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Today, this article will look at little different than out typical articles. We all know the costs of losing employees and trying to hire and train new ones. It is exhausting and expensive. So, we think about our wages and benefit packages all the time. What can we do differently that makes people stay? We can’t change the job and we don’t want to keep people that don’t like the work itself. So, how do we acknowledge employees in a way that is valuable to them and that our businesses can afford to do? 5 Things To Consider About Employee Recognition At Your Christmas Party: 1. Years of Service: These can be based on milestone work anniversaries (5, 10, 15 yrs, etc.). If a person has been at your agency 11 years, you pull them up and acknowledge them in the group of employees who have been there at least 10 years up until the time they hit the 15 years landmark. This way longevity is recognized yearly. 2. Special Employee awards: Now, this may be difficult if your staff is very small, but acknowledge the employee who has gone the extra mile in the job they do. Tell the story. The employee needs to know when the employer is proud of the work that has been done. Consider a plaque or certificate. Don’t minimize the value of the employee having them to display. 3. Acknowledge all employees in the mix: Because we are a clinical industry, the administrative staff is often overlooked on day-to-day operations. Ultimately, don’t miss the chance to acknowledge the employee who was able to catch billing errors or collect on a large account. Staff doesn’t like to hear about money, but those types of collections keep Christmas bonuses in place! So, make sure the other staff knows the accomplishments of the finance department or the office manager that every caller loves to speak to. Don't ever forget the IT staff that is on call more than any clinical person in your agency! 4. Letters from the administration: Add a personal note to your staff either collectively or individually depending on the size of your agency. If you are larger, there are employees you don’t often see or get to talk to on a regular basis, so take the time so send a note with that Christmas bonus. 5. Consider the Christmas bonus: Listen, some of you can afford to do substantial monetary bonuses and that is fantastic. However, if you are not in that position, consider something in its place. Maybe small gas cards go with the letter from administration. With the cost of groceries, consider something that helps with the costs of daily living for employees. Big box gift cards in your area will always be used. You may do a lot of these things on a yearly basis to employees. All this being said, it doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons for acknowledgement throughout the year. However, your annual Christmas party is a good way to do it collectively. Between your annual party, write the individual cards to employees when you hear a patient interaction worthy of praise. Or, maybe you buy a gas card for the employee who has picked up extra shifts and always shows up on time. Ultimately, employees will feel valued. You will not regret the time, effort, and energy put into these efforts. Merry Christmas! If you want help with recruitment and retention strategies for your agency, please call Kenyon Homecare Consulting at 206-721-5091 or contact us online today.

By Stephen Tweed As the home care caregiver shortage continues, we recognize that there is no short-term fix. If you want to be successful in home care over a long period of time, you will need to develop a long term strategic initiative to attract and retain the caregivers you need. That means working diligently to create a great place to work. Crafting Your Company Culture: Creating a great place to work for caregivers means crafting a company culture that is in alignment with the needs and wants of your best caregivers. The most recent Best Caregiver Study from Leading Home Care and the Home Care CEO Forum showed that the most reliable workers in home care want: To do meaningful work To feel valued and respected by their clients, their supervisors, and company owners To have a flexible schedule To receive the proper education and training to do their work To feel fairly paid We define company culture as … “The way we do things around here.” Your culture is influenced by four factors; the leadership style of the CEO, the core values that guide your decisions and actions, the behavior you expect, and the behavior you permit. Building a company culture that will enable you to systematically find and keep the caregivers you need is a long-term commitment. Seven Steps To Crafting Your Company Culture: Crafting your culture is not easy, but there is a system that works. After studying dozens of companies that have crafted amazing cultures, and after interviewing CEOs of these companies, we have developed seven specific steps that are necessary to build a strong culture over the long haul: Define your Core Values Define the behaviors you expect for each Core Value Communicate your values and expected behaviors Train your leaders to Live Your Values Engage your Caregivers Promote Your Culture Reinforce Your Culture After leading this process for a number of home care companies, we’ve found that this seven step process takes at least a year to get through, and you are never done. The largest, privately owned home care company in the world has spent over 40 years working on their culture, and they are not done yet. The good news is, you can start today. Where To Start: The place to begin this process is defining your core values. When we lead this process of crafting your culture, we begin by brainstorming a list of values that members of the leadership team believe are important. Then we discuss each value, and define its meaning. We talk about what it means to live this value. Then, we narrow the list of values down to three. Why three values? Because people can’t remember more than four. If you have seven core values, and people can’t remember that last four then why have them? Pick the three that are most important and that your team members resonate with. Begin there. Top Tier Home Care Companies Are Working on Their Company Culture: As you know by know, through the Home Care CEO Forum and our Home Care Mastermind Groups , we work with companies in the very top tier of our industry. One of the common characteristics of our Top 5% Mastermind Group and our Top 7% Mastermind Group is that they are all working on crafting their company culture. They are working through the steps in this process in varying degrees. The fastest growing companies in these groups have built on their company culture to develop systems to recruit and retain caregivers. We’ve learned that you can only grow your home care company when you are able to attract and retain high quality caregivers, and crafting your company culture is part of that process. This article is being re-published with permission of the writer, Steven Tweed: Stephen Tweed, CSP, is an internationally known health care and business strategist, award winning professional speaker, and published author. He is the CEO of Leading Home Care… a Tweed Jeffries company and the Founder of The Home Care CEO Forum® and Caregiver Quality Assurance®. If you need assistance in your recruitment and retention efforts as well as looking at company culture, call Kenyon Homecare Consulting at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see how we can help.

