Staffing Crisis in Care Homes: What Providers Can Do to Retain Their Teams

The pressures facing the UK’s care-home workforce are well known. Vacancy levels remain high, competition from other sectors has intensified, and international recruitment has tightened. But while recruitment continues to dominate sector conversations, retention is the issue that will shape care-home stability.

Recruiting new staff is essential, but it is only part of the solution. When turnover remains high, recruitment becomes an expensive, time-consuming cycle that never resolves the underlying problem. Evidence from Skills for Care shows more than 131,000 vacancies in 2023/24 and a turnover rate of around 30%. The Department of Health & Social Care’s 2025 survey reports that 66.7% of providers struggle to recruit while 53.9% struggle to retain. This means that even when new staff join, many services lose experienced colleagues at the same time.

For care providers, this is where the real operational risk lies. Retention protects consistency, quality, compliance and culture. Recruitment only fills gaps.

Why retention is the stronger stabiliser for care providers

Every departure has a cost. In a care-home environment, the impact is more than financial. High turnover affects:

• Continuity of care – new staff need time to understand residents, routines and clinical expectations.

• Compliance and inspection readiness – frequent churn makes it harder to demonstrate consistent practice.

• Team morale – stable teams provide emotional support for one another; high turnover erodes that stability.

• Operational planning – rota gaps lead to stress, agency use and reduced oversight.

Research from UK universities shows a clear association between staff retention and care-home quality outcomes. Homes with stronger retention patterns are more likely to achieve Good or Outstanding ratings.

For these reasons, retention is now a core operational priority for care-home providers, not a secondary HR concern.

The link between retention and quality

One of the most significant insights into the value of retention comes from research carried out by Hussein and Manthorpe at the University of Kent’s Personal Social Services Research Unit. Their 2019 analysis examined workforce data from hundreds of care homes and matched it against CQC ratings to understand whether stability influenced quality.

The study found that homes with lower staff turnover were more likely to achieve Good or Outstanding ratings, while homes with high turnover were more likely to fall into Requires Improvement or Inadequate categories. The researchers also identified that retaining as few as ten additional staff members in an average home was associated with an upward movement into a higher quality bracket.

Importantly, staff retention was found to be an independent predictor of quality. This means the positive influence of workforce stability remained even after accounting for factors such as size, ownership type and whether the home provided residential or nursing care. For operators, this confirms what many already recognise: consistent teams support safer routines, better decision-making, and more reliable standards of care.

Why people leave — and why environment matters

Pay remains a major driver of turnover, but the evidence shows it is not the only one. Staff frequently cite the following as reasons for leaving:

• Poor working conditions

• Stressful or noisy environments

• Lack of space to rest and recover

• Feeling undervalued or overlooked

• Limited progression and support

• Fatigue due to inefficient layouts or constant reactive repairs

  
  

This matters because these factors are within the control of care providers, even when pay and funding structures are constrained.

One finding is consistent across workforce research: people tend to stay where they feel respected, supported and able to do their job well. Working conditions — including the physical environment — strongly influence these decisions.

That includes the parts of the home families rarely see: staff rooms, changing areas, circulation routes, medication prep spaces and back-of-house environments.

Staff-facing spaces: a critical but overlooked retention tool

In many homes, staff areas are the first to be deprioritised when budgets are tight. Yet these spaces are where teams decompress between demanding tasks. When those environments are cramped, outdated or uncomfortable, short breaks do little to reduce fatigue.

By contrast, modern, clean, well-designed staff areas enhance wellbeing, support recovery between shifts, and reinforce a sense of value. These improvements might appear minor, but for stretched teams, they are meaningful. Research into job satisfaction in long-term care settings repeatedly highlights the importance of rest quality, workspace layout and perceived organisational support.

This is why refurbishing staff facilities is now seen as a practical retention intervention. It is one of the few levers providers can use to make daily working life easier in a sector facing sustained workforce pressure.

How refurbishment supports staff retention — and care-home operations

Environmental improvements can support retention in three ways:

1. Reducing daily friction: Better layouts, improved lighting and organised storage reduce physical strain and wasted steps — especially important during shortages.

2. Supporting mental wellbeing: Comfortable, calm break spaces help staff reset. Clean, well-presented environments improve morale and reduce the emotional load of long shifts.

3. Demonstrating organisational respect: When providers invest in staff areas, teams feel valued. That sense of investment contributes to “job embeddedness” — a known predictor of retention.

However, refurbishment must be delivered carefully. Poorly managed works can add pressure at the worst possible time. This is where a specialist partner adds value.

We work within live care environments, planning refurbishments so they support rather than disrupt staff - our approach ensures that environmental improvements deliver the intended retention benefit without adding stress during the project period. The focus is on calm delivery, predictable timelines and visible progress that lifts team morale.

Retention starts with the environment staff work in

For care providers, the central workforce challenge is not simply attracting new staff — it is keeping the people who already understand residents, culture and routines.

Retention protects stability. Recruitment fills vacancies. Both matter, but retention is the stronger, more sustainable lever for care-home operators facing mounting workforce pressures.

Improving staff environments is one of the most practical, evidence-based steps providers can take to support the teams who deliver care every day. And when planned properly, refurbishment becomes more than an estate investment — it becomes a workforce investment.

If you want to talk about how we can help you improve your staff areas, get in touch.

Contact the team