Caring at scale: The Senior Manager's Role in Fostering a Positive Culture

I’ve been a loyal customer of my bank for several years. At least, until this month. I closed my savings account and transferred the money to my ISA. I transferred my credit card balance to another company to take advantage of a 0% offer. Probably thousands of pounds’ worth of business, gone with just a few clicks. 
I doubt anyone noticed. Certainly, nobody cared. 
Rewind a few decades and I would no doubt have had to visit a physical building and speak to a person behind a counter. That person would probably have asked me if there was anything they could have done to change my mind, and maybe even have called the manager over. They would have asked why I’m moving my account, and they may even have been able to offer an incentive to convince me to stay. The scale of banking makes this sort of customer care impossible. 
Twenty years ago I started my career in care. One of the motivations for leaving teaching for the care profession was the fact that teaching was starting to feel like a conveyor belt of coaching children to pass SATs, regardless of the actual value of those abstract assessments. As a carer I got to know the young people I was working with in a much more holistic manner. Partly because I was no longer working under the label of ‘teacher’, but mainly because I was working usually on a 1:1 basis. Later, when I found myself as a senior RSW, deputy manager, and then manager, I maintained that close knowledge of the young people and staff. It is an essential part of any caring role. 
So where does that leave me as a senior manager? Currently I oversee ten beds over five sites across south and mid Wales, with responsibilities that extend far beyond those of a home manager or project manager. This year, if all goes to plan, there will be another site with another two beds as well as work on a multi-million-pound multi-site project in West Wales. All of this will pull me further away from ‘front-line’ work. So how do I ensure the company doesn’t become just another gigantic, faceless corporation leaning more to the ‘industry’ side of the ‘care industry’? Having briefly worked, for one of those companies where you are just a column on the payroll and there are no people to care for, just beds to be filled, I am determined to do all I can to stop even the suggestion that we will head in that direction. 
This is the sort of thing that really does start with the senior management team’s actions. Not their words – anyone can write a mission statement putting the needs of clients/service users at the heart of the service. This is a lovely marketing tool, but to really care at scale you need substance and integrity. Caring at scale can’t be done by the MD, the CEO, or even the Director of Services. Our job is to create the culture in which care is central, and every decision we make sends a message across the company and beyond about how serious we are in that intent. Do we invest in our staff? Do we ensure the homes we offer are places we’d want to liv in ourselves? Do we regard minimum standards, legislation and guidance as things we want to exceed, or simply meet in order to save the extra expense? Do we hire manager, team leaders, and carers who live these values, or do we look at interviews for people who can manage a spreadsheet and find every last penny of efficiency, no matter the real expense? Do our people understand the cost of everything, or the value? 
It is easy to get swept up in the profit and loss statements, the cash flow predictions, the spreadsheets, and the language of management and finance. This is especially true when your chosen role takes you away from the day-to-day lives of the people in your care. What’s so important at a senior management level is to remember why we do this, and ensure we employ people who carry our values – but then support them do work in a manner that supports this. ​