Aria Care Group
Aria Care Group operates 50 residential care homes across England, Scotland and Jersey, delivering high-quality care and support. Its team of professionals offer a range of services to residents including nursing and dementia care.
The group’s dedicated team of carers and hospitality staff work tirelessly to maintain the high standard of resident care that they are renowned for. With so many different job functions, the business requires a wide range of high-quality uniforms to enable wearers to carry out their roles comfortably and safely. Over the past few years, Aria Care Group has been assessing uniform suppliers in the sector to identify a provider who could fulfil all of its garment needs and ensure consistency across the homes.
the challenge
In May 2023, Aria Care Group identified that by sourcing the uniforms required for each of its departments from one supplier, the team could significantly reduce the time and resource spent. Furthermore, by using a central supplier, Aria Care Group could ensure brand consistency across all of its care homes where previously, each home had autonomy over uniforms, and wore a variety of styles. Introducing consistency would help with brand recognition among a competitive landscape of care homes, but also ensure easy identification of team members no matter which location you were attending.
The care group’s staff provide hospitality from the heart, and required uniforms that embodied this value. Therefore, it was decided that new hospitality uniforms would be the first step in the standardisation process, so the search for a uniform provider began.
Case Study
why alsico?
Aria Care Group already had a longstanding relationship with alsico, having been a customer for eight years. Alsico provided the group’s high performance clinical uniforms, with garments including tunics and healthcare trousers, demonstrating the quality of its solutions - including their durability throughout frequent rewashing.
Alsico worked closely with Aria Care Group to showcase its wider range of solutions, meeting the needs of the entire care home environment, with the same high standard of customer service that had already been evident throughout the eight-year relationship so far. The ability to source company-wide uniform solutions from one trusted supplier was a top priority in Aria Care Group’s decision making and led to the easy decision to select alsico.
Case Study
implementation
To ensure consistency for hospitality uniforms across the entire group’s care homes, the finished design needed to be agreed upon. Alsico worked with Aria Care Group to create a selection of garments for each role bespoke to the organisations requirements, incorporating several different samples so that the team could thoroughly compare how multiple options would look and feel. Attention to detail was key, with branded samples developed with different fonts for personalisation, as well as sizes.
Once the final designs had been approved, the new uniforms needed to be communicated to all Aria Care Group’s staff across locations in England, Scotland and Jersey. Alsico worked with the team to create a digital brochure which illustrated which styles should be worn for each role, as well as a detailed explanation on how to order them. Alsico’s customer portal, which is where each home would order its uniforms, helped to ensure the consistency that the care group was looking for, as users were only shown the relevant garments for their uniform needs rather than the entire environment’s range.
Sourcing all uniforms required within the business under one supplier, and therefore managing many different requirements, is no easy feat and could prove very time consuming. Therefore, to ensure that the transition continued to run smoothly, alsico appointed one dedicated team member who was already involved in the relationship to act as the primary point of contact for the whole group. Having one trusted point of contact has strengthened the collaboration between Aria Care Group and alsico, enabling the workwear specialist to get an even deeper understanding of the care group’s current and future needs. This relationship has been instrumental in aiding the Aria Care Group team through the transition, taking a proactive approach to planning ahead and mitigating any obstacles anticipated on either side.
James Clear, Hospitality Director at Aria Care Group added:
“We are committed to providing excellent care in our communities and delivering a service that our residents and families can trust. Introducing a uniform that is consistent across all of our care homes makes our staff easier to identify, and makes our brand more recognisable. Alsico has gone above and beyond in collaborating with us on the uniform and has been able to cater to the very specific needs of each of our departments. We are looking forward to continuing this relationship as we progress to the next phase of the project.”
learn more about our healthcare solutions
We offer comprehensive uniform solutions for a variety of environments, ensuring comfort, functionality, and sustainability. As one of the largest suppliers of healthcare uniforms in the UK, our expertise spans across care homes, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities, providing tailored solutions that meet the unique demands of each setting.
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