Cultural competence also emphasizes the importance of culture without making assumptions about a patient based on race, country, religion or sexuality. Ultimately, it is recognized as essential to reducing racial and ethnic disparities in health care.

“Cultural competence in home care is crucial for creating an inclusive environment where every individual feels welcomed, respected and safe,” April Kohnen, director of home care services at Griswold Home Care for North San Diego, told Home Health Care News. 

Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based Griswold Home Care is a home care franchise with over 160 locations across the U.S. 

Kohnen said that Griswold North San Diego prioritizes cultural competence through caregiver training. The company also enforces policies and practices that foster an inclusive environment for everyone, ensuring that care services are customized to meet clients’ specific backgrounds and needs. Griswold North San Diego regularly collects feedback from caregivers and clients to enhance and adjust its services to be more culturally sensitive and respectful.

Collecting demographic information and sending surveys to the communities where an organization offers services is essential to providing culturally competent care. This helps the organization understand the needs of current and potential clients.

Increasing the diversity of the organization’s workforce can improve client-caregiver matches, leading to better service for clients. Providing interpreter services can facilitate client conversations, ensuring a comprehensive discussion about care planning rather than a summary. This helps clients understand their care and enables them to actively participate in decision making.

Focus on person-centered care

Person-centered care allows caregivers to establish meaningful connections with clients.

“We have to remove ourselves from the equation initially,” Dr. Carol Anderson, regional medical director at Woundtech, told HHCN. “We must consider that we’re treating someone different from ourselves and be open and nonjudgmental. Communication and empowerment of the patient are key. Don’t assume anything, and do your homework on who the patient is before stepping in the door.”

Woundtech is a Hollywood, Florida-based home care provider focused on wound care and chronic wound management.

Six person-centered care concepts should be emphasized, according to Activated Insights. These include effective listening, valuable conversations, shared decision-making and goals, respect for choices, successful care planning and emotional understanding.

“Culturally competent care partners play a key role in reducing health disparities by offering inclusive and personalized care,” Kohnen said. “Understanding and addressing specific needs can prevent miscommunication and build stronger client relationships. This results in more accurate assessments, better adherence to care plans and improved health outcomes.”

LGBTQ+ focused care

According to a study by Dr. Karen Fredriksen Goldsen, there are about 2.7 million adults in the U.S., age 50 and older, who identify as LGBTQ+. About 1.1 million are older than 65, and these numbers are expected to double by 2060.

Compared with their heterosexual counterparts, LBGTQ+ elders are more likely to be single, live alone, not have children, be in poor health, and have faced poverty and homelessness. They are also less likely to frequent senior centers and benefit from meal programs and other vital services.

Access to trusted and reliable home health services benefits this group because they are much less likely to have a support system or family caregivers who can provide support after injury, surgery or illness.

“LGBTQ+ elders often face unique challenges, including concerns about discrimination and feeling misunderstood,” Kohnen said. “We strive to create a welcoming and inclusive environment by providing care partners with LGBTQ+ cultural competency training guided by SAGECare. This training helps our care partners better understand the life experiences and identities of LGBTQ+ elders, aiming to make them feel safe, valued and supported.”

SAGECare, a division of SAGE headquartered in Los Angeles, provides service providers with training and consulting on LGBTQ+ aging issues.

“Patients have expectations of us as providers,” Anderson said. “They’re expecting us to address their issues and resolve them. However, we won’t get anywhere if we don’t listen to them and their unique needs or beliefs. As a provider, you must be culturally aware of what is going on with the patient because if you have not identified where they are coming from, you won’t understand if they are non-compliant.”

The post The Importance Of Cultural Competence In Home-Based Care appeared first on Home Health Care News.

In home care, turnover tends to beget more turnover. If providers don’t nip the issue in the bud, they will open themselves up to a larger problem.

Home care agencies report average turnover rates of 76%, which challenges their ability to deliver high-quality services. High employee turnover also means high financial costs. On average, caregiver turnover costs agencies $171,600 annually, a report from Activated Insights showed.

Turnover results in extra hours for the remaining staff caring for clients, often leading to burnout. This also negatively impacts clients, as they don’t always receive the necessary attention due to the limited number of staff.

“These agencies are competing in a broad economy, and there are numerous job opportunities available for workers across various sectors,” Joanne Spetz, director of the University of California San Francisco Health Workforce Research Center, told Home Health Care News. “Licensed nurses are in high demand in hospitals and ambulatory care settings, while direct care aides and assistants with valuable interpersonal and organizational skills can find opportunities in many different sectors of the economy. As a result, there is significant competition for workers.”

