For years, home care agency owners have listed caregiver turnover among the top threats to the industry. So many are stuck on the never-ending hamster wheel of recruiting, onboarding, and turnover before the caregiver even hits 90 days of employment.
So how are some owners and operators avoiding this cycle altogether?
Agency owner Jeff Welsh’s caregiver turnover rate is just over 10%; that’s less than 1/7th of the average caregiver turnover rate according to the most recent Activated Insights Annual Benchmarking Report.
enCappture sat down with him recently to understand how he did it. His answer? Creating a relationship with every employee.
Here’s Jeff’s process:
- Roll out the red carpet for the best applicants
- Create a big first impression
- Make it personal for every employee
- Get the whole team involved
1. Roll Out the Red Carpet for the Best Applicants
How many questions do applicants need to answer to apply for your agency? You may think it’s best to get as much information as possible to rule out weak applicants before you waste time, but Jeff uses a different approach; he asks only a few simple questions, with an option for applicants to upload a résumé.
So how does he sort through a sea of applicants without his staff spending hours on interviews that go nowhere?
Like many home care agencies, Jeff employs a staff member whose job it is to reach out to applicants and schedule interviews. However, in Jeff’s agency, this staff member isn’t just a recruiter. Instead, she acts as a hiring and retention manager. Rather than simply calling and scheduling an interview with everyone who applies, she sorts through the applications to select the best possible candidates and reach out to them personally to set up interviews. She also keeps in touch with them throughout the hiring and onboarding process to keep new caregivers engaged and on the job.
Because the barrier to applying is so low, Jeff’s hiring manager has a wealth of candidates to choose from. Rather than needing to chase down applicants, she is able to pick and choose the most promising leads and really roll out the red carpet to them, starting their relationship with Jeff’s agency off on a positive, professional note.
According to Jeff, this doesn’t just impact his caregivers’ and hiring manager’s job satisfaction; his entire office staff has been positively impacted by this process as well.
To accomplish this yourself:
- Lower the barriers to applying for your agency as much as possible
- Empower your recruiter with additional responsibilities to retain candidates through the hiring process and beyond
- Reach out personally to the best applicants to get them excited about your agency
2. Create a BIG First Impression
Jeff wants caregivers to have one clear impression from their first day with his agency: “I’ve never worked somewhere like this before.”
Caregivers are used to applying for job after job without hearing back, then being treated as interchangeable, without much thought given to team culture. Caregivers are, in essence, the ultimate remote workers—which makes creating culture more difficult, but not impossible.
Jeff starts off with a welcome gift for his new caregivers; a selection of branded merchandise, snacks, and gift cards in a customized box featuring his agency’s logo. He says that this tends to make a big impression on his new caregivers
From there, he focuses on presenting a polished, professional onboarding experience. Jeff hosts onboarding and training in his agency’s own branded mobile app, giving caregivers a platform to access all of their tools from one place.
You can make a great first impression by:
- Ensuring your employees feel excited and prepared from day one on the job
- Surprise new hires with a welcome gift basket to improve engagement
- Present a professional image of your agency with a cohesive central platform, like a mobile app
3. Make it Personal for Every Employee
Jeff also hosted a contest for his employees, asking them why they became caregivers. He engaged a panel of judges to select the best responses, then treated the winners to tickets to a sports game. His reasoning? So his employees could see teamwork in action.
Even in a fun contest, Jeff is consistently tying back to his agency’s mission and core values.
He brings teambuilding and fun together with another initiative in his agency: caregiver baseball cards. Much like the collectibles that inspired this program, each “baseball card” briefly gives important information about the caregiver. In this case, it includes their specialties and interests outside of work. This facilitates connection between his employees in an environment that makes it difficult to get to know your coworkers.
The baseball cards also make it easy to improve caregiver/client matches. Aside from just ensuring caregivers have the skills necessary for a specific case, schedulers can look for caregivers with interests that allow them to really connect with their clients. This improves job satisfaction all around (as well as keeping clients happy), likely contributing to Jeff’s incredibly low caregiver turnover rate.
Want to do the same? Try to:
- Reward with your values by tying caregiver recognition back to your mission statement
- Encourage office staff to get to know caregivers on a personal level to improve client matches and job satisfaction
- Make your caregivers feel like part of a team by sharing their interests
4. Get the Whole Team Involved
For 2024, Jeff told his agency “The Theme is Team.” That means that teamwork is baked into all of his agency’s processes for every team member. Often, “workplace culture” initiatives fail because they are exclusively top-down, shared by the leadership team without operational support to make those values a part of each employee’s daily experience.
To combat this, Jeff intentionally splits up the work of sharing the annual theme. Each office staff member has different, specific tasks to reach out to caregivers that reinforce their agency’s culture. Beyond reenforcing his agency’s mission statement, this also makes caregivers feel more connected to the agency. They can see the full team supporting them, rather than just having a single point of contact.
To get your entire staff in on the action:
- Include meeting the office staff as part of a new hire’s orientation, or, even better, introduce your top candidates to the office staff as the final stage of their interview.
- Give your office staff a stash of gift cards to local coffee shops, lunch stops, or gas stations to give to caregivers as a thank you for helping to fill shifts, a job well done, or other opportunities to improve their relationship.
Bringing it All Together with Technology
Jeff utilizes an enCappture mobile app to accomplish this level of connection with his caregivers at scale. From onboarding to their 5 year anniversary, Jeff uses his app to keep his caregivers engaged and employed with his agency.
If you’d like Jeff’s results for yourself, you can:
