3 Tips from top executives to help with retention and recruitment

On July 21st, 2022, Home Health Care News, in partnership with AlayaCare, hosted a webinar: “Improving Caregiver Recruitment and Retention for your Home Care Agency”. This webinar was focused on the subject surrounding the caregiver recruitment and retention crisis and how home care organizations could overcome these challenges to continue to grow and be successful in the industry.  

Missed the webinar? No worries! Read the summary below and get access to featured clips.  

Webinar Panelists: 

Sava Berhané – SVP Customer Success, AlayaCare 

Kristen Duell – CMO, Home Care Pulse 

Andrew Donlin – Moderator, HHCN 

Tip #1: Competitive wages and better employee benefits should be considered 

While recruiting and retaining caregivers is a top challenge in the industry, Sava Berhané turned the conversation towards the tension between pay increases as a lever for addressing this challenge. 

“When we see caregivers turn over or leave that they’re citing pay and benefits…Data has shown that pay on its own will not be a sole factor for how we keep these workers, especially the best of them in the industry.”

– Sava Berhané

She later mentioned in more detail, how caregivers are getting paid the same salary as workers at department stores, like Walmart, but when you are comparing the care work with the kind of work done at Walmart or Uber, part of the reason why it is competitive is that there is a lot more that you have to sustain and burden if you’re doing care work, yet the wages are too similar. It makes it seem rational that care workers may be looking at other industry options.  

Andrew chimed in repeating Sava’s important point by re-summarizing 

“I think providers are a bit shortsighted in terms of investment because ‘this is going to hurt my bottom line if I invest in it now.’ But you need to think about what it will do for your caregivers and what that will do for recruiting and retention, which are by the way, very costly endeavors if not done right.” 

Tip #2: Combat inflation by improving efficiency and workflows 

Kristen mentioned in the introduction that “You can’t be in-home care without home care workers.” In addition to that, both she and Sava expressed how organizations should leverage tools and technology to increase efficiency, and provide care workers with better resources and support to make their jobs easier. 

“It is a people business and because resources are lacking and being able to leverage those insights and provide them what they need, that’s what we’re here for.  That’s what technology companies are here to support you with.”

– Kristen Duell

How are current agencies and organizations leveraging technology? Adopting technology has been something this industry has been resistant to, according to Kristen, but if implemented in the right way Sava explained that you can look at reducing time and effort, especially with paperwork. 

Tip #3: How do you get somebody interested in your organization and want to work for you? 

“Job Ghosting” is a term that describes when a candidate or new hire vanishes without a call or notification and stops all communication. Andrew brought up a point about how the industry has seen an increase in job “ghosting”. A lot of agencies see this as a “job seekers” problem, but really it is about how caregivers experience your agency’s hiring processes and culture.  

Kristen offers up some advice on how to tackle this and have job seekers become interested in your organization and want to work there.  

“Make sure that they know you from a personal perspective. You make sure that you’re speaking to what is important to these caregivers and reminding them throughout the process, sharing, and being intentional with your communication as it’s leading up to the interview phase, as it’s leading up to their experiences as they come in. “

– Kristen Duell

It was also mentioned that a lot of time caregivers have expressed walking into an agency and not being acknowledged or even paid attention to.  

“You can believe you have done everything, but if you do not put yourself in somebody else’s shoes and go through that hiring phase, you’re missing a really big opportunity to really see from a caregiver’s perspective on what they’re experiencing form an agency picking the right tools to help you scale to.”

– Kristen Duell

Want to watch the whole webinar?

Find the recording here.