Spotlight on Autumna Founder Debbie Harris

Debbie Harris has been an innovator and leader in the care industry for over a decade. She was the visionary who founded care home reviews and now runs Autumna, the UK’s largest and most detailed online directory of later life care.

Debbie’s innovations continue with S.A.F.E infection control, CHOICE Dining, Live Ratings and D.A.D (Dashboard for Accelerated Discharge) all of which come together to give families and care professionals alike, easier access to the information they need to find appropriate and available care.

We asked, so what drives you Debbie?

What drives me is the ability to make change happen and the reason I can do that is because of the Autumna platform.

The platform is the visible face of later life social care, all in one location, and we are using the needs of the care seeker to drive and improve the standards, not only of our platform, but also across the social care sector.  It encourages greater transparency, online visibility and accountability. That, in turn, is driving change and improvements in the quality of care and in the understanding of care.

Why did you become involved in the later life care sector?

I experienced the sector initially as a care seeker about 15 years ago when I was tasked with finding a care home for an elderly relative.  I just remember, on that occasion, not understanding anything and feeling completely lost.

That experience has been reinforced thousands of times over the last 15 years by all the families I speak to because later life care is not a subject that's talked about until you absolutely need it.

Nobody really takes the opportunity to prepare or consider what they will do in advance, so every time somebody starts looking for care, they’re in exactly the same position as I was all those years ago. They don't know what to do. Back then I only had the yellow pages, there was no internet or online directory to help me.

Hopefully I’ve changed that side of things for the better with Autumna. We’ve designed the website in such a way that it guides care seekers and highlights the sort of questions they should be asking, and by doing that, by making them more aware of what is on offer, we can use their engagement to help drive up standards.

Did you always want to set up your own business in the care sector?

Not really.  I've always been interested in business and I've always been around very successful businessmen, but with the emphasis being on ‘men’.  I had never been around any successful businesswomen who I could use as role models.

It's literally only been over the past five years that I've realised that I actually have quite a unique set of attitudes and capabilities to bring to this sector.  I don’t think it’s something you can say about many sectors, but, to my mind, there’s a really, clear advantage in being a woman in business in this sector.

I think 80% of the paid workforce in care are women.  If you add the unpaid sector, my guess is it’s even higher.  So, I believe, you need somebody working in the sector, and influencing the sector that understands the needs of women, and yet I don't know of another directory that is run by a woman, they all seem to be run by men. 

With the recent ‘International Women’s Day’ it really has highlighted how the social care sector is surrounded by inspirational women from all walks of life, and we need to keep on celebrating this across the care sector.

What is the basis of Autumna’s culture and how is it instilled across the business?

Autumna’s culture is all about collaboration and support, both internally and externally.

I think this is one of the things that being a woman brings to the business.  Women naturally talk to each other, collaborate and share.  We naturally support each other.

So, for example, if anybody contacts me, I will always talk to them and try to help them.  

I was reintroduced to somebody recently on an International Women’s podcast. She told me that I was apparently the second person she spoke to when she was setting up her business and it was as a result of our conversation back then that she carried on with it and by all accounts has made a great success of it.

That sort of thing makes me feel really proud, and I hope that is what I am also doing internally, within Autumna.  

We've got mentoring and learning going on across the company.  Our staff is made up of men and women, of course, old and young and of different ethnicities.  We’re a very diverse, supported group of people and we very rarely lose staff to other employers.  In fact, just recently, we’ve had two return to us after being tempted elsewhere, which I think speaks volumes about our culture and how we value people. 

You don't have a physical office though….so how does that work?

When Covid hit we had certain employees who needed to ‘shield’, so we made the decision to leave the office and work remotely and we realised within four or five weeks that we didn't actually need an office.  We work quite unusually.  We work remotely but we are on TEAMs all day long, with our cameras on but the microphones muted, unless, of course, we need to discuss anything with the group. 

We've grown rapidly over the last three years, so we now subdivide into smaller groups, for practical purposes but, each morning at 9am, we all meet up and go through what everyone will be doing for the day and then again, we do the same thing at 5:30pm to see how everybody's got on and to congratulate people for a good days’ work.  The drive and the team motivation to perform well is maintained.

What is your vision for Autumna?

Autumna, I believe, has a very big part to play in this sector in the future.  We sit in a unique position in that we are working both with care seekers and care providers.  We are very care seeker led in the innovations we bring to the platform.  We are always listening to what the care seekers are saying, and we are responding to them, but in a way that also supports the care providers by giving them a Return on Investment too since you can't do one without the other.

I’m really pleased to say there is a lot of change coming over the next few months at Autumna, a lot of exciting new innovations and developments that will really support the providers at a time when they really need it.