Spetz stated that while health care organizations have revenue limitations, particularly in Medicaid or private pay, the significance of work culture in tackling burnout and retention should not be underestimated.

“Often, direct care workers, aides, and assistants are treated as disposable and unskilled, despite having valuable skills that should be appreciated,” Spetz stated. “Home care organizations need to find ways to show respect and appreciation for these workers, and create avenues for them to take on leadership roles, even if they may not be able to offer competitive wages.”

Spetz used the example of Washington State’s Medicaid program, which set up basic training standards and options for caregivers to follow. In this program, pay raises are linked to specific stages in the training options, allowing caregivers to receive formal recognition for their increasing skills and expertise.

Similarly, Austin State Hospital in Texas employs peer providers who are not licensed therapists, but peers who have experienced the same illnesses as some patients. The hospital recognized their contributions and began a career ladder process to move them into other opportunities in the organization. Spetz suggested the same idea could be implemented in home care organizations.

“It’s not all about compensation,” National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) President William A. Dombi told HHCN. “It’s about worker respect. It’s about people understanding that meaningful work is being done. It almost seems we’ve got a culture change that is developing within home care employment practices, recognizing that once you have someone employed, you must take steps to ensure you can keep them as an employee. Turnover rates are high, mainly because it seems everyone was spending time on recruitment and not enough time to focus on the retention side of the equation.”

Caregivers frequently face high levels of stress due to demanding job responsibilities, unpredictable work conditions and feelings of isolation. These stressors can lead to low job satisfaction and emotional burnout, ultimately causing caregivers to resign from their positions.

“We are aware that factors such as burnout and low compensation contribute to turnover,” Molly Candon, assistant professor in the Center for Mental Health and the Department of Health Care Management at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, told HHCN. “We also know that characteristics of home health care organizations, such as the quality of supervisory feedback and long work hours, can drive turnover.”

Caregivers value work-life balance and seek assurance that their jobs are not a dead end. They want the chance to develop and grow within the organization. Thus, continuous and thorough education and training can improve staff retention. Training prospects and internal advancement opportunities are crucial for attracting new employees. Candidates are more inclined toward employers who provide them with opportunities for improvement and progression.

For some caregivers, the idea of shift or client assignments helps with burnout and gives them a sense that they are making a difference and offering the best care to their clients by providing continuity.

“Clients and staff generally seem to want continuity of relationships,” Spetz said. “Caregivers want to know, whenever possible, they are going to get a certain client on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and a different client on Tuesday and Thursday, for example. That creates predictability and a sense of routine that can help with burnout and work-life balance.”

For agencies experiencing high turnover, checking in with caregivers can be a great way to understand what they need to feel valued.

“Exit interviews are important, but I would suggest retention interviews,” Spetz said. “When someone has been with your team for a while, interview them to find out why they are staying and what they like about the job or your organization.”

Condon echoed the necessity of interviews, but also acknowledged they can sometimes be challenging to facilitate.

“Surveys and exit interviews are great resources for understanding why and how employees leave their position and could contribute to a root cause analysis,” Condon said. “However, employees need to feel comfortable disclosing their true intentions.”

The post How To Retain Employees And Combat Home Care Worker Fatigue appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Overall customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS) increased for the first time since 2020 to 6.4, according to the 2024 Activated Insights Benchmarking Report. In 2020, the industry saw an NPS of 6.7, which dipped to 6.0 in 2021. Customers ranked their care staff’s ability as their highest source of satisfaction, followed by caregiver compatibility. However, the report indicates that customers are least satisfied with communication from their provider and say they wouldn’t always recommend them.

NPS is a metric used to measure customer satisfaction, loyalty and enthusiasm. It gauges how likely customers are to recommend a company to a friend or colleague. Customers respond on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 representing “not likely to recommend” and ten representing “extremely likely to recommend.” NPS has been a standard metric for businesses since its creation by Bain & Company in 2003.

Since client satisfaction with provider communication scored the lowest, Activated Insights suggests proactively collecting feedback and taking action to improve it. The company also proposes training staff in communication, setting up clear communication channels, designating a care manager to maintain regular and scheduled communication with the client and their family, and including the client and family in care decisions.

“Opportunities for improvement often arise from inconsistencies in communication,” Michelle Cone, senior vice president of training and brand programs at HomeWell Care Services, said during an Activated Insights webinar. “When clients and families are not informed of schedule or care plan changes or updates regarding changes in condition that can impact the well-being, it can negatively impact customer satisfaction. Families are left in the dark, leading to frustration and mistrust. Trust is crucial in our industry, and communication plays a vital role in maintaining it.”

HomeWell Care Services, based in Burkburnett, Texas, offers personal care, companionship, and homemaker services for seniors and other homebound individuals.

