Care workers across the UK will be able to share real-time feedback on workload, pay, wellbeing and other pressures, giving employers and commissioners a more immediate picture of workforce challenges.
Developed by Flourish, part of Merseyside-based The Progress Group, ‘Click Pulse’ is believed to be the first platform of its kind in adult social care to embed continuous workforce feedback directly into training activity.
Click Pulse enables insight to be gathered consistently and at scale, in a sector where workforce data is typically based on annual surveys.
Flourish works across adult and children’s social care and education, providing workforce development and training solutions designed to raise standards and improve quality of care.
Click Pulse has been developed with The Care Workers’ Charity and has already been piloted with care providers ahead of its wider rollout.
The platform is built into Flourish’s existing e-learning system, which is used by more than 110,000 care professionals and generates more than 150,000 course completions each month.
It works by asking care workers a single, structured question when they complete a training module, with the option to provide more detailed feedback through a fuller survey.
Eammon Price, Chief Executive of Flourish, said: “Adult social care has been relying on workforce insight that is often out of date by the time it’s used. If we’re serious about addressing the pressures facing the sector, we need a much clearer and more timely understanding of what’s happening on the frontline.
“Click Pulse introduces a more immediate way of understanding what staff are experiencing. Because the feedback is gathered regularly, you can start to see where pressures are building and respond earlier.
“The key is that it doesn’t add any extra burden. It’s built into something people are already doing, so insight can be gathered consistently and at scale without introducing additional surveys, systems or reporting requirements. Ultimately, it gives employers a much clearer, more immediate view of what’s happening in their workforce.”
The platform uses a consistent set of standardised questions designed to reflect real frontline challenges, covering key areas including pay, workload, wellbeing, leadership, training and retention.
For example, staff may be asked whether their workload is manageable within contracted hours, or whether they intend to remain in the sector.
Click Pulse has been designed to address long-standing challenges in how workforce insight is collected in adult social care, where information is often gathered infrequently and can quickly become out of date.
By capturing feedback on a regular basis, it enables employers to identify emerging pressures earlier and respond more effectively.
Karolina Gerlich, Chief Executive of The Care Workers’ Charity, said: “Care workers’ voices matter, but they’re not always heard in a way that reflects what day-to-day life on the frontline is really like.
“That’s why we’ve worked with Flourish on the development of Click Pulse - to help shape an approach that makes it easier for workers to share their experiences in a simple and consistent way, without adding to workload.
“Having a clearer, more regular picture of what staff are going through is essential if organisations are going to respond in a meaningful way.”
Insight is provided to employers, giving them access to structured data which can support workforce planning and operational decisions.
Walfinch Oxfordshire Home Care was among the providers piloting Click Pulse ahead of its launch. Kam Gill, Managing Director, said: “Being able to hear honestly from our team on things like pay, training and how they feel in the role and then benchmark that against the wider care sector, is exactly the kind of insight we want to act on.”
The platform launches initially within adult social care which reaches more than 110,000 care professionals - approximately 11% of the frontline workforce - through existing users of the learning system.
Further development of Click Pulse is planned, including expansion into other sectors. As adoption grows, aggregated and anonymised data could contribute to a more consistent and timely understanding of workforce pressures across the sector.
