Since 2000, Tagtronics Care has provided dedicated homecare management software to hundreds of UK homecare agencies.

Many home carers are typically used to a paper-based system where they handwrite daily notes and are initially reluctant to move over to a digital system.

Once carers have been properly trained on our domiciliary care software, they quickly discover the benefits of improved efficiency and time saved on admin tasks, allowing them to focus on providing better care for their clients.

Clarendon Homecare went digital in 2008, using our system initially for work rotas and care planning, but soon moved more of their operations online for daily care notes and MAR sheets.

Dave Vincent, General Manager, says: “A digital system gives us the ability to respond in much shorter timeframes. If there’s an issue, we can pick this up immediately. It’s allowed our senior carers to focus on other activities, such as supervising carers, responding to service user reviews and improving our overall quality of care”

In this blog, we look at how to train your care team on new homecare software, starting with understanding your carers’ needs, preparing for training, designing and delivering the home care software training and offering post-training support.

Understanding Your Carers’ Needs

Your carers will have varied educational backgrounds with different levels of tech-savviness. Some may have a fear of new tech and be reluctant to veer away from manually filling out forms as that’s what they’re used to. It’s important to take different skill levels into account when designing new software training and ensure any training is inclusive and caters to all skill levels.

Home carers are time-poor with busy workloads and any training will need to be flexible to fit around their work schedules. Working together with the homecare software provider, you can build a supportive training environment for your carers to help them to get up and running with the new software quickly and easily.

Birchwood Homecaring Services have been using our digital software for the past 18 years. They say: “In comparison to other homecare systems out there, Tagtronics is simple to use, easy to learn and extremely user-friendly. It has everything we need, and it’s all really easy to access and manage”.

Preparing for Training

Assessment

Before formal training begins, why not conduct a preliminary assessment to understand the current skill levels and training needs of your carers? Carrying out a survey or face-to-face interview with them to assess their current tech skills could be quite effective. The results of this assessment could then be used to tailor and personalise the training programme for each carer.

Setting Objectives

Set clear, achievable training goals and objectives based on the assessment results. For example:

• By the end of this session, carers will be able to log in and navigate the main dashboard.
• By the end of this session, carers will be able to add new tasks to a clients’ care record.

Designing and Delivering the Homecare Software Training

Breaking the training down into small, focused, manageable modules works best so that you and your care team can learn about specific and relevant aspects of the software applicable to your roles.

Providing interactive and practical hands-on learning experiences will help your carers to learn by doing.

Add real-life scenarios and tasks into the training sessions that mirror the day-to-day activities your carers already do but explain how to use the software for these same tasks.

Tagtronics provides a structured training programme with two purpose-built modules:

• Module 1 covers accessing the system and setting up employee and client records.
• Module 2 covers rotas, managing visits and creating reports. 

Post-Training Support and Evaluation

It’s important to provide continuous support and resources for your carers even after the initial training, especially if updates and changes are made to the software. Tagtronics offer free unlimited software support and training as part of your monthly subscription.

All About You have been using our software since 2004. Simon Lee, Operations Director, says: “The technical support offered is excellent. Any questions, or anything we’re unsure of, we pick up the phone and 99% of the time you put the phone down with your questions answered. The team is always on hand”.

Create a peer support system where experienced carers can help new colleagues get up to speed with the software, reducing onboarding time.

Fay Howell, Care Manager with ProFad Care Agency, says: “When we have new staff on board, we’re able to train them quickly and with the additional support included from the Tagtronics Care team, new carers can pick up the system within a day or two. By the end of the first week, they know their way around the system and understand where to find all the information they need. It’s hugely reduced our onboarding time”.

Regular Check-Ins

Regular follow-ups in one-to-one meetings or team reviews are useful to check in with your carers and make sure they’re still comfortable with the software. Any gaps in their knowledge can then be identified and additional training provided if necessary.

Measuring Effectiveness

After each training session, it’s a good idea to gather feedback and assess your carers’ understanding using quizzes, practical tests, and real-world scenarios. Post-training assessment and feedback will help improve future training sessions and tweak any processes that are not working.

Ongoing monitoring of your carers’ performance and efficiency with the new software will also help you to gauge the success and effectiveness of the training programme.

Successfully training your homecare team on new software means offering a supportive, personalised experience and continuously improving and tweaking processes as you go along.

It’s important to invest adequate time and resources into proper homecare software training to get your carers on board with the new tech. Proper training will ultimately improve the overall quality of care for your clients and the efficiency of your home care team.

For a demo of Tagtronics all-in-one homecare management software, call 01254 819205 or email howcanwehelp@tagtronics.co.uk.