What happens after you ask a carer how their day went? For Nursebuddy, that's where the real work begins.
The latest Carer Wellbeing Report 2026: the toolkit takes the findings from more than 151,000 anonymous daily carer check-ins and asks a practical question: how can homecare managers use what their teams are telling them to make working life better?
The findings paint a surprisingly positive picture. 93% of spontaneous written comments from carers are positive, with people sharing the moments that make the job rewarding: meaningful relationships with clients, personal satisfaction and days when everything simply runs smoothly.
But the difficult days matter too. When a carer tells you they've had a bad day, the next question is why? Nursebuddy’s survey gives carers the opportunity to identify what made a shift difficult, with heavy workloads, lack of support, unexpected problems such as travel issues, and difficult client situations among the key areas highlighted in the data.
That detail matters. It gives managers something to act on, whether that's looking at workloads and rotas, addressing travel pressures, or simply recognising when a carer needs more support.
Rather than waiting until a carer reaches burnout or decides to leave, the new report looks at how those everyday signals can prompt earlier, more practical support.
“Capturing numbers is great, but data is completely useless unless you turn it into root-cause fixes. This part represents the ‘how-to’ blueprint,” says Simo Hännikkälä, CEO and Co-founder of Nursebuddy. “We’ve packed this section with simple resources to help your office teams ease the pressure and protect staff from burnout.”
From insights to action
At the heart of the report is an early warning matrix, designed to help homecare managers recognise the potential risks behind everyday wellbeing signals:
- Fatigue or exhaustion: Often linked to long or consecutive shifts.
- Travel struggles: Frequently caused by unrealistic visit gaps, long journeys, or vehicle issues.
- Peer & office support: A lack of peer support affects morale, while feeling unsupported by management is a much deeper source of distress.
The report gives managers practical ways to respond, from reviewing workloads and travel time to creating more opportunities for check-ins, recognition and peer support.
The research also highlights just how closely operational decisions are tied to wellbeing. Poorly designed schedules were associated with a 32% increase in extreme distress among carers, while 56% of unexpected problems related to issues on the road, including vehicle breakdowns, long journeys and mileage costs.
In other words, supporting carers isn't always about introducing another wellbeing initiative. Sometimes it's about fixing the thing that is making their working day unnecessarily difficult.
Listening has to lead somewhere
Gleberry Support is one example of what this can look like in practice.
The domiciliary care provider reviews its wellbeing data every Monday and shares the results with the team. When someone isn't having a good day, the response might be a quick check-in call, extra training, or simply catching up over a coffee.
It's a useful reminder that asking carers how they’re doing is only the beginning. The real value comes from listening to the answer, spotting the patterns and doing something about them.
Part 2 also looks at the bigger picture, exploring how career development and the Care Workforce Pathway from Skills for Care can help carers feel more supported, valued and able to build a long-term future in homecare.
For Nursebuddy, the message from the report is clear: wellbeing data gives homecare providers a window into what's happening on the frontline. The opportunity is to use that window to make better decisions, and help more carers have more good days.
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