How many nights are you awake trying to figure out the recruitment and retention puzzle? You changed your benefit package, tried sign-on bonuses, raised salaries and still employees leave. Are you completely frustrated facing Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) and more budget cuts? Are you feeling burned out as an owner and/or administrator? Maybe it is time to take a look at you and where you are in taking care of the person responsible for everyone else. What's Going On With You? On a scale of 1-10, how engaged are you in your agency? Compare today to a year ago, 5 years ago and 10 years ago. What is the difference? Have you moved agencies more than once in that timeframe? The thought process is that we are there to take care of everyone else as well as the agency itself. That’s what we are paid to do, right? Well, yes and no. If you are at wit’s end, then how can you possibly be effective to to keep your employees engaged? That isn’t a judgment, but a legitimate moment to step back and ask who is taking care of you? If you have a very engaged board of directors, then you may have someone actively working on your recruitment and retention. If you don’t, then you need to recognize your own needs to make sure you are as effective as possible for the long haul. Do you have employees with an “A” scorecard who now consistently perform at a “C” level? Ask yourself what has changed? If they are coming into the same job and same conditions, same leadership etc., then something else is happening. Normally, we take the time and ask. We learn of things that may not have anything to do with the job that still affect it. It is usually situational and short term. These are things as administrators we work through with employees. What about your situation? My team are called into agencies where the leadership is frustrated whether it is financial or clinical or both. Agencies aren’t calling a consultant if everything is going well. You try to do everything not to pile more responsibility on everyone else often at your own expense. Have you evaluated your own breaking point? Who's Looking Into Your Recruitment And Retention? This is the big question, right? And just like employees, it may not be about the money. There may not be enough money for you to miss another child’s ballgame or family get together. So, what do you do to find the balance? Disconnect when you aren’t at work: This is the biggest “easier said than done” statement of them all. However, it is the most important. Ask yourself what happens to your agency if you don’t check your phone and email for the next 8 hours? Do you fail your agency if you don’t answer every email that comes through during the evening? How many times are you interrupted by things that could wait until the next morning? Here’s the tougher question: How much of it do you do to yourself? Have limits as to what you jump and run to do: You will not regret time spent with family, but you may regret vacation time talking with the office unnecessarily. Disconnect and develop reasonable boundaries so you don’t end up resenting going to work in the morning. Maybe you need additional vacation time: Let’s face it, the job isn’t the same as it was 5, 10, or 20 years ago. If you sit at the same vacation time you did 10 years ago, maybe it is time for more. Maybe the ability to disconnect hinges on the ability to truly get away from your physical location. Go somewhere with a different time zone. It doesn’t mean you aren’t available to employees, it just means they may be more willing to problem solve before calling if it is 4 AM your time. Get the right person to cover in your absence: We see a lot of agencies where the administrator and the back-up work well together. If your number 2 in charge doesn’t have autonomy and confidence to make decisions independently, then you don’t have a good number 2. Your back-up administrator needs to be confident to make what decisions are within his or her wheelhouse. If you go away for a week and get called several times, then you need to work with those in charge in your absence. There are certainly times where contact is necessary, but it needs to be the exception and not the rule. Successful recruitment and retention strategies for your agency have to consider you in the process too. What do you do to change your focus: I have to admit that this one was a tough one for me. How many times do you find yourself engaged in something else and realize you are right back to work in your mind? It is one thing to disconnect from something physical like your phone or your laptop, but a whole different story when it comes to your brain. Find what works for you. Podcasts (that have nothing to do with work), guided meditation, exercise, music, and time with friends/family all take you actively focusing on something else. Learning to keep your mind focused on something other than your business takes time. Everything Starts With Operations: You can know the regulations, have a great policy manual, maintain optimal recruitment and retention and onboarding , and yet still