“Make consistent and scheduled communication a part of your overall customer strategy,” Cone suggested. “Assign team members to handle different touchpoints and ensure that families hear from you regularly, not just during urgent or negative situations. Share the positive news as well.”

On the other hand, caregivers rated the compatibility between clients and caregivers as the most significant factor affecting their job satisfaction, followed by their interactions with office staff.

The report highlights that, while office staff tend to have the highest satisfaction scores among employees, the industry’s customer care coordinators and care schedulers receive the lowest administrative salaries. This wage disparity can negatively impact employee satisfaction. The data indicates that when one office staff member leaves, it can motivate an average of five other staff members to quit. Considering that the average cost to replace a home-based care employee is about $3,900 in turnover costs, the combined turnover costs for a home care provider due to this exodus amount to $39,960.

Care staff are least satisfied with the recognition they receive. Providers have an opportunity to demonstrate to their employees how important they are to their clients. On the other hand, customers are most satisfied with the compatibility and ability of their care staff. However, employees’ dissatisfaction with recognition means they may not fully comprehend their significance to their clients. This lack of recognition could contribute to the record-high turnover rate of care staff, which is currently close to 80%.

Cone proposed retaining long-term employees by showing appreciation for their work through regular employee recognition and positive customer feedback.

“Communicate to your caregivers and office staff regarding how they do, what they do, and how much their presence and who they are as individuals positively impact clients’ lives,” Cone said. “Share and communicate with them how impactful they are to this industry, your agency, and the clients and communities you serve. Don’t assume they know this.”

Cone said the most significant opportunity for recognition remains consistency.

“The key is consistency,” Cone said. “Communicate the desire to acknowledge and act on feedback consistently. Whether the feedback is from a client, a peer or management, specify who said what and establish a process to share that feedback with the relevant stakeholders.”

The report stated that providers who actively managed their employee and customer experience, staff training and employer brand saw over three times greater lifetime value per client than those who didn’t. Similarly, managing the customer and employee experience resulted in providers hiring an average of 90% more care professionals than their competitors.

The post Home Care Clients Like Their Caregivers More Than Their Provider, Data Shows appeared first on Home Health Care News.

That said, only 43.8% of home-based care staff and 55% of home health and hospice staff feel prepared to care for new clients, according to the 2024 Activated Insights Benchmarking Report. As a possible result, the annual care staff turnover rate has climbed 14% in the last two years to almost 80%.

Organizations demonstrating a commitment to continuing education improve employee satisfaction by allowing caregivers to hone their skills and grow in their careers. Investing in employees’ long-term success will impart a sense of purpose and possibility within a role known for turnover and burnout.

Empowering caregivers with professional development opportunities translates to better patient care, while continuous learning boosts caregiver confidence, competence and overall sense of achievement.

However, according to the report, while establishing a clear career path is one of the top strategies for retaining long-term employees, only 39.9% of providers have one.

“Helping that caregiver feel supported and knowing what they need to do when they get to that client’s home the first time is so important,” Carla Zak, director of organizational learning at Right at Home, said during an Activated Insights webinar.

Founded in 1995, Right at Home is a franchise that offers home care to seniors and adults with disabilities. It is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, with over 700 independently operated locations in the U.S. and five other countries.

Investing in professional training gives caregivers the confidence to care for patients and boosts client trust. According to the report, caregiver’ abilities ranked at the top in terms of customer satisfaction for 2024. Those who train their staff to provide patient-centered care are seeing the highest employee and customer satisfaction levels in years.

“It’s not just learning the content, it’s being able to share stories,” Zak said. “Caregivers live in an isolated world. They go to a client’s home; sometimes, it’s just them and the client. So, to have the ability to interact with other caregivers and talk about what’s working or not working provides not only the training they need, but the support they probably don’t even realize they need.”

Currently, 83.1% of organizations offer specialty training, with 96.4% offering dementia training to tailor to the industry’s growing needs.

Quality training boosts ROI

In-person training from a professional vendor is the most expensive employee acquisition method, costing approximately $470 per caregiver. However, the benchmarking report said it generates the highest caregiver revenue, at roughly $17,071.

While 61.6% of providers bill solely based on the length of visits, only 29% bill for a combination of visit duration and skill level. This provides most home care organizations the opportunity for additional revenue growth based on training and empowering employees.

“The average home-based care provider offers five hours of orientation and eight hours of ongoing training,” the report read. “Those who offer at least eight orientation hours and 12 hours of ongoing training see an increase of $1,103,291 in revenue. However, while establishing a clear path is one of the top strategies to retaining long-term employees, only 39% of providers have one.”

