Home Care Heroes Blog - Ankota

Home Care Growth Kit: Recruiting + Retaining = Growth

Written by Jed Hammel | Dec 15, 2021 6:01:04 PM
(For more on growing your agency, please check out our free "Home Care Growth Best Practices" resource.)

"Small home care agencies believe that they are small because they can't get client referrals. Big agencies KNOW that they're big because they can recruit and retain caregivers."

The top challenge in home care is having the staff to fill cases. The agencies who can take the phone call, meet the prospect today, and staff the case tomorrow are growing astronomically. The agencies who think they can suggest a home visit next week and then take two weeks to recruit a caregiver are being left in the dust.

With all that in mind, today's focus in the home care growth kit is recruiting and retention.

How to Attract More Caregivers

Below we provide a curated collection of some of the best advice we've found from industry leaders on the topic of caregiver recruiting and retention:

From Home Care HR Expert Anne-Lise Gere:

Home Care HR Expert Anne-Lise Gere offers Six Strategies to Improve Recruiting and Retention.

The top strategies are as follows:

  • Emphasize your Caregiver Satisfaction Ratings
  • Benchmark and Offer Competitive Wages
  • Provide Mentoring to Cut Down On Early Turnover
  • Promote Your Unique Culture
  • Provide Career Development (not just a job)
  • Your Office Staff Matters more than ever!

We recently chatted with Anne-Lise on the Home Care Heroes Podcast.

Click below to hear her insights:

 
 
From Home Care Growth Expert Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss
Here's a great video from Steve the Hurricane on "How to Attract Caregivers.":

From Home Care Marketing Expert Jason Chagnon

Since the Internet is the first place that everyone searches for everything, check out this article from home care website expert, Jason Chagnon, at Providential Marketing. He offers 10 Creative Suggestions in this article, including SnapChat, Reverse Career Fairs, Leveraging Holidays and Current Events, and asking your caregivers how they found you.

From Home Care Expert Ginny Kenyon  

Ginny Kenyon reminds us that many caregivers entering the marketplace today are Millennials or from  "Generation Z" and that they have a different mindset when searching for fulfillment in their lives. You might enjoy her article about recruiting tips for Generation Z.

How to Ask Great Caregiver Interview Questions

Home Care Pulse has a two article series where they give advice on interview questions. The first article suggests that you should ask four types of questions, as follows:

  1. Past Experiences
  2. Behavioral Questions 
  3. Hypothetical Questions
  4. Skills Questions

But then an expanded article adds a 5th category which might be the most important one. They call it "Questions to Help You Understand Their Needs as an Employee." Don't be intimidated, but this second article gives you 65 questions to choose from.

How to Provide Excellent Caregiver Training

In a home care business, your caregivers are your product, and caregiver education is a key way to develop a high quality product. Caregiver education is also a key ingredient in your caregiver education program. Home Care Pulse shared an article entitled The Top 10 Topics You Should be Training Your Caregivers On. Please read the full article for all of the detailed insights that are shared, but here's the top 10 list:

  1. Housekeeping
  2. Transportation safety
  3. Preventing pressure ulcers
  4. Recognizing Abnormal observations
  5. Caring for clients with mental illness
  6. Caring for someone after a stroke
  7. Preventing readmissions
  8. Helping someone with COPD
  9. Helping someone after a heart attack
  10. Common medications
 

How to Safeguard Against Attrition in the First 90 Days

In the article, Overcoming the Biggest Obstacle to Growing Your Home Care Business, Home Care Pulse focuses in on improving your 90 day retention rate.  Sadly, caregiver turnover averages over 60% per year and when caregivers leave in the first 90 days, your costs to recruit and train the caregiver will never be recuperated. 

Note that the biggest reason that caregivers leave is that they don't get assigned enough hours, or they lose their case and don't get reassigned quickly enough. The top 3 suggestions are as follows:

  1. Hire the right caregivers in the first place
  2. Keep new caregivers working the hours they want, and
  3. Stay in touch with your caregivers, always making sure that they are valued and appreciated
Here's another link to the full article.
 

How to Continue to Learn Home Care Best Practices

Stephen Tweed is one of the preeminent consultants in the home care industry. Stephen joined the Home Care Heroes podcast and shared the foundations of a Caregiver Quality Assurance Program, and the value of growing and learning in Mastermind Groups. Here's a link to the episode or you can listen here:
 
 
 
 

Recruiting and Retention Training Suggestions

There's a very robust recruiting and retention course called Momentum that is taught by Home Care Results expert Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss and Home Care HR Expert Anne-List Gere. Plus, we're able to give you a $1,000 discount on that program. Be sure to use code "ANKOTA1000" for the discount. 
 
Just click the picture below to learn more:
 

Additionally, Valerie VanBooven from Approved Senior Network was kind enough to offer a 4 part online training course on recruiting and retention that you can access by clicking here:
 

Home Care Recruiting Ideas for When You've Tried Everything Else

We're sure that you've found numerous valuable ideas in this installment of the home care growth kit, but as an added bonus, here are some further guides and resources for you:

From Home Care Pulse:

From Ankota:

From Providentia Marketing:

Thanks for reading this article and jumpstarting your agency's growth journey.  For a quick and shameless plug, Ankota wants to be your home care software provider. We consider home care professionals to be heroes, and our mission is to take care of the home care tech so you can focus on the "hero stuff" like providing great care, recruiting and retaining great caregivers and growing your business. If you'd like to connect, please click here.

Ankota is the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com. 
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