20/01/2026
££ BLOODBATH
BUDGETS BLEED
Care Home Managers, do the maths!!
Take a lowest paid carer who quits.
Their salary was £23k per year.
One carer leaves and it takes 6 to 9 weeks to replace.
During that gap, your £35k per year manager is covering their role.
Average 7.5 weeks at 1.25x OT rate equals roughly £5,300 per leaver,
or if you use agency cover, significantly more.
Care England pegs it at £6k direct plus 33 percent of salary,
which lands in the £10k bracket, so my calc is very conservative here.
If your manager doesn’t claim OT,
then you have an opportunity cost as they do two jobs;
quality and safety risks slip through, and you will pay when CQC finds it.
The manager can cover one carer, but if two leave...
then it might breach your staff to resident ratio,
impacting your occupancy capacity and ultimately the home's income.
That's a huge hit!
But let's assume this isn't the case.
But here’s what that really costs your business…
The average home has 49 staff,
and with a 22% turnover rate, industry average,
that's 11 staff quitting every year.
That's £58,300 per year just on recruitment time lag... BEST CASE!
and that's assuming the lowest paid employee makes up all 11 exits... which it won't,
and that's STILL not counting ads, bonuses, agency, sickness overlap, CQC risk, or lost occupancy.
Then there's the 2 to 4 weeks for your new hire to learn the ropes.
During that time, you’re paying double money and energy.
! THE REALITY !
Research from Skills for Care, CIPD, and Care England consistently agree
on the ballpark range of £10k to £40k per leaver.
The spread reflects different role grades and assumptions: direct recruitment costs are fairly well tracked, around £3k to £6k, but adding indirect losses, vacancy cover, lost expertise, overtime and agency cover, etc., multiplies that several fold.
AKA... you're losing £110,000 to £440,000 bleeding out every single year,
when sat at 22% staff turnover for the typical home.
But this isn’t just about money.
Every time someone leaves, your manager works double,
quality risks slip, and CQC will find it.
This is why I work to completely STOP care managers from EVER needing to hire again. How?
You think your carers are quitting because of low pay? No.
There are homes out there who pay peanuts and their staff stay loyal and work miracles every day.
People quit because they don't feel valued in the team they're immersed in.
That grates harder on their soul than any black and white bank balance ever could.
Even if you don't believe that, the double upside is that if you stopped just two carers from leaving by creating cultural value from the inside, then you will have saved enough to hire an additional nurse which takes the load off everyone else, or raise everyone's hourly pay.
See how this spirals into massive cost savings yet?
By the way this is NOT the manager's fault! They have so much load on their shoulders doing 5 people's jobs because of the revolving door of staff churn that there's no wonder they're just surviving the daily chaos, on edge about being blamed for dropping the ball, and not feeling ready for CQC inspections.
Yet so many managers focus on the recruiting side, and yes that's important,
but a good hire won't break the silent rules that keep the revolving door spinning...
even if they're a wonderful carer, they will leave.
Stop this vicious cycle. Get a retention system that works.
If you want to know the cost to your business,
just DM me the word "CALC" and I'll send you the exact calculator CEOs are using to spot £170k retention leaks,
plus get a sneak peek into the system being used to stop the revolving door.
What's the cost of not stopping this vicious cycle?
Stop hiring your way out of a retention problem.
Build the culture that stays.
