By Stephen Tweed
How profitable is your home care company? What would it take to make it more profitable?
According to the 2014 Private Duty Benchmarking Study from Home Care Pulse, the median sized company with revenue of $1,398,000 had a net operating profit of 23.5%. That’s quite good. However, many companies had net operating profit of nearly 30%. How do they do that?
Well, there is plenty of research from other industries to show that companies 
with highly engaged workers are more profitable that companies that do not engage their workers. Engagement, defined as “involvement, commitment, passion, enthusiasm, focused effort and energy”, has now been widely correlated with higher company performance. In a 2012 analysis of 263 research studies across 192 companies, Gallup found that companies in the top 25% for engaged employees, compared with the bottom 25%, had 22 percent higher profitability, 10 percent higher customer satisfaction ratings, 28 percent less employee theft and 48 percent fewer safety incidents.
A 2012 global work force study of 32,000 employees by the consulting company Towers Watson found that companies with the highest number of “sustainably engaged” employees had an operating margin of 27 percent, nearly three times those with the lowest traditional engagement scores. Put simply, the way people feel at work profoundly influences how they perform.
Employee engagement begins with the people you hire. Recruiting and selecting employees that have been highly engaged with their previous job and their previous company is a predictor of future success. The CQA Pre-Employment Assessment from Caregiver Quality Assurance® now has a section that measure employee engagement. By using this tool you increase the probability that you will hire employees who are likely to engage with the job and your company.
If you are currently a member of Caregiver Quality Assurance® talk with Diane West, CQA Program Manager, about how to use and interpret the Employee Engagement section of the CQA assessment. If you are not yet a member of Caregiver Quality Assurance®, give Diane a call at 502-339-2132 to take a free demo of the assessment and find out how you can hire more engaged employees.
Hire better people who are more engaged and you will improve client satisfaction, increase your profits, and reduce your stress. What is that worth to you?
