3 Surprising Strategies to Recruit More Caregivers in 2022
As of Dec 2021, a record-shattering 4.4 million Americans are leaving their job every single month. Some people have called it the “great resignation” or the “great quit.” McKinsey and Company is calling it the “great renegotiation.”
This is because the typical job seekers’ needs and expectations for work have changed, and pretty dramatically. Record inflation is pushing people to get part-time work on top of a full-time job and ask for raises; the ‘fight for $15’ movement has been successful in many areas of the country and means that the typical job seeker expects more money. Los Angeles County minimum wage went up to $15.96/hour July 2022.
Due to the relatively tight, typical margins for a home care agency, both of these factors put substantial pressure on employers to get creative.
How are some Home Care Agencies recruiting and hiring more caregivers in 2022? Here are three strategies to try:
Make your hiring funnel faster and easier for a caregiver to get through
First things first, if you’re not yet measuring your key stats related to your hiring funnel. You should start doing that right away. Here’s an article we wrote on how to do that and what to measure.
Next up, you should be aiming to get your time to close to 10 days or less for a caregiver. Time to close is how long it takes you to move a caregiver’s application to either hired or rejected.
It’s important to think about your candidate’s experience in the hiring process. It’s a relatively low wage position in the larger scheme of the US economy. So consider these questions about what your hiring process is like for candidates today:
How many steps are truly needed?
Which steps can you cut out of the process? Which steps can you combine?
Can some of the steps be delayed until after they’re hired and have begun training/onboarding?
Finally, you also need to ensure that you’re staging your interviews in the right way to build long-lasting partnership with your employees. Caregivers are the life-blood of home care and need to be treated with respect and as the valuable people that they are. All too often, at Augusta.care, we hear home care agencies running a very one-sided interview process.
Fact of the matter is: Caregivers have a lot of choices right now in terms of the best employer for them. To differentiate yourself in the interview process, try making it a discussion and an interview. Begin by setting the tone of the conversation in a way that opens it to dialog.
Here’s an example strategy to test at your agency which shows respect for your caregiver and begins the relationship as a partnership with your potential employee:
“Being a caregiver is one of the most meaningful careers out there. We truly make a difference in vulnerable people’s lives every day. But, it’s a very hard job both emotionally and physically and we’re often understaffed due to the low-margins in the business. What I’m looking for are caregivers who want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and be a partner to my agency in caring for humans near the end of their lives.
I know you have a lot of choices to work with many agencies, so if we worked together, here’s a few of the opportunities you would have to learn and grow with my team: X, Y, Z benefits specific to your agency.”
[Benefits that caregivers tend to ask for: Initial and ongoing training opportunities; flexible schedules; opportunities to increase their pay; ways they can grow their career and move up in the organization]
This strategy helps you cultivate a compassionate, transparent, and dialog-based relationship with your employee.
2. Structure your business to give caregivers flexibility and stability in their work schedules
These two concepts may sound like they’re at odds with each other. How could a caregiver want stable work hours but also a flexible schedule at the same time?
The pandemic changed everything about how we work in the US. For all the problems COVID caused, it also offered Americans the opportunity through the pandemic to spend more time with their family and friends, less time on the daily grind of the commute. They saved more money because they stopped going out to eat and on trips as frequently.
McKinsey identified a persona that is a great match for a new professional caregiver in their recent profile on the new job seekers in the market today. They call this group the “The caregivers and others: At home but wanting more.”
This group of job seekers are family caregivers, 18-44 years old, predominantly women who may be ready to come back to the workforce, under the right circumstances:
“For many in this cohort, workplaces that are inflexible and that don’t provide a pathway to advancement aren’t worth the sacrifice of going back to work while continuing their [own] caregiving duties,” McKinsey writes.
This “caregivers and others: at home but wanting more” group of job seekers needs enough flexibility in their work schedule to pick up their kids at school if they’re sick and take a parent to the hospital when they’re suddenly in need of care. But at the same time, they need a steady schedule so they know when to schedule care or after school programs for their own family.
So how do you cater to this, frankly ideal, group of job seekers? Here are some strategies:
Adapt how you do business with a family to accommodate your caregiver’s needs. Many home care agencies today tell their clients that there is a 3-4 hour minimum. And then they’re scrambling through their caregiver roster to find someone to fill that shift on random days that the client chose. You need to flip the script to help your caregivers be successful in the role. (Thanks to Anne-Lise Gere, CEO of Gere Consulting, for this strategy!).
Try approaching your client this way: “I have a caregiver that I think would be a perfect match for you because they’ve had 3 years of experience working with someone who has diabetes and I think their personalities are complementary. They’re available Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 9am - 2pm. Would you like to try that out?”
Designate some of your best caregivers as on-call for your newest caregivers. Pay this group of caregivers more (frankly, as much as you reasonably can). Have them mentor your new caregivers and be their on-call relief for when their unexpected family caregiving duties arise.
3. Provide career advancement opportunities and pay increases incrementally
Successful home care agencies have several things in common, but two of the biggest factors to attract more caregivers is to be as aggressive as you can with wages and additional training and development opportunities. According to Home Care Pulse, the best home care agencies (earning more than $5M/yr) spend 5% more of their profits on caregiver wages than the average home care agency. And, the best home care agencies are providing at least 6 hours of orientation training and at least 9 hours of ongoing education.
Yes, that’s right. These are two well-tested areas of investment in your home care business where if you spend more than you’ll make more, statistically speaking.
Here are some strategies that you could employ to improve your business toward incremental wage growth and increased training opportunities:
First off, you need to offer paid training opportunities. Whether it is online, in-person, on-the-job training with an experienced caregiver or overseen by a RN/LPN.
Create a well-defined and publicly available career ladder within your organization. It should be simple and easy for caregivers to share with each other (please note these are examples, specific numbers and wages should be tailored to your market and services):
Level 1 = $15/hr; 6 hours of paid initial training completed; 80 hours of client visits completed. Reimbursement for any out of pocket registration or licensing expenses at this point.
Level 2 = $16/hr; 9 hours of paid ongoing training completed; 160 hours of client visits completed. Max 1 call-out to earn this level in the first 160 hrs of client visits.
Level 3 = $17/hr; additional 9 hours of ongoing training or on-the-job mentoring completed; 320 hours of client visits completed. Max 2 call-outs to earn this level.
Your top tier caregivers should then be eligible to receive first choice of shifts or clients and given other opportunities to grow their career. Can you give them 1 shift a week as a scheduler in the office? Or, give them more time doing paid mentorship/training of new caregivers?
There’s no silver bullet out there to attract and retain caregivers, but there are strategies based on data that you can employ to continually and consistently improve your results.
