Karen Ward is the longest-serving member of staff at Britannia Homecare. She joined nearly 23 years ago as a homecare worker, then moved up to senior carer, team leader and into the office. That path isn't unusual at Britannia: everyone in the office, including the manager, started out as a homecare worker.

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When Karen wanted a change, Britannia found a way to keep her. "I wanted to stay with Britannia because it was such a good company to work for," she says. "[They] basically created a position for me within the company."

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Today she's Senior HR Coordinator, one half of a two-person HR team with her colleague Caroline.

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It says a lot about what Britannia values. The team takes pride in longevity, with many staff who've been there more than 10 years and quite a few more than 15. For Karen, that loyalty comes from one place: the relationship between HR, management and the people doing the care.

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Britannia provides personal care, nutrition and hydration, medication support, domestic help and wellbeing support to adults across a large area. Behind that sits a busy HR function. Karen and Caroline run appraisals and supervisions, train new starters, hold back-to-work meetings, sign off spot checks and Care Certificates, and run interviews and exit interviews. They also answer phones and resolve concerns raised in Birdie. "It's just constantly busy," Karen says.

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Appraisals used to follow Britannia's own form, shown on a large TV in the training room and typed up live as the conversation went. The form was then printed, and the member of staff read it and signed the paper copy for their file.

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It got the job done, but it shaped the conversation. "It all seemed very regimented," Karen says. "These are the questions I need to ask you. So I'd ask you and then I would type the answer." She remembers sitting on the other side of that table herself: knowing exactly how to do the job, but unsure which words the form wanted to hear.

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Britannia was one of the first agencies to try SmartMeetings, part of Birdie’s SmartTools. It lets the team focus on the conversation while SmartMeetings takes the notes. Whether it’s an appraisal, a supervision or a client review, it records what’s said and turns it into a summary with the key points and actions to follow up, ready for the team to check in Birdie.

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The preparation still happens. Before an appraisal, Karen looks back at the last one's goals, recent spot checks, and feedback from the people Britannia supports and from colleagues. What's changed is the meeting itself.

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"Now it flows like a conversation," she says. "If I find that there's any slight little gaps, then I can immediately give them an update on that, or it'll be flagged up [that] we need to put this person into a little bit more training."

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Afterwards, Karen reviews the summary, gives each action a deadline (booking someone onto first aid training, for example) and saves a PDF straight onto the member of staff's file. Appraisals stay private to HR unless she chooses to share them, which mattered to her from the start.

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She's started using it beyond appraisals too. When spot checks take her out to staff working in different areas, she makes notes on the visit, then records her summary back in the office's quiet room. "It was very good," she says. "It documented everything that I wanted it to."

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Between them, Karen and Caroline now record 10–15 SmartMeetings a week on average. In the past, an appraisal used to take well over an hour with the typing, and that didn't include the member of staff coming back in to read and sign the printed copy.

Now an appraisal and an annual competency review take somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour. "So it is saving a lot of time," Karen says.

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For Karen, though, the time isn't the point. "It's not about let's just do a SmartMeeting because it saves time," she says. "For me, it's about, I can actually have a conversation with the staff."

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That's where she sees the real value for a business like Britannia. "If your staff feel valued because you're actually giving them some of your time, they're more likely to stay," she says. "If you've got happy staff, then everybody's happy across the board."

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Karen doesn't run client assessments herself, but Britannia's assessors use SmartPlans, Birdie's AI assessment tool, and she hears the same from them. "You're going into people's homes, and if you're having to fill in a box, asking questions and write it down... Whereas now they're able to go in there and just have a chat with them, and they learn more about their needs," she says. "Same [as] we do with staff."

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Her advice to other agencies comes back to being personable with your team: "Just use it. It allows you to have that person-centred approach with your staff."

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And as Karen puts it: "I don't know how we lived without it."

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