struggle. Being able to put the pieces together for operational efficiency and excellence is a different issue and skill set. So, understand your limitations and get the people around you that have the talents to complete the things you struggle to do well. We see it with employees everyday. Employees gravitate to the tasks they are good and thrive doing, so why would you be any different? You can have the best plan but need to have people around you that can help with the execution of it. At Peek Consulting , we work with homecare, home health, and hospice agencies who are looking for clinical, financial, and operational solutions for their agencies. This article is being republished with the permission of the writer, Shelly Barrett. Call Kenyon Homecare Consulting To Help With All Your Consulting Needs: If you need assistance with your homecare. home health or hospice agency or are looking to start and agency, Kenyon Homecare Consulting can help. Please call us today at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see how we can make things easier for you! We have a comprehensive line of products and services to help you with all your need.

If you follow this blog, you will know that our last post dealt with some information obtained in the National Healthcare at Home Best Practices and Future Insights Study . There are so many excellent data points and today we want to look a little more into expectations for new employees and retention of staff as well as legacy planning. If you have not downloaded the entire report, then please do. When you read the items we reference from the report here, then consider where your agency culture could potentially change to improve retention of staff. Recruitment of Nurses to the Industry: It is no surprise that topping the list of barriers is compensation being higher in other healthcare venues than home health and hospice. This is not new considering our our reimbursement in comparison to hospitals, etc. However, within the top 3 barriers was a misinformed or wrong perception of the industry. This was true for Home health and Hospice Centers of Excellence reporting as well. Our industry is somewhat handcuffed on the reimbursement issue, but what does that tell us we need to do to help those nurses understand the industry differently? How can we reach people to change it? After a few years working in the industry, I had several nurses communicate to me a feeling that they did not believe their assessment skills were good enough to be in home health or hospice. I communicated the opposite. When working with other staff directly around me, I always felt I didn't need to figure things out on my own. My assessment skills got much better working independently in home health and hospice. How many nurses shy away for this exact reason? Recruitment of Aides to the Industry: Again, the biggest barrier lies in reimbursement. This is a tough thing, but we as home health and hospice agencies don't utilize aides to their fullest capacity most of the time. If we did, then what resources in terms of additional visits made by higher cost employees could be decreased. Doesn't this allow us to train, increase expectations of certain skilled aides and change rates of pay because of the advanced care provided by these staff? The biggest take home here is that the Centers for Excellence agencies are more likely to utilize colleges/ universities and preceptor programs as sources of recruitment than those non Centers for Excellence agencies. Are you looking into this in your area? Legacy Planning: This data point was very interesting from a consulting standpoint. We all know that major changes to leadership can be very disruptive to employee job satisfaction as well as recruitment and retention. Hospice agencies reported the effect of leadership changes in the next 3-5 years as having a 64.13% neutral impact. Meanwhile, when home health was surveyed, it reported a negative impact of 62.57% and very negative impact at 35.50%. Only 2.23% of home health agencies reported leadership changes as a neutral impact. Although the industries have differences, the stark contrast to the impact of leadership changes is drastic. It is clear why over 89% of the 1,000 home health agencies involved have formal legacy planning. Meanwhile, only 11.41% of hospice planned for change. As far as best practices, 99% of Home Health Centers of Excellence agencies have formal legacy planning. Kenyon Homecare Consulting can Help: Our next article will focus on another portion of this report. We would suggest agency leadership use the metrics involved to understand their own agency strengths, weaknesses, and need for planning. Ultimately, there is so much data here to digest and so much of it can help you look at your agency through a different lens. At Kenyon Homecare Consulting , we help agencies improve clinically, financially, and operationally to function the best way they are able. If you would like assistance with your agency, then call us today at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see how we can help!