The post Sophisticated Caregiver Training Remains An Underutilized Retention, ROI Tool  appeared first on Home Health Care News.

This was one of the critical insights from Activated Insights’ – formerly Home Care Pulse – 2024 Benchmarking Report.

The report found that the home-based care turnover rate has increased by more than 14% over the last two years to 79.2%. Inefficiencies in the recruitment process also contributed to this, with only 16.4% of home health care and hospice nurses and 12.8% of home care applicants hired.

Due to this lack of hiring, 63.3% of providers turned down cases in 2023.

This rejection of cases places home care providers in an unfortunate position, as client turnover in this sector is at 26.8%.

“Retention begins the moment you post the job,” Activated Insights wrote in the report. “To attract and retain the right candidates, highlight what makes the home health care industry unique.”

The organization suggested that building a solid employer brand, highlighting benefits, showcasing career growth, creating a positive work culture and offering continued training are all vital to attracting and retaining optimal talent.

And while it isn’t all about money for frontline workers in home-based care, it was found that providers who paid their staff above the 75^th percentile saw a 35.5% decrease in turnover.

Positives emerge

To proactively improve employee retention, Activated Insight leaders recommended gathering feedback from customers and staff to identify strengths and areas for improvement while prioritizing relationship building.

Clients surveyed rated their care professionals’ ability as their highest satisfaction factor, while employees expressed the highest satisfaction with the compatibility between clients and care professionals. This high client satisfaction may account for the 18% decrease in providers consistently declining cases due to staffing shortages.

“As if an industry-wide staffing shortage wasn’t enough to prove the value of recruiting and retaining home-based care employees, the median revenue per employee is the highest in four years,” the report read.

Revenue, however, did increase by $1,000 per care employee, resulting in $14,822 in revenue per hire, higher than the last four years.

The post Caregiver Turnover, Referral Rejections Continue To Increase In Home Care  appeared first on Home Health Care News.

That was one of the key takeaways from Activated Insights’ — formerly Home Care Pulse — 2024 Benchmarking Report.

The report found that home care turnover has increased by more than 12% over the past two years. The current industry-wide turnover rate is 79.2%.

This often results in home care providers having to turn away new clients.

Activated Insights also reported the hiring rates across various home-based care sectors. Only 16.4% of home health and hospice nurses applicants were hired in 2023. This was a 25% decrease in applicant-to-hire ratio compared to the previous year.

Additionally, only 12.8% of home care applicants were hired during the same period.

When looking at the home care providers’ main methods for recruiting professional caregivers, Indeed.com came out on top at 39.3%.

Even though Indeed is favored by home care providers, it is generally ineffective at producing long-term gains.

“Although Indeed continues to be the most popular recruitment source, it produces the highest turnover rate of 88%, ultimately producing a short-lived ‘quick win’ for recruitment numbers but a devastating retention rate,” Activated Insights wrote in the report.

At 14.6%, having an employee referral program in place was the second highest utilized method of recruitment.

Word of mouth or reputation was the third most popular method at 9.4%, and an organization’s own website was the fourth at 7.0%.

Rounding out the rest of the list — 4.3% of home care providers are utilizing myCNAjobs.com, 4.1% social media, 1.1% reactivation of previous employees, 1.1% Career Builder and 0.9% job fairs.

Plus, 5.7% of home care providers said they are utilizing “other recruitment sources.” These included things like church or faith-based newspapers, corporate TV advertisements, radio, chambers of commerce and more.

The report also looked at home health and hospice recruitment methods. The top responses for these providers looked similar to the methods that home care providers are utilizing.

For home health and hospice providers, Indeed was the top answer at 31.5%, and 9.4% of respondents said word of mouth. A company’s own website came in third at 6.0%.

The post Home Care’s Industry-Wide Turnover Rate Reaches Nearly 80% appeared first on Home Health Care News.

Care Indeed, Cherished Companions Home Care and 24Hr HomeCare are among the non-medical home care companies to make 2018’s top workplaces list, compiled by Activated Insights, a Great Place to Work subsidiary focused on senior care. Great Lakes Caring — now a part of the recently formed home health, personal care and hospice powerhouse Elara Caring — headlined the group of majority Medicare-certified home health and hospice providers that made the cut.

To put together the inaugural Best Workplaces in Aging Services list, broken down into senior housing and at-home care categories, Great Place to Work analyzed survey results from more than 162,000 employees across nearly all 50 states. Top workplaces were evaluated based on a variety of factors, including respect, fairness and leadership competence.

One of the most surprising takeaways from this year’s list: Home- and community-based care workers generally like their workplaces more than their senior housing and skilled nursing facility peