It doesn't matter who we asked, what role they worked in, or in which part of Life Care, lots of people said they feel listened to. We put this down to how we live our values, one of which is ‘Respect’.

We’ve been working on living our values for about ten years (we even have a wall where people celebrate people who live the values), and it seems to be working.

Of course, not everyone feels heard. So that’s why we created our team app. It’s called Life Care Connect. So if someone doesn’t feel heard, we encourage them to jump on the app, and let someone know. And increasingly, they are, which is fantastic (and amazing!).

This also came up again and again, from nurses and carers in particular. They often followed it with, “There’s no politics", or "Everyone’s equal”, or “People are just really lovely here”, or more simply, “The team is good. It makes a difference.” 

We work hard to build our team culture. For instance, every year, every team member participates in "The Life Care Way", a culture-building program that helps us all to refocus on our values.

They say people don't leave organisations; they leave managers. Given so many of our team members say their manager is "approachable", we must be doing something right! It's not just managers through. Our people say, "It's easy to ask for help" and "You never feel stupid asking a question." There's an overlap here, of course - when people respect and value others, they want to listen, even when it's a question like, "Where's that form I need to fill out again?"!