FAQs

The length of your shift depends on the role that you will be performing, and will always be stated in your contract. For example, our administration staff work for eight hours while our carers and nurses do a 12-hour shift. We also offer a variety of flexible or part-time roles too, so the length of shifts may vary.

Breaks are in line with Working Time Regulations and the timings may vary between homes, so it’s best to ask the individual home manager.

Yes, we do offer-part-time shifts although these are specific to the vacancy at that particular home and role requirements. However, eligible employees can request a change in their working pattern once they have 26 weeks of continuous service.

Yes. Our uniforms are colour coded, depending on the role, and we provide a free set of tunics for nurses, carers and trainers, as well as housekeeping, activities and facilities staff. Administration staff wear navy jackets and skirts/trousers with cream or white blouses/shirts.

During your first 12 weeks of employment you will receive a specific, job-related induction to learn about the company, our policies, values and standards.

You would need to work during the day throughout your induction, then revert to the nightshift when this is completed.

Looking after vulnerable people and helping to maximise their quality of life is a very important and responsible job. While knowledge and experience are very useful – and we provide ongoing training to ensure that our staff excel in their roles and provide the best possible care to residents – personal attributes are also important and these are often innate rather than learned. They include compassion, patience and the ability to remain calm under pressure.

Our performance management process enables us to monitor our employees’ work to ensure that it meets the objectives of our organisation, which are to provide the best possible care to residents at all times. It involves providing regular feedback on performance via structured two-way appraisal and regular supervision sessions, identifying areas of strength and developmental needs and putting in place agreed training objectives and plans that can be tracked and measured.

We review salaries at least once a year, benchmarking ourselves against other similar employers in each of our support offices’/homes’ local areas to ensure that we remain competitive.

While we don’t have a performance-related bonus as such, we offer an attractive rewards package, including competitive pay, pension, life assurance, access to retail discounts and an employee referral scheme.

Everyone who works with vulnerable adults needs to undergo a Disbarring and Barring Service (DBS) check before starting employment. Once your employment is confirmed we send you a link so you can provide the required information and get the process underway. In addition, most of our staff will need to pay for half the cost of the check, which is deducted from the first month’s pay. Don’t worry – we can guide you through this.

We reward our hard-working staff via a wide array of benefits. These include pay that is regularly reviewed and benchmarked to ensure that it remains competitive, as well as a pension, life assurance, enhanced overtime, a good holiday entitlement plus a paid day off on your birthday, retailer discounts, free refreshments, seasonal gifts, free uniforms and an employee referral scheme for staff who introduce new employees to us. We also support staff via our employee assistance programme and a variety of family-friendly policies such as paid compassionate as well as maternity, paternity/shared parental leave and study leave, as appropriate. We pay for professional subscriptions and memberships, where applicable, and also recognise and reward loyalty and long service.

We are committed to help our staff to excel in their roles and so we provide access to continuous professional development, via on-the-job training and supervision as well as support while you work towards industry-recognised care qualifications. Many of our staff have progressed through the various pathways. For example, one of our home managers began as a care assistant just seven years ago, while a deputy manager was, until recently, doing the quality & training co-ordinator role. A number of our care assistants have moved up into assistant practitioner roles and or nursing, and a couple of clinical leads have been (or are currently) seconded to cover a colleague’s maternity leave, so there is plenty of flexibility.

We will support you to achieve additional professional qualifications that are relevant to your role by paying for examinations and providing time off for you to study for these, whenever necessary.

If your role specifically requires you to be a member of a professional register, such as the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) which is essential for practising nurses, we will (with prior agreement) pay your subscription fees.

Yes, as appropriate and by prior agreement with your manager/supervisor when you sign up for external professional courses that are relevant to your role.

If you are interested in one of our nursing roles, we prefer that you do have previous experience. But for our caring roles it doesn’t matter if you don’t. If you’re passionate about helping others and are willing to learn, then you’re the perfect candidate. There are a lot of different roles available, depending on where you’d like to work or what you want to do, and we can help you find the right one.

If you take a look at the vacancies section, you’ll see that we have a variety of roles available. These range from caring and nursing roles, that are more on the clinical side and involve working closely with residents, to jobs in the administration teams as well as housekeeping, activities and facilities. All these roles work together to support the safety and wellbeing of our residents. To get a feel for what each role involves, you can click on its detailed job description and also view the profiles of Canford Healthcare employees who actually perform the role.