Employability Skills in Health and Social Care: A Case Study of Hounslow West Care Home

This case study focuses on employability skills in health and social care, specifically at Hounslow West Care Home. It covers topics such as determining own responsibilities and performance, developing interpersonal and transferable skills, understanding team dynamics, and developing problem-solving strategies.

Running head: EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS
Employability skills
Name of student
Name of University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Task 1 Determining own responsibilities and performance............................................................3
1.1 Develop a set of own responsibilities and performance objectives.......................................3
1.2 Evaluate own effectiveness against defined objectives.........................................................5
1.3 Make recommendations for improvement.............................................................................6
1.4 Application of different motivational strategies for improving the quality of performance. 7
Task 2 Developing interpersonal and transferable skills.................................................................8
2.1 Developments of solutions to work-based problems.............................................................8
2.2 Different communication styles at various levels..................................................................9
2.3 Identifying the most suitable time management strategies..................................................10
Task 3 Understand the dynamics of working with others.............................................................10
3.1 Roles played by the health care professionals in team building activities to achieve shared
goals...........................................................................................................................................10
3.2 Analysis of team dynamics..................................................................................................12
3.3 Alternative ways to complete tasks and achieve team goals...............................................12
Task 4 Be able to develop strategies for problem solving.............................................................13
4.1 Evaluate tools and methods for developing solutions to problems......................................13
4.2 Identification of a particular business problem and resolving strategy...............................14

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4.3 Evaluating the impact of implementing the strategy on the business at Hounslow West
Care Home.................................................................................................................................15
References......................................................................................................................................16

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EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS
Introduction
Employability skills are different types of skills that are applied for different types of jobs
. These kinds of skills could be stated as the major skills because it could enhance the
competency skills of the workers and even manage transferrable skills, furthermore make
individuals capable of performing to their potential. The health and social care organisation
chosen here as the case study is West Hounslow Care Home’ and here I have been appointed as
the senior health care support worker to manage the organisational functions and meet the health
care requirements. This will be done to treat the individuals suffering from dementia, learning
disability or illness or any her mental health illness and my roles and responsibilities will
increase because of getting selected as the Care Home manager (Armstrong and Jackson-Smith
2013). The topic will be prepared to assess my won responsibilities and develop various
employment applications and training materials, both for recruitment and selection of new
employees and ensuring professional development at a faster rate.
Task 1 Determining own responsibilities and performance
1.1 Develop a set of own responsibilities and performance objectives
While working within a health and social care setting like West Hounslow Care Home,
there are various roles and responsibilities that are needed to be done for fulfilling the
organizational requirements effectively. The functions and responsibilities associated with the
job role have been related to the proper treatment procedures in order to make the individuals
suffering from dementia and other mental health problems recover quickly (Bakker-Pieper and
de Vries 2013). It would also be important for the care workers to establish good relationship

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with the service users, because it will ease the mental stress and even allow them to recover
quickly from their illnesses. The management of performances and own responsibilities are
important aspects of the self management which can allow the care workers of West Hounslow
Care Home to organize, plan and deliver the best ever positive outcomes for the company
(Bennett 2012).
As a Care Home manager and part of the senior management, it is my own responsibility
to facilitate teamwork and coordination and furthermore promote effective communication
between the employees. The performance of a team is always better than individual performance
and so engagement of all the staffs is essential for proper decision making too. Own
responsibilities also include improving the communication process effectiveness, which can be
possible by effective teamwork and coordination. By enabling communication between staffs, it
would be easy to improve the decision making process while by establishing a good connection
between me and the staffs could help in maintaining positive attitudes and behaviors for creating
a positive mindset among them (Bradley et al. 2012). This would not only help them to recover
quickly but would also allow them to know their needs and requirements, furthermore fulfill
those with ease and effectiveness. I will perform all these duties and responsibilities to make sure
that that the organizational requirements are met and the organisation sustains competitive
advantage in business.
1.2 Evaluate own effectiveness against defined objectives
As I have appointed as the Care Home manager, it would be my responsibility to act as a
responsible leader and manage the human resources properly to increase the responsibilities of
the team members. This would not only promote innovation, but could also enable them to
remain committed to their work responsibilities while working at West Hounslow Care Home