By Stephen Tweed This month is Company Culture Month for the Home Care CEO Mastermind Groups, and our Mastermind Town Hall will focus on creating a “Caregiver First” Culture. You’ve read our posts before so you know that we define company culture as “The way we do things around here.” And you also have heard me talk about the four elements of your company culture: The Leadership Style of the CEO The Core Values the Guide Your Decisions and Actions The Behavior you Expect The Behavior you Permit Using our Values Worksheet, we’ve guided dozens of home care companies through the process of defining their core values, describing the behaviors that to with each of the values, and communicating those expected behaviors to all members of the team. Holding Team Members Accountable My wife and business partner, Elizabeth Jeffries, RN, CSP, CPAE is a world class Executive Coach. She coaches CEOs in large hospital systems, and she coaches Physician Leaders in academic schools of medicine at several esteemed universities. Elizabeth works with these executives on their leadership skills, and helps them develop relationships with the members of their leadership teams. Here favorite coaching is on-boarding new leaders as they move into a new role in the organization. One of the elements of leadership that Elizabeth works with is accountability, and helping her coaching clients hold people accountable for what they committed to do. She has even developed a Seven Step Accountability Script that leaders can use to prepare that conversation. The seven steps are: Describe – the opportunity for developmental coaching Express – how you feel about this situation Question – what questions do you want to ask? Suggest – what outcomes you want Explain – the benefits to the person for this course of action Ask – for commitment Account for : – what you will say to hold the person accountable You can read the details of this process in Elizabeth’s newest book, What Exceptional Executives Need to Know. The Behavior You Permit You Promote In developing her coaching process over the years, Elizabeth has developed a mantra that holds true for most situations. “The Behavior You Permit you Promote.” This is very true when it comes to crafting your company culture. And when you are crafting an “Employees First Culture,” you will need to be observing the behavior of leaders toward their team members, and holding them accountable for demonstrating the behavior you expect. We have learned over the years that it is very easy for leaders to speak the words that describe the company culture. It is much more difficult to demonstrate the behaviors that go with living your values. What do you do when a member of your team behaves in a way that is outside of your expectations? What do you say? What do you do? What are the consequences? How do you hold Caregivers Accountable? In today’s world of high turnover, no call – no show, and unreliable caregivers, how do you hold caregivers accountable for the behavior you expect? While it is not easy, there are some steps you can take to increase the probability that your caregivers will behave the way you want them to, and they’ll stay with you. Here are some specific concrete steps you can take to get your caregivers to buy in to your company culture and demonstrate the behaviors that you expect: Communicate your company values in to your job ads Build “Culture Fit” into your selection process Use behavioral interview questions to determine how the applicants core values align with your company values Focus on company culture in your on-boarding process Train your office team members on the values and behaviors of your culture Be very specific with caregivers about the behavior that is expected and the consequences Make sure that your supervisors and managers are holding caregivers accountable Ask very specific questions when having conversations about behavior. Build your values and behaviors into your reward system. Reward caregivers for living your company values and expected behaviors Enforce your expected behaviors and implement the consequences for bad behavior. Use the Seven Step Accountability Script when having those conversations. There is no magic answer to the process of implementing your culture and getting your caregivers to behave the way you want them to. But the companies we work with you are really focused on crafting their company culture are seeing measurable improvements in their ability to attract high quality new hires, and in retaining those new hires. Another Mantra that has come out of our work: “People who want to work, want to work with people who want to work.” When you build an amazing culture of attraction and accountability, you’ll find that these suggestions really do work to find and keep the people you need to grow your business. Discuss These Ideas with your Peers One of the great ways to test these principles is to discuss them in depth with your peers, and learn from OPE – Other People’s Experience . You can do that by becoming a member of a Home Care CEO Mastermind Group . Nobody really understands what you are going through as a home care company owner except another owner of a home care company your same size. This article is being re-published with permission of the writer, Steven Tweed: Stephen Tweed, CSP, is an internationally known health care and business strategist, award winning professional speaker, and published author. He is the CEO of Leading Home Care… a Tweed Jeffries company and the Founder of The Home Care CEO Forum® and Caregiver Quality Assurance®. If you need assistance with your homecare. home health or hospice agency or are looking to start and agency, Kenyon Homecare Consulting can help. Please call us today at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see how we can make things easier for you!

