12 months...
Share updates with a single click.
Staff can see relevant messages in one place.
Request post-shift feedback from staff.
Recognise staff contributions by sending them praise.
Identify staff at risk of churning.
How care organisations can embrace flexible working and thrive.
Maintain quality of care and reduce costs.
Bring out the best in your teams.
Streamline operations across sites.
Keep your staff and volunteers connected.
Richard, our Head of Product, worked in social care for 10 years before bringing his experience to Sona.
Over 500k shifts are created by our customers each year.
Integrate with Nourish.
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Sona is the 2022 Leaders in Care Awards winner for Innovative Solution of the Year for Care Homes.
Give staff greater visibility of shifts available to work, with a simple "shift claim" process to increase their income.
Improve employee engagement and retention with a seamless employee communication platform.
Happier staff provide greater customer experiences, which in turn drives return rates, revenues and recommendations.
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| 6 min read
Here are the main takeaways from Sona’s webinar on closing the labour gap in the Hospitality industry.
| 2 min read
Sona has been shortlisted for the Innovative Solutions, Care Homes and Best Care Marketing Team categories, at the Leaders in Care Awards 2023. The awards ceremony annually recognises the best providers, leaders, and suppliers in social care.
| 8 min read
Welcome to the first edition of Sona’s Social Care around the world series.
PUBLISHED: September 2023
Why are people leaving Social Care, and where are they going?
This report looks at the trends seen in the last year, the meaningful changes compared to 2022, and highlights how Social Care organisations can improve recruitment and retention, and better target the needs of those who receive care.
PUBLISHED: July 2023
10 practical strategies to boost your sales per labour hour
These practical strategies will help your hospitality organisation gain a competitive edge by boosting sales per labour hour (SPLH). Provide a few details to get instant access!
PUBLISHED: June 2023
Showing appreciation is crucial for staff retention in the care industry.
Our latest report provides 15 practical ways to boost team morale with proven examples from across the sector. Provide a few details to get instant access!
PUBLISHED: June 2023
Sona's KPI Cheat Sheet is designed to provide clear metrics to track progress and make informed decisions specifically within the Care industry.
PUBLISHED: April 2023
Our set of handy templates is designed to help you improve your employee experience and retention rates, covering the key questions you should consider asking any future leaver.
PUBLISHED: January 2023
Take our bespoke quiz, designed to help you understand your communication style and provide tips to improve your communication with others.
Insight, Social Care, Digital Transformation
Modern workforce management software can bring a host of benefits to your organisation.
4 minute read
But the benefits of bringing in new technology can only be fully realised if everyone embraces it and adoption is high.
Ensuring frontline employees have a great onboarding experience can make all the difference and save everyone a lot of pain down the road.
Our team has amassed decades of experience rolling out technology to frontline workforces. So we wanted to share that with you in this quick guide to onboarding new software.
Every organisation will have different needs, but we have found that you can't go far wrong by following these best practices:
Take a phased approach
Prepare your organisation well in advance
Communicate the why as well as the what
Empower champions and embrace critics
Put the right support in place
Make it fun
Review and refine as you go
You've probably spent a significant amount of money on your new software, and you're excited about how it can help your organisation. So it can be tempting to want to deploy it far and wide as quickly as possible.
In our experience, staggered launches tend to get better results. We recommend starting with one smaller test group, as this allows you to test your plan and apply what you learn to the broader rollout.
Assuming this first phase goes well, you then have a success story you can share to win over any sceptical colleagues (more on this below).
A phased approach also enables you to channel your resources more effectively. It's better to have high adoption across two sites than low adoption across ten.
In 2013 Beyoncé surprised everyone by releasing a new album that she had never previously announced or publicised.
Don't be like Beyoncé (not something we say often!).
The majority of employees are opposed to change - 62% don't like leaving their comfort zone. So asking them to do something new with no prior warning isn't likely to go down well and will probably make the sceptics even more resistant.
Think of the rollout like you're releasing a blockbuster movie:
Start talking about the project openly well in advance of your go-live data
Be clear about what to expect and when to expect it
Don't rely on a single update - communicate regularly in multiple formats
Aim to go beyond the practical information to generate anticipation and excitement for the project (see 'Make it fun')
With so much vital information to share with your teams, it can be easy to focus solely on telling them what the software is and what you need them to do.
Don't forget to explain why the organisation has chosen the software and how using it will benefit each individual. Try to be as specific as possible; the most compelling advantages often vary by role type.
Identify your biggest internal advocates early and encourage them to be as vocal as possible. Enthusiasm is infectious, which will give your project early momentum and help you win over more resistant team members.
Establish a healthy dialogue with more critical colleagues, too. They might also be influencers - but against your project - so bringing them onside will make your life easier. It's also very likely that they have reasonable concerns and objections, so listening to them can improve your rollout process and communications.
Teething issues are inevitable with any new software. How problems are addressed will have a more significant impact on the rollout's success than the problems themselves.
Work closely with your software provider's account management and customer support teams to agree on roles, responsibilities and processes for handling staff queries.
And make sure everyone knows where to find troubleshooting information and access support as part of your onboarding communications.
Don't just follow your initial plan blindly. If you can't access it on your own, your new software partner should be able to provide you with regular reports with usage and adoption data.
Let the data guide you. For example, if there's noticeably lower engagement for a specific role or location, speak to those users, find out why and fix what you can.
Do the same for your best-performing groups, as you may discover ways to improve the experience for others and uncover great ideas for this or future rollouts.
Injecting a sense of fun into the rollout doesn't just make the experience more enjoyable - it could help you get better results.
You could consider:
Running a friendly competition - e.g. the first location to hit 100% adoption wins a prize
Giving your rollout a fun project codename and/or internal brand (Project 'Breezy Badger', anyone?)
Finding creative ways to celebrate your project milestones
70% of all change programs fail due to employee resistance, according to McKinsey estimates. But, like most interactions, creating a fantastic first impression goes a long way to securing the goodwill needed to get through the riskiest period - the initial rollout.
We hope this guide will help ensure your next project doesn't suffer the same fate!
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1 min read
We're very pleased to welcome Paul Watson as VP of Customer Success. Here's what Paul had to say about joining us from Fourth Hospitality.
6 min read
Rishi Sunak is now Prime Minister. What does his leadership mean for the Department of Health & Social Care and for the care sector? We look at his plans.
2 min read
According to our latest research, 79% of leavers are open to working in health and social care again in the future. Here are some practical steps health and social care organisations can take to reduce preventable labour turnover.