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(Carnevale and Smith 2013). As a Home manager, it is also my responsibility to develop
knowledge and skills among the individuals by providing training sessions to them. This would
allow them to perform to their potential as well as make the company easily adapt to changes and
become satisfied with the job too. Various terms, policies and procedures are associated with the
coverage of health and employment of individuals. It would be important to keep all of them
informed about the terms, policies and procedures and allow them to take care of the patients to
maintain quality standards as well as ensure safety and health of the service users (Chen, Wu and
Fu 2012).
The objectives of the organisation are to maintain the quality standards and at the same
time, improve the potential of the staffs to deliver better productivity, higher revenue generation.
By maintaining the quality standards, the organisation could meet the requirements of service
users who had been suffering from some kinds of mental health illnesses. There are various roles
played me to enable effectiveness while achieving the organizational goals and objectives. The
knowledge development process introduced could improve the work processes and ensure that
the employees remain motivated to achieve their targets by maintaining the business terms and
conditions properly (Daim et al. 2012). The Care Quality Commission or CQC should allow for
maintaining the highest quality services to benefit the service users and safeguard people with
dementia. The service users should be treated equally from every aspects and be allowed to make
choices and in case if they could not, then their families should be discussed with rather than
taking any immediate measures during the treatment procedures. I could say that I had been
efficient to fulfill my roles and responsibilities to meet the performance objectives criteria (Dyer
and Dyer 2013).

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1.3 Make recommendations for improvement
Continuous training should be promoted for enhancing own effectiveness while it could
also improve the skills and competency level; furthermore handle the service users with much
ease. The training materials provided would also assist the health and social care professionals to
understand their job roles and responsibilities and achieve the performance objectives. The line
manager acts as an intermediary between the manager and the employee who is responsible for
presenting information and messages delivered by the manager to the employees. By attending
the training programs, it would be easy deal with the issues properly and obtain feedbacks
regarding their performances too for ensuring successful business performance management
(Estampe et al. 2013). High level of trust and loyalty would be developed among the individuals,
which could make them move in the direction for learning new methods and techniques to
deliver the best possible services to the people suffering from dementia. It would therefore result
in high level of improvement through accomplishment of business goals and objectives with
convenience.
1.4 Application of different motivational strategies for improving the quality of
performance
The Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is one of the best motivational theories that not
only helps in managing the human resources properly but also can improve the quality of
performances of the workers at Hounslow Care Home. As a manager, I would like to train the
HR manager and make sure that they keep the employees motivated by fulfilling their demands.
Providing additional money, rewards and other benefits could keep them motivated and focused
on their goals properly (Goetsch and Davis 2014). To fulfill the psychological needs, the HR
manager must check whether the basic needs including food, shelter and water had been

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available or not. To meet other demands, it is also important to provide proper health security
and employment opportunities so that they can feel secure while working for the company and a
strong bond between the employer and employees will be established too.
McGregor’s theory X and Y is based on two motivational factors including the kinds of
individuals who are not interested in working and the other type who handle these tasks as
normal tasks. The reasons for not giving the best for the company could be searching for better
employment opportunities and so the managers should motivate them by providing them
transportation facilities, housing facility, better security and both monetary and non-monetary
rewards while working for Hounslow Care home (Grol et al. 2013). As a Home manager, I
would also provide training sessions to the employees to keep them motivated and for their
betterment of performances to progress towards professional development.
Task 2 Developing interpersonal and transferable skills
2.1 Developments of solutions to work-based problems
A health and social care organisation often faces complex issues related to planning,
problem solving, communication and leadership along with lack of teamwork, self-management
skills and inappropriate management behavior. Due to this, not only the organisation functions
deteriorate but it also becomes difficult to handle the patients who have different healthcare
needs related to dementia and other mental health problems. I have consulted with the line
manager and HR manager to let the employees participate in the training and developmental
programs on communication, self-management skills and group collaboration (Jackson 2014). It
was seen that Hounslow West Care Home was experienced issues related to communication and
improper leadership skills, which created difficulties in managing the human resources properly.

