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At a time when the home care industry is plagued with workforce shortages, Senior Helpers, 24 Hour Home Care and ComForCare have made a name for themselves as best-in-class employers.
Among common retention tactics, all three organizations actively elicit feedback by surveying staff on a regular basis. Senior Helpers, 24 Hour Home Care and ComForCare have all carved out company-specific methods for becoming successful employers as well.
In some cases, their unique strategies revolve around giving employees access to various health and wellness offerings. In others, they’ve focused on ensuring fair wages and opening up opportunities for specialized training.
While investing in workforce culture can be costly, the three home care providers have seen strong ROIs in the form of more job applicants and stable retention rates. The investments likewise helped Senior Helpers, 24 Hour Home Care and ComForCare each earn spots on Fortune’s 2021 “Best Workplaces in Aging Services” list.
The top executives of each organization recently gave Home Health Care News an inside look at how they built an attractive home care workplace.
Senior Helpers’ paradigm shift
At Senior Helpers, the ability to stay in tune with how employees feel is the result of going straight to the source. The company has long implemented “Listen 360,” a program that surveys clients, caregivers and other staff on a monthly basis, co-founder and CEO Peter Ross told HHCN.
“That has worked wonders for us because we get such a great feedback loop from all of that,” he said. “We also get to react to anything that isn’t positive. A lot of times, organizations put their head in the sand and say, ‘No big deal. I’m good almost everywhere else.’ We want to learn so we can be proactive.”
Maryland-based Senior Helpers has a national network of more than 300 franchise locations. The company was acquired by Advocate Aurora Enterprises, a subsidiary of Advocate Aurora Health, earlier this year.
Something else that has been important for Senior Helpers is a paradigm shift when it comes to prioritizing clients over caregivers.
While Ross believes clients’ needs are paramount, it’s also important to cater to caregivers. In recent years, Senior Helpers has been intentional in its efforts to do so.
“I think a lot of industries look at their customers as job No.1 — most important,” Ross said. “I think that’s been an error by our industry for years. One of the things that we’ve done is to view our staff and caregivers on the same level as our clients. They’re not more important or less important. In our business, you can’t have one without the other.”
Along these lines, Senior Helpers has turned its attention to its employee perks and benefits offerings. Full-time caregivers at the company, and their families, have access to telehealth services through Teladoc Health (NYSE: TDOC), for example.
Additionally, Senior Helpers offers a pharmacy discount card for drugs.
The company is also looking into offering free access to popular streaming services such as Netflix (Nasdaq; NFLX) or Amazon Prime, as well as discounts for cell phones. Creativity is key when trying to think up possible perks, Ross explained.
Establishing Senior Helpers as a desirable workplace has meant a spike in interested applicants. In the last nine months alone, the company has driven over 100,000 applicants to its franchisees and corporate stores, according to Ross.
“As an industry, we’ve always tried to hire experienced caregivers; that’s just not possible anymore,” he said. “You have to be able to train people to be caregivers. A lot of times, you’re walking away from people that would be great caregivers. They just don’t know how to be a great caregiver until you train them.”
24 Hour Home Care measures and manages
Ryan Iwamoto, president and co-founder of 24 Hour Home Care, has used the saying “what gets measured, gets managed” as a guiding principle with regards to keeping the company on track as an attractive workplace.
24 Hour Home Care does quarterly engagement surveys for all employees, as well as monthly surveys for its caregivers.
“The monthly survey is one question: How happy are you with 24 Hour Home Care,” Iwamoto, told HHCN. “If they’re not at a [five out of five], they can give some context on how we can improve. This is all taken in real time, and we can respond pretty quickly, or use that information to help us strengthen ourselves as a company.”
Los Angeles-based 24 Hour Home Care is an independent, non-medical home care provider with 20 locations across California, Arizona and Texas.
One area that has become a key focus for 24 Hour Home Care is ensuring that caregivers are being paid a fair and livable wage, according to Iwamoto.
“Every year, we make sure our caregivers are making above-market rates in every territory we operate in,” he said. “Now, typically, that’s done on a yearly basis, but with everything going on, we’re actually looking at that on a monthly basis. There are some territories where we are not hitting our goal of being above market rates, so it’s really making sure that we have an eye on that.”
In general, the median wage for caregivers in the U.S. is lower than that of other jobs with similar entry-level requirements, such as janitors, retail salespersons and customer service representatives.
Direct care workers earned a median hourly wage of $12.80 in 2019, a meager improvement from $12.61 in 2009, according to PHI data.
Like Senior Helpers, 24 Hour Home Care has also embraced creative perks. The company partnered with Calm, a meditation app, and offers this to employees. The company also offers discounted pet insurance and a guaranteed off day on birthdays.
Plus, the company offers full comprehensive medical benefits to all 24 Hour Home Care caregivers.
“During a pandemic, you want to make sure that your caregivers are well taken care of physically, obviously mentally as well,” Iwamoto said.
In terms of retention, the company hit a record low point in 2020 due to the COVID-19 emergency, when its rate reached 43%. Since then, 24 Hour Home Care has been able to improve its retention rate to 48%.
“The goal is for that number to go up even more to about 50%,” Iwamoto said. “Right now, that’s where we’re at for 2021. ‘Progress over perfection’ is what I always say.”
ComForCare keeps employees engaged
For ComForCare, its “CaregiverFirst” program has been a major benefit to the company. The program gives the company’s franchisees innovative strategies, resources and tools for caregiver recruitment.
“We invest hundreds of thousands of dollars at the corporate level to help our franchisees with the recruiting process. There are best practices. There are special programs, information on how to work with some of the recruiting tools that are out there in the marketplace,” J.J. Sorrenti, CEO of Best Life Brands, told HHCN. “All of these things are tools that we use throughout the network to help.”
Owned by New York-based private equity firm Riverside Company, ComForCare is a home care franchise organization that has over 200 independently owned and operated locations in the U.S. and Canada. Best Life Brands is the platform company above ComForCare.
With regard to ComForCare’s caregivers, the company keeps its employees engaged by offering opportunities for additional training and education. The company’s dementia program certifies caregivers to work with seniors with this condition, for instance.
“It creates loyalty, a purpose and a mission for our caregivers when they’re able to help patients that are struggling with dementia,” Sorrenti said.
Another ComForCare program teaches caregivers how to identify fall risks and sharpen their prevention skills.
While ComForCare couldn’t share specifics, Sorrenti is happy with its retention performance across the company.
“The hard part for any company, not just home care, is to make sure that upon recruitment, they’re keeping that person engaged, excited and helping them orient themselves to the work that they’re about to do,” he said. “That’s why we give a lot of focus on making sure they’re engaged.”
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