Peaceful R&R – 5 Ways You Can (Try) to Help Your Recruiting & Retention Strategy

The home care industry is booming.. Sort of. There is a wave of home care patients that will be aging, and a wave of home caregivers that is absent. We have talked here on the blog about some of the challenges facing home care agency owners in 2022 and beyond, but today we wanted to focus on some solutions. We now know that millions of aging Americans will need access to home care, so how will we staff them? Let’s break down a few ways home care agencies can evolve their traditional recruiting measures, and retain quality caregivers!

Here are 5 ways you can try to help your recruiting and retention strategy.

Open Your Mind (and Your Hiring Pool)

In order to keep up with demand, and manage a successful home care agency, owners and hiring professionals will need to shift their perspective a bit. Many industries require experience in order to get hired, with young folks needing to “wait their turn.” Obviously, you want to have experienced caregivers on your team, but open your mind to the potential of new caregivers with room to learn and grow.

Engaging with local training programs and local educational institutions can help recruiters be able to connect with students early, and network with your local home care matrix. Having quality relationships with these educators can be a big help in finding talent. Don’t pigeonhole yourself with steep hiring requirements!

Support the New Blood!

Training programs should be robust and engaging! Utilizing technology and video platforms can be a great way to train new employees. When you hire a new caregiver into the field, enhance your traditional required training. Think outside of the box, and don’t do what everyone else does, UNLESS it’s something that you feel fits your company culture. One good measure to consider is mentoring these new inexperienced caregivers by pairing them 1:1 with some of your most experienced employees for training in the field. Skeptics will point to the cost of sending 2 employees, but the benefits for retention and client satisfaction can outweigh the cost of re-hiring over and over.

Let Your Caregivers Provide Their Voice

Caring about your employees is more important than ever. Sometimes, the best connection you can make that demonstrates you care is allowing them to be transparent and honest about problems and solutions. Create a culture and environment that provides regular, distinct opportunities to provide feedback. It’s vital to also incorporate systems that follow through on the feedback! This relationship is one that is honest and open and is ultimately for the betterment of the company and your patients. Provide a responsibility to one or more of your caregivers to be tasked with regular check-ins with your caregivers to hear them out, document needs or issues, and address those issues. This can certainly help your team feel closer, and part of the bigger goals of the organization.

Utilize New Training Tools

Technology can be frustrating at times, but can also provide MAJOR solutions to your business if you embrace it. The pandemic proved to be a huge issue for training but also forced the country to adopt new practices with zoom meetings, telehealth, and other remote communication tools. One major component of change was the shift toward virtual training. There are plenty of great tools to use to provide interactive and effective training for your caregivers. Evolving your perspective on training can certainly help you train better employees, and also help save time and money on peer-to-peer training.

Pay Well, Creatively

Wages are hard to come by for home caregivers. It is unfortunate to see how minimal the median hourly wages for home care workers have risen over the last decade, despite the increase in need. Seeking to be one of the best-paying agencies in your region should be a goal, as paying more than average can obviously help you recruit and retain. Talk to your caregivers about what matters most to them. Consider highlighting performance, PTO packages, and incentives. Provide rewards for the hardest workers, but also highlight growth in new workers. The time is now to get creative and help our caregivers, more than ever!

The time is now to take care of our caregivers, as the demand is only going to continue to rise. We need quality home care workers, and we need them now. What is your strategy for the next year? 5 years? 10 years? How will you evolve with technology? How will you reward your hard workers?

Thanks as always for taking a few minutes to read the blog and remember to follow us on Linkedin for more home care agency news and info!