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Training should be provided to develop their knowledge and skills and allow the team members
to communicate with each other, furthermore implement effective information technology
system to resolve the communication barriers (Keep 2014). The coaching sessions would allow
the staffs to gain abilities to make decisions and work towards a common goal or objective. I
along with other managers of the organisation would like to present our experiences to the
employees by relating to critical situations, which could make them capable enough to respond
to the needs of service users with convenience (Kusurkar et al. 2013).
2.2 Different communication styles at various levels
There are different styles of communication that are followed for becoming more
responsive at work and manage clients’ needs properly. Listening and presentation skills could
be major approaches to communicate with the individuals admitted to the care home and provide
them with necessary services based on their demands. To adapt to the various communication
needs, telephonic conversations could be managed along with the implementation of an
information technology system. This would create an internet connection through which each
and every members of the organisation would be able to able to communicate with each other
and discuss problems faced by the service users (Lerman 2013). Assertive communication style
could help the employees to express ideas and exchange information with others for making
decisions. To respond to the needs of the patients suffering from dementia and other mental
health issues, the staffs must be polite and interact with them properly to understand what they
actually need.
2.3 Identifying the most suitable time management strategies
There are different strategies implemented by the health and social care organizations
nowdays not only to deliver the services on time, but also to ensure customer satisfaction. One

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such strategy for managing time could be the prioritization of workload, where the most
important tasks should be prioritized on more than the less important tasks. Learning is useful to
understand how time can be managed while performing the tasks and how it can be aligned with
the accomplishing of business objectives. Another effective way to manage time could be the
maintenance of a proper schedule, which would allow the individuals to do tasks according to the
time allotted for those (Lorinkova, Pearsall and Sims 2013).
Task 3 Understand the dynamics of working with others
3.1 Roles played by the health care professionals in team building activities to achieve
shared goals
At Hounslow West Care home, the care workers are associated with the management of
team building and development activities for achieving the shared goals and objectives. These
health care professionals perform their roles as planter, resource investigator, shaper,
implementer, monitor, complete finisher and coordinator (Men 2014).
The managers remain creative and imaginative to solve critical issues related to
communication , leadership and quality of services though sometimes they can be lacking the
ability to communicate properly with the subordinates. They also act as monitor evaluator to
check the performances of the staffs and make decisions to train and improve their skills. As a
manager of the Care Home, I managed training sessions and discussed with the line managers to
communicate the development needs to the employees so that they could be part of it (Moore et
al. 2016).
The existing employees serve the roles of shapers by overcoming obstacles easily though
they often fail to provide proper support to the new employees. The implementer remains the

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most disciplined and performs their task responsibility though lack of flexibility prevents them to
cope up with the changes within the organisation. The complete finisher checks their roles and
make sure that any errors detected are removed as early as possible, not only for maintaining the
highest quality standards but also to produce the right kind of services that should be delivered to
the service users on time (Ndulue et al. 2012).
3.2 Analysis of team dynamics
The team dynamics is one of the major reasons for supporting coordination of employees
and ensuring improvement of the competency skills. It could help in managing clarity of mission
and objectives, make the employees understand individual roles and responsibilities, maintain
strong leadership skills and promote open communication. The dynamics of a team is dependent
on the various stages of team development including the forming, storming, norming, performing
and adjourning. The forming stage is the initial stage where the members of a health care team
will meet each other for the first time. Due to lack of clarification of roles and responsibilities,
the storming stage is enabled to make them push against the boundaries (Sadeghi and Pihie
2012). The norming stage was managed at Hounslow West Care home to make sure that the
strengths of staffs are respected and all of them were allowed to provide their opinions. As a
manager and leader, I encouraged them to present their own viewpoint about how to resolve
mental disorders faced by a patient who as admitted. Performing allowed us to work as a team
and deliver the best quality services whereas the final stage, i.e., adjourning created a sense of
belief amongst us that the goals had been reached (Sadri 2012).
3.3 Alternative ways to complete tasks and achieve team goals
Few alternative ways to achieve the goals and objectives are setting the SMART
objectives, i.e., specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. I was focused on my