By Stephen Tweed I became of fan of Marcus Buckingham with when he worked with the Gallup Organization and wrote his first book, First Break All the Rules . He shared lots of facts and data from Gallup surveys of employees, and came to some conclusions that can help companies grow. One of those conclusions was the quote above. We got a sneak peak at the 2022 Home Care Benchmarking Study from Home Care Pulse, and the turnover number for last year was 64%. That’s a little better than the 65.2% in 2020, but not much. Turnover has basically been flat for the past six years. We also learned that 57% of turnover happens in the first 90 days of employment. That’s a refinement on the number we have been using for a while that said that 80% of turnover happens in the first 90 days. WHAT CAUSES CAREGIVER TURNOVER? Every month, Home Care Pulse surveys thousands of caregivers. From that data, they have identified the five big reasons caregivers leave : Lack of Communication Pay is too low Lack of Consistent Schedule with enough hours Lack of Support from Office Staff Management is Disorganized and Operates Last Minute We see that four of the top five causes are related to the action, or inaction, of managers and office team members. “Caregivers leave managers, not companies.” WHAT ROLE DOES YOUR OFFICE TEAM PLAY IN CAREGIVER RETENTION? This month of February 2022, the Mastermind Groups in our Home Care CEO Forum has been discussing the role that their office team plays in retaining caregivers. Members have had open discussion about what they are doing to help their office staff be more responsive to their caregivers. We have seen that companies with the highest growth rates in 2021, companies with the lowest turnover, and companies with the highest 90-day retention have some things in common. It is pretty clear from the data and from anecdotal examples that the home care office team plays a huge role in finding and keeping high quality caregivers. Here are some things high performance home care teams are doing to reduce turnover and improve caregiver satisfaction: Set up a consistent process for communicating with caregivers, particularly in the first 90-days Set up a system to match caregivers’ desired paycheck with their actual hours worked and actual take-home pay Clarify who is actually responsible for supervising caregivers, and communicate that to everyone Provide education and training for team members who supervise caregivers on what caregivers need and want from their supervisor Set up systems so that office team members are more organized and can devote more attention to individual caregiver needs and expectations It is pretty clear from our research that the best caregivers stay with a home care company when they are doing meaningful work, when they feel valued and appreciated, and when their take-home pay matches their financial needs. PUT CAREGIVERS FIRST We’ve been working with home care companies across the US, Canada, the UK and Australia for over three decades. In all of that time, most companies we know have had a “customer-first” mind set where they do everything they can to create a high level of client satisfaction. And that has worked amazingly well for many companies. In 2022, the tide has turned and larger, faster-growing companies have proclaimed a “Caregiver-First Mindset.” That doesn’t mean that client satisfaction and customer service are no longer important. But it means that in this world where you can’t bring on new clients if you don’t have the caregivers, the company priorities and mindset are shifting. It means getting our office team members involved in working together to understand the needs and wants of caregivers first, and putting in place people and processes to meet those needs. It means using caregiver satisfaction data, recruiting data, and retention data to help office team members work together more effectively to keep our best caregivers. This shift from Clients First to Caregivers First is quite difficult for company leaders and team members who have been in business for many years and have constantly focused on client needs. It is taking some major shifts in thinking and in actions to make that shift. CREATING INCENTIVES FOR OFFICE TEAM MEMBERS. Just before the outbreak of COVID, we were doing a site visit to one of our Top 5% Mastermind members. As they discussed their growth % in 2019 over 2018, they shared some data on what they had done to improve 90-day retention. The results were very impressive. As we discussed their process, we heard the CEO repeat back the mantra that we have been promoting for years: “What gets measured gets managed, what gets rewarded gets repeated” This company had set up a new incentive plan for each of their office team members. The incentive plans varied from department to department, but everyone was incentivized based on three performance Metrics: Increase in Weekly Hours of Service Home Care Pulse Satisfaction Survey Results Caregiver Retention The were able to show each of their team members how they contributed to those three numbers, and how they would be rewarded when the numbers moved in the desired direction. It became pretty clear from talking with them about how tracked the metrics, and how they calculated their incentives, that nearly every member of the team had bought into working together to grow the business, improve client and caregiver satisfaction, and keep good caregivers. ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION WITH PEER COMPANIES ABOUT KEEPING YOUR CAREGIVERS A significant number of our in-depth conversations in our Home Care CEO Mastermind Groups are about keeping high quality caregivers. Developing managers and team members so they have the knowledge and skills to nurture those relationships is part of the process. If you would like to have regular conversations about issues like this with leaders of other companies your same size who do not compete with you, you may want to consider becoming a member of a Home Care CEO Mastermind Group in the Home Care CEO Forum . This article re-published with permission of the writer, Steven Tweed: Stephen Tweed, CSP, is an internationally known health care and business strategist, award winning professional speaker, and published author. He is the CEO of Leading Home Care… a Tweed Jeffries company and the Founder of The Home Care CEO Forum® and Caregiver Quality Assurance®. Should you need assistance with your home care, home health, or hospice agency, then call Kenyon Homecare Consulting at 206-721-5091 or contact us online . We help agencies develop practical solutions for success in the home care industry.

