Award-winning recruitment, retention and recognition: The role of employee listening - RMBI Care Co.

RMBI Care Co.’s employee listening strategy is characterised by a values-driven, data-informed approach, leveraging the WorkBuzz platform for actionable insights, targeted interventions, and continuous improvement in employee engagement and wellbeing.  

With employees engaged with the charity’s vision, passionate about service delivery, and aligned with its corporate values, RMBI Care Co.’s challenge is taking care of its people, so in turn, they can continue to provide quality care in a sustainable way.

Kind, supportive and trusted throughout the employee lifecycle

Recent winners of the Great British Care Awards, London Region for the Three ‘R’s’(Recruitment, Retention and Recognition), RMBI Care Co. attributes its success to a values-based approach. Those values focus on being kind, supportive, and trusted, and are embedded in practices throughout the whole employee lifecycle – from awarding long service to conducting exit interviews.

This approach is also reflected in RMBI Care Co.’s targeted strategies for wellbeing and inclusivity, which is built based on feedback derived from regular employee engagement surveys.

These strategies, alongside a comprehensive onboarding process, rewards programme, and menopause-friendly accreditation, contribute to an award-winning approach to retention and recognition.

Employee feedback driving action

RMBI Care Co.’s employee listening strategy combines clear, accessible survey results with meaningful analysis to generate actionable insight.

Engagement survey results are shared across all staff levels, supported by drill-down reports for specific groups and topics. Additional data—such as absence, turnover, and conversational feedback—help build the full picture, with analysis demonstrating a relationship between higher engagement and improved retention.

These insights directly shape targeted action plans at both care home and organisational levels. Across RMBI Care Co., regional operational leaders and HRBP’s support managers to turn survey results into practical steps, while drill-down analysis highlights the most impactful topics to explore in specific areas.

By embedding survey action planning into everyday practice, RMBI Care Co. ensures that employee feedback not only informs decisions, but drives meaningful, sustained improvement for its employees.

Retention in the social care sector: Seeing engagement data in context

Through partnering with WorkBuzz, RMBI Care Co. benchmarks its survey results externally with other social care providers. This enables the organisation to understand how its engagement, wellbeing, and inclusivity compare to others in the sector.

Care sector specific benchmarking is necessary, especially for retention, since employees often choose between different care providers for their next role, making sector comparisons highly relevant.

The rich and care-specific benchmarking data helps validate internal findings and provides context for interpreting engagement, absence, and turnover rates, supporting evidence-based decision-making.

"I find the WorkBuzz platform really intuitive and genuinely helpful. The heat maps and overall ease of use make it so much simpler to compare feedback across different services and pinpoint where we need to focus our action planning. I also really appreciate how WorkBuzz expands our employee listening options and lets us create tailored surveys that support our well-being and inclusion work. It’s become a great tool for helping our people feel heard."

- Jenny Goodchild, Deputy HR Director 

Unlocking the power of WorkBuzz

After partnering with Agenda Consulting for 10 years on employee surveys, RMBI Care Co. transitioned to using the WorkBuzz platform, appreciating its intuitive interface, heatmaps for regional and care home analysis, and ease of creating custom surveys.

RMBI Care Co. has recently used WorkBuzz to roll out a focused survey to prepare for reaccreditation as a menopause-friendly workplace. The intuitive platform made it quick and easy for the HR team to create, distribute, and analyse the feedback on this specific topic-focused survey.

Communication of results and areas to explore is made clear and simple by the WorkBuzz reporting, enabling RMBI Care Co.’s HR team to easily distribute key findings and outcomes with regional teams and leadership.