Who Was Involved?
In 2021, Data Drives Insight (DDI) and Human Services Skills Organisation (HSSO) embarked on a partnership to collect data across the care industry by using DDI’s CILCA360 tool. With investments from both organisation, the shared purpose was to understand current leadership capability across the Care and Disability industries in order to create targeted development strategies and improve future outcomes.
The data collected includes 11 590 surveys from the assessment of 1394 leaders in the care industry. Leaders were represented in all states:
Care Industry Strengths
The surveys measured leadership capability by using the average ‘current performance,’ scores for each survey item for each individual leader. These are measured on a five-point scale. The top five highest performing items across the whole assessment were:
- Actively cares about the safety and wellbeing of others
- Consistently follows legislation
- Is sincere
- Treats all others with respect
- Follows policies and procedures to achieve organisational goals
The highest performing domain was Leading Business. This domain focuses on legislation, policy and procedures which suggests that leaders on average were compliant to a high degree. Additionally, the data suggests that leaders had a genuine care for the safety and wellbeing of others.
Care Industry Opportunities
Leadership capability surveys measured opportunities by the average gap size between current performance and desired performance. These were both measured on a five point scale. The top five items that had the biggest gap were:
- Manages team conflict effectively
- Practices self-care
- Effectively deals with unacceptable behaviour
- Shares responsibility effectively
- Addresses challenging situations effectively
The results indicated that the area needing the most development was the Leading Others domain, specifically with managing team conflicts, working through challenging situations and dealing with unacceptable behaviour. These results reflect a need for leaders to improve staff skill development strategies and conduct more effective appraisals.
What Next?
There are many areas of opportunities for development for leaders in the care sector. The CILCA360 tool provides insight into leader-specific opportunities to focus developmental strategies. Our findings suggest that development in the sector needs to move from a compliance focus to a person centred focus to create more psychologically safe teams that deliver quality services for older persons and sustainable businesses.
The full report will provide extensive research into the outcomes of the survey, analysing comparisons by state, gender equity, across sectors, as well as providing insights into recommendations, challenges and the importance of improving psychological safety. This report will be available at the ACCPA conference from October 23rd-26th.