" 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.  From Home Care Growth Expert Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss Here's a great video from Steve the Hurricane on "How to Attract Caregivers.": https://youtu.be/zQ6Q8jC3A2k 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: Past Experiences Behavioral Questions Hypothetical Questions 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: Housekeeping Transportation safety Preventing pressure ulcers Recognizing Abnormal observations Caring for clients with mental illness Caring for someone after a stroke Preventing readmissions Helping someone with COPD Helping someone after a heart attack 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: Hire the right caregivers in the first place Keep new caregivers working the hours they want, and Stay in touch with your caregivers, always making sure that they are valued and appreciated Here's anothe r 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 . 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. Click here 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: Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 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: How to Recruit & Retain Caregivers When You’ve Already Tried Everything. From Ankota: CAREGIVER RECRUITING AND RETENTION BIBLE (HOME CARE STAFFING) From Providentia Marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Caregiver Recruiting CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE GROWTH KIT! 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. Kenyon Homecare Consulting can help you with all of your agency's needs. Whether you need assistance with your start-up, recruitment and retention, clinical or operational issues, regulatory compliance, or financial concerns, we can help. Call us today at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see how we can help you reach your goals. Kenyon Homecare Consulting reposted this article with permission of Jed Hammel who authored it and originally posted it to the Ankota Blog.

Clinical employee retention is such a loaded subject. There are so many facets to what makes a clinical employee stay or leave an agency. You have to consider everything important to the employee while realizing generational issues greatly changes the focus for each individual. So, in considering wage, benefits, vacation, family leave, onboarding and the generation of employee involved, have you thought about what robust educational programming brings to the table? Have you ever considered it as a retention measure? It’s Not Just About The Onboarding: We used to see so many agencies with high turnover rates related to the onboarding process. Employees consistently wrote in exit interviews that the orientation was inadequate and employees felt thrown out on their own before ready to safely provide care. While there are still agencies out there with poor education and training in the onboarding process, Kenyon Homecare Consulting would like to focus on what you do to keep the employees challenged and engaged through ongoing education. Let’s consider each clinical background for purposes of this article: Home Health Aides: Aides are often our most underutilized resource with the highest turnover rate. Maybe this prevents you from investing training dollars because the overall lack of long term employment is a hindrance. So, look at things like pay increases attached to additional education. Our biggest cost in healthcare is related to chronic illness. Invest in chronic disease education programs for your aides. This way, the knowledge base is elevated as is the clinical capability of your staff. If you can reward staff with chronic disease certification with pay increases and a different level of engagement in the care plan, then you have potential for cost savings with other disciplines involved. Pull random care plans where chronic illness is the primary diagnosis. When reviewing documentation, are there visits made by a therapist or RN that could have potentially been made by the less costly home health aide? It isn’t about decreasing the nursing or therapist, but about maximizing the potential of the employees and determining service frequencies accordingly. If the home health aide is rewarded for advanced engagement and accountability in patient care, you greatly decrease the desire of the aide to jump ship. Rehab Services: Regardless the therapy discipline, advancing clinical education is a win-win for the agencies. However, since so many agencies utilize contracted services, they don’t invest here. That is a mistake. How many agencies still have therapy providers unwilling to address any medication issues in the home? How many do not provide simple wound care? Do you miss out on vital communication? How many extra visits does nursing make into the home because of it? Providing training to the therapists allows them to improve competence in areas where they may not feel comfortable. Reality is that just because something is within scope of practice doesn’t mean the clinician has competence in the area. My nursing degree says treating pediatric patients in a NICU is within my scope of practice. However, spending the majority of my clinical career in home health and hospice tells me I am clearly not currently competent to do so. We can’t throw our clinicians into the deep end. How many therapists have refused or left your agency because they were uncomfortable or unwilling to complete something within scope of practice? How many would