Member Article

New data shows gulf in happiness between domiciliary care workers and care home staff

Domiciliary care workers are the happiest shift workers in a league table of professions, according to new data released by Deputy, the leading workforce management app.

Almost nine in ten (88%) shifts worked by domiciliary care workers resulted in them feeling ‘happy’ last quarter, compared to just one in five (21%) for care home staff.

The data has been recorded using Deputy’s new Shift Pulse feature. Workers rate how they’re feeling at the end of their shift on a sliding scale from ‘stressed’, to ‘frustrated’, ‘ok’, ‘good’ and ‘happy’. More than 88,000 UK shifts were measured between 1 April and 30 June 2022.

Workers recording a ‘happy’ score at the end of their shift were ranked as follows:

1. Domiciliary care: 88%
2. Pharmacies and chemists: 71%
3. Cafes & coffee shops: 57%
4. Fast food & take out: 52%
5. Pubs & bars: 51%
6. Retail: 43%
7. Cleaning: 39%
8. Restaurants: 38%
9. Healthcare: 31%
10. Care home staff: 21%

David Kelly, General Manager for EMEA at Deputy, said: “It’s great to see so many happy shift workers from the domiciliary care sector. We all know that every business is only as good as its team, especially in care. Not only is it vital to look after your team for their own wellbeing, a happy, healthy workforce is also good for business. With that in mind, we clearly need to address the happiness of our workers in healthcare and care homes.”

At the other end of the scale, the highest reports for feeling ‘stressed’ or ‘frustrated’ were recorded by those working in the cleaning industry (16%), healthcare (12%) and retail (11%).

David Kelly said: “It’s important for managers and owners who receive negative feedback to use it to open up conversations with their staff and find ways to improve things. We want to help managers and employers to support the good mental health of UK shift workers.

“Our new Shift Pulse feature is designed to provide workers with a simple way to share how they’re feeling after every shift, so that managers can respond to their team’s needs.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anna Thomas .