Personas for Home Care

In order to ensure that everyone in the industry is using the same terminology, and to help CASPA members ensure they are targeting the right people, we are creating in conjunction with Digital Social Care a set of personas for people at care providers. We have split this into seven categories that fit broadly the size of organisations. These categories are:

1. Single home care office where the owner(s) normally has close knowledge of what is going on and might also be the care manager and responsible for all the operational management of the business. This may be run as a small family business or might be co-owned by more than one individual.
2. Mid-sized home care businesses, perhaps comprising 2 – 5 offices where there is a senior management team that makes decisions to ensure the changes are consistent across the organisation.
3. A group ‘direct’ which typically has between 8 -12 care offices. Within this model, there is often a senior management team and CEO with responsibility for the group.
4. Multi- franchise set up. The franchisor will approve and recommend / mandate suppliers that franchisees can engage in the running of their businesses. The franchisor also sets the policies for adoption as well as the parameters for certain business transactions.
5. Corporate company with a head office where decisions that have a wider organisational impact are referred. This model may comprise a number of care offices and may have external investors who may take an interest in some operational issues such as the procurement of an IT system.
6. Charities where there is a board of trustees and all decisions have to be signed off at board level.
7. Local councils may have an influence particularly where they commission the care and the provider is required to comply with certain contractual clauses. There have been examples where the local council will mandate or recommend use of a digital care management system and procure on behalf of the care providers.

 

PERSONAS IN HOME CARE

Single office to mid-size businesses

• Owner – often able to make decisions quickly and understands the benefit of reducing costs and improving efficiency.
• Care manager – Usually very influential in decisions even though may not have the authority to sign -off on procurement without approval from owner(s)
• Senior carer/nurse – often a small group of people and it can be hard to retain these people – so the care manager is normally keen to ensure they buy in to proposed changes that will impact the ways that people work. It is often easier to implement a solution where this group is engaged and have been kept involved in the change process.
• Care worker – normally these people are valued, and decisions on change will often include their views.

• Management team – mid-size businesses might have a senior team that have to be included in any decision to make changes. Sometimes the management team is made up of a combination of people with experience ranging from strong front-line care experience, commercial experience or some other industry backgrounds. There is quite a range of speed of decision making, but generally they are quicker than more complex larger organisations. They tend to make decisions for the whole organisation, so it is common to have a system implemented in each care office once it has been accepted.

Large organisations

The large organisations will typically have defined business functions, and therefore more management stakeholders that may need to be consulted as part of any change project. Personas within such organisations may include:

• IT personnel – This stakeholder will have a tendency to care more about hardware and software roll-out, hosting and maintenance than about the impact on the business. Normally go through a very formal and structured decision-making process.
• Regional/area directors/managers – normally very influential, but not always aligned to the overall organisation goals. It is not uncommon to win an opportunity to implement a change, only to be limited to a small number of offices that will adopt the change.
• Compliance personnel – Usually interested in the impact of the change in relation to compliance with standards and regulations. They can often be involved in completing aspects of due diligence on the solution. It is good to find out the requirements of this stakeholder early as they may request assurance and/or additional compliance documentation which could lead to delays in implementation.
• Trustees – in the context of charities the trustees will have a governance remit and will have an interest in ensuring that risks associated with change management are robustly managed. They may require assurances on many aspects of the proposed changes before signing -off on procurement.