stay if you provided education and training that allowed them to become really good (and comfortable) at managing what you need them to address in patient homes? Nursing: Now, let’s talk about education from the standpoint of mixing things up for your case managers here. Since all nurses provide case management for the patients, we don’t often evaluate how empowering those in the role can help retention. You may have the nurse that does an absolutely fantastic job in the home, but haven't trained these nurses on the meaning and scope of case management. Did you just assume they are really good at the process? You need to also consider your client population in your education to nurses. What is missing that really improves patient care while getting the nurses excited about their mission in the homes? Have you asked them? Ok, What’s Next? If you would like to think differently about education and training as a retention measure, then figure out what your employees are missing. Whether it is chronic disease, specialty services, or improving competence in certain tasks, you need to invest in the right programming. And, you can’t determine what your agency needs here without talking to clinicians. So, include them in the strategic plan. At Kenyon Homecare Consulting, we assist agencies with education to include on-site and virtual training platforms, strategic planning with seasoned clinical consultants, and operational assessments to determine what your educational program needs. Call us at 206-721-5091 or contact us online today!

As we work with home care agencies all around the country, we hear this cry for caregivers all too often. With the increased aging of the population, this cry is getting louder. While different areas of the country have shortages of nurses and therapists, the largest challenge is hiring home care aide. This class of caregiver is called different names depending on the state and the type of care the employee is providing. Since every state has their own set of rules, the caregiver designation will vary with the state except for CNA which is a federal designation and is required for certain federally funded programs. There is evidence of a growing need for home care aides, but the biggest challenge is getting the right fit. The CNA schools are turning out multiple graduation classes a year, but many do not read or speak English enough to work in an unsupervised situation, lack the basic skills to provide care for the patient population and do not always have sufficient knowledge to recognize when the client is having issues. Therefore, health related issues are not brought to the attention of the home care agency management staff. So where do we start? First, you need to assess the clients your home care agency serves and identify the skills and personal attributes that the home care aides will need in order to properly care for them. This includes not only skills and knowledge, but personality traits as well. Once you have identified what is needed to care for your clients, develop a profile of the ideal aide. To establish the presence of the desired traits, require all applicants to take a knowledge test of caregiving (a 50 question test is available through Kenyon Home Care Consulting) and a hands on skills test (recommended to be administered on-site or through a local nursing home). Once it is determined the applicant has the basic knowledge and skills, require that the applicant take an online personality test to determine the presence of desired personality qualities. (One such test is offered online through Steven Tweed Leading Edge called Caregiver Quality Assurance test). If you approach hiring using the above process, the home care aides you hire will be superior and provide your clients with the quality of care that you need to protect the clients but your reputation, which helps your business grow. You will also find that 60% to 80% of home care aides that apply will not meet your requirements. If you have had a very lenient process for hiring this may come as a shock to you and a lament from your schedulers that there are not enough aides to meet your demand. In the short term that will be true. However we have found that over time, the stringent process produces a workforce of quality, dedicated and loyal employees that help with your scheduling headaches. Building a workforce of knowledgeable, skilled, dedicated, loyal and dependable home care aides is the way to the future for home care agencies. Failure to screen and hire for excellence in the home care leads to customer complaints and in some cases litigation. We have provided expert witness services in some cases and when we did an analysis of the root cause of why the agency was sued, it was because of the agency’s failure to hire individuals with the knowledge and understanding needed to adequately care for such a frail population. Additionally, the language barrier present in almost all cases added to complexity of the situation with bad outcomes for the agency, the client, and the home care aide. We realize that in some situations this will prove to be a difficult process to follow because the demand for services exceeds availability of home care aides. When this is the situation, we moved to plan B, developing our own training school to meet our customer needs. If you need help with recruitment and retention or building a quality in-house educational program, Kenyon Homecare Consulting is available to help. Call us at 206-721-5091 or contact us online to see how we can help!