By Stephen Tweed
The Biggest Threat to Home Care is the Caregiver Shortage!
That’s one conclusion from the 2016 Home Care Benchmarking Study that will be published shortly by Home Care Pulse. In our sneak peak at some of the coming industry data, this year’s study confirms what we have been hearing from CEOs across the country. There is a Caregiver Recruiting Crisis affecting all of home care. Those agencies that want to grow and prosper in the coming years will have to solve it.
Over the next few months, we will be bringing you strategies and insights from some of the leading home care companies in the country. We’ll connect you with CEOs and COOs who are finding solutions to the crisis. And we’ll continue our research into the most effective ways to recruit, select, train, and retain to quality caregivers.
Ask the Expert
To get some insights on how to find the caregivers you need, I turned to my friend and colleague, Scott Spangler. 
Scott is the former COO of Cypress Home Care Solutions in Phoenix, AZ, and host for our very first Private Duty Field Trip. Scott is an expert in home care operations, and he considers recruiting and selection a key component of operations. I talked with Scott about the Caregiver Recruiting Crisis, and he began with a simple statement.
“CEOs need to think differently about recruiting.”
What do you mean, Scott?
“Too many CEOs just delegate recruiting to someone on their office staff and say, ‘find me more caregivers’. You can’t do that any more.”
What do you mean, Scott?
In my conversation with Scott, we discussed how CEOs need to think and act differently if they are going to create a culture that attracts high quality caregivers.
There are three ways home care CEOs need to think differently.
- You have to understand the differences in caregivers. Not all caregivers are created equal. You need to study the attitudes, behaviors, and work ethic of your best caregivers.
- You need to have the right person in charge of recruiting. You can no longer assign this to an office staffer or add-in to the duties of your scheduling coordinator. You need a “marketer” who is focused on selling your company to high potential applicants.
- You need to have a high sense of urgency. The best caregivers are already happily working for someone else, and if they become available to work for you, you better act quickly. You need to be able accept and screen an application and set up an interview within 24 hours. You need to be interviewing and on-boarding weekly, so that you can put that caregivers to work within a few days.
We’ve seen it in our Caregiver Quality Assurance program. CEOs get very excited about using our online assessment tool to evaluate candidate’s attitudes, behavioral style, and thinking ability. But then they delegate the recruiting and selection to staff and don’t monitor the results of the recruiting and selection process. Then when there is a shortage, they come back and put pressure on whoever is doing the recruiting. “Find us more caregivers.”
Recruiting and Selection is a Process.
One of the Five Points of Strategic Focus is Process. As a home care leader, you need to be looking at every task that you do over and over again and be systems thinker. How can we put in place a process so that we do this task with repetition and consistency? What can we learn to make this process more effective? How can we measure the performance of our recruiting process and make continuous improvement? What can you do to make a candidate’s life better by coming to work for you? What can you do to refine the words you use in your recruiting ads to tell the story of why a person would want to work with you? How can you get your office team and recruiter fired up and excited about finding top talent for caregivers?
Connect with Other CEOs
Beginning this month, we a rolling out the Home Care CEO Forum, our new membership network for CEOs in the top 10% of home care, and CEOs who want to be in the top 10%. The Forum is an opportunity connect with other leaders through virtual and live Round Tables, Field Trips, and Mastermind Groups.
Our next CEO Virtual Round Table will be on Thursday, March 24, 2016 at 4:00 pm eastern time when Scott Spangler will be with us to talk about Solving the Caregiver Recruiting Crisis, Part I: What CEOs Need to Understand About Recruiting.
If you are facing the recruiting crisis, you won’t want to miss this first in a series of online conversations with leaders in our industry as we work together to find new ways to attract and retain the caregivers you need to grow your business.
The Virtual CEO Round Table is FREE to Members of the CEO Forum. If you have been a Premium Member of The Academy for Private Duty Home Care, you are now a member of the Forum. If you have never been a member, now is the time to join.
Join the CEO Forum
If you are not yet a member of the Forum, you may attend this online Round Table on a pay-per-view basis.
Register for the CEO Round Table
Join us at Cypress Home Care Solutions in Phoenix on April 13 & 14 for our next Private Duty Field Trip.