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work goals and so I decided to provide training sessions for them where they can learn about the
importance of communication and working as a team. This helped in overcoming the
communication barriers and made them feel valued for the organisation too. At Hounslow West
Care home, communication was a major issue, so resource allocation could be done to facilitate
the communication process. This could ensure that everyone should interact with each other and
fulfill the job requirements effectively (Teijeiro, Rungo and Freire 2013). Another efficient
approach for the achievement of team goals could be the review, feedback and evaluation of
progress for the action plan that had been implemented. I understood the progress and checked
whether the tasks were performed properly or not, which further helped in delivering the best
outcomes through better services delivery and high level of customer satisfaction (Tricco et al.
2012).
Task 4 Be able to develop strategies for problem solving
4.1 Evaluate tools and methods for developing solutions to problems
A useful tool for solving the issues is the trial and error method where different numbers
do not function, because of which, users can utilize it as an alternative for problem solving. It is
important to maintain a positive behavior or attitude, which can facilitate making of decisions as
well as manage the employees properly within the organisation. The use of design form or
template could be useful tools for recording the tasks and evaluate the amount of work done,
furthermore adopt the best operating procedures. This could assist the organisation to track and
monitor the performances of staffs and check whether proper treatment is being provided to the
service users or not (Witter et al. 2012). The development of checklist can monitor the work
performances, shift timings of employees and whether they have met the criteria of working

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hours at the care home or not. These tools and methods could provide relevant solutions to the
problems faced and overcome communication barriers and even the leadership qualities would
be tested in such circumstances.
4.2 Identification of a particular business problem and resolving strategy
One of the major problem faced at Hounslow West Care Home could be the very little
teamwork and coordination among the staffs. The tasks could consume a lot of time, because of
which, the quality standards might also not be fulfilled. All the Staffs, senior management team
and the care home authorities should engage together during the development of programs,
practices, principles and techniques to foster improved business operations. Communization
should be prioritized on for improving the morale of team members and openly coordinate with
each while handling a major project together (Armstrong and Jackson-Smith 2013). As a
responsible manager of care home, I would like to implement the fair wages method to provide
good amounts of wages to the employees and make sure that they are not discriminated. Rather
than showing aggressive behaviors for their mistakes, it would be important to facilitate the
training programs for their own skills development and ensure that the business operations could
live up to the quality standards (Bennett 2012).
4.3 Evaluating the impact of implementing the strategy on the business at Hounslow West
Care Home
By implementing an effective strategy, the business would be impacted positively in
terms of better profit level and attaining of competitive advantage within the health and social
care sector. There would be reduced turnover of employees and the retention level would
increase. The organisation would be able to experience growth consistently due to better working
conditions and a good culture promoted through team work and communication. The problem

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solving strategies are interrelated with the labor market turnover strategies, because with the
overcoming the problems, the employees tend to get more satisfied with their needs and
requirements fulfilled at Hounslow West Care Home. With better rewards, encouragement and
motivation through engagement in training programs, the performance and competency level of
theirs would increase (Bradley et al. 2012). This would not only be beneficial for their own
professional development, but also for the Care home because the business performance would
improve and it would be convenient to deliver the health care services properly to the service
users.

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