Caring for the carers starts with making support easier to reach

Care workers spend their working lives supporting other people. 

They care for people through illness and declining health, support families through difficult moments and build relationships with residents and service users that can last for years. How do we reflect here people with disabilities and lifelong care needs? 

That emotional responsibility is part of what makes social care so valuable. It is also why employee support in this sector needs to recognise the reality of the job. 

Many providers employers? already do a huge amount for their people. EAPs, wellbeing services, discounts, recognition, financial support and health benefits are common across larger organisations. 

The challenge isn't necessarily a lack of support. 

It's making sure the people who need it know it's there, understand it and can actually use it. 

 

The frontline engagement gap 

Care is inherently deskless. 

Employees may be working nights, weekends, across different homes and services or out in the community. Their working day is focused on the person in front of them, not checking an inbox or browsing an HR portal. 

That creates a communication challenge. 

An email sent at 10am may work perfectly well for head office and completely miss the colleague halfway sleeping after? through a night shift. A benefit sitting on a platform can technically be available to everyone while still being practically invisible to large parts of the workforce. 

This doesn't mean employees don't value the support. 

Often, they simply haven't had it explained in a way that fits their working lives. 

The Care workforce report developed for this campaign captures the problem neatly: traditional communication methods don't reach everyone equally, and support hidden behind a login is support that often goes unused.  

For HR leaders, that distinction matters. 

Low engagement with a benefit doesn't automatically mean it's the wrong benefit. Before adding something new, we should understand whether the existing offer has genuinely reached the workforce. 

 

Supporting the whole employee 

There's another dimension to this in care. 

Employees don't leave their own lives at the door when a shift begins. They have mortgages and rent, children and parents, health concerns, financial worries and unexpected life events of their own. 

Yet their job requires them to spend the day focused on somebody else's needs. 

Financial resilience, physical health and mental wellbeing therefore aren't separate from the employee experience. They influence whether someone feels able to remain in work and continue doing an emotionally and physically demanding role. 

Practical financial protection can form part of that support, particularly for employees who may have little financial buffer if illness, hospitalisation or recovery prevents them from working as normal. 

But providing it is only half the job. 

Employees need to know what protection they have, why it matters and how to use it. 

 

What good communication looks like in care 

There isn't one communication channel that will reach everybody in a care workforce. 

The strongest approach combines accessible technology with human interaction. 

That means: 

• Communication designed around shifts and services, rather than head-office hours.  

• Benefits and support explained in plain language.  

• Simple digital access to benefits, wellbeing, discounts and recognition.  

• Face-to-face opportunities for employees to ask questions and understand what's relevant to them.  

• Practical health, wellbeing and financial protection that employees know how to access.  

• Visibility of where participation is strong and where particular services, shifts or workforce groups may be missing out.  

Technology makes support accessible. 

Human interaction makes it personal. 

For care employees in particular, that matters. A workforce built around human relationships deserves an employee experience that doesn't rely entirely on self-service. 

 

What HR leaders should do next 

First, look at activation as closely as provision. Ask not only what support is available, but who understands it, who uses it and where participation differs across services, roles and shifts. 

Second, look for the employees most likely to miss traditional communications. Night workers, community teams, bank staff and employees rarely based at a central location shouldn't have a different employee experience simply because of when or where they work. 

Third, consider the protection gaps within the workforce. What happens financially if an employee is unexpectedly admitted to hospital, needs time to recover or experiences a serious life event? And importantly, would they know what support was available to them? 

Finally, don't underestimate the value of human contact. In a sector where employees spend their days creating relationships with other people, face-to-face engagement gives organisations an opportunity to make their own support feel equally human. 

 

Caring for the people who care for everyone else 

The care sector rightly spends enormous amounts of time thinking about the experience of residents, service users and families. 

Employee experience belongs in that same conversation. 

Not because HR needs another initiative, but because continuity of care depends on people who feel able and willing to stay. 

The latest workforce figures show the scale of the challenge, but behind vacancy and turnover statistics are individual employees carrying physical, financial and emotional pressures while doing work that society depends on. 

The opportunity for HR isn't simply to provide more. 

It is to make the support already available easier to see, easier to understand and easier to use, while identifying where meaningful protection is still missing. 

When we ask people to spend their working lives caring for others, making sure they feel supported themselves is a reasonable place to start. 

 

About the Author 

Jenny Hinde is Chief People Officer at Personal Group, where she leads people strategy focused on helping employers improve workforce engagement, wellbeing and retention across frontline and deskless populations. 

 

About Personal Group 

Personal Group is a leading provider of employee benefits and wellbeing services in the UK, focused on delivering measurable outcomes for frontline workers. Through its award-winning platform, Hapi, along with in-person activation, employee-paid cash plans, and Innecto HR consultancy, Personal Group empowers organisations to support and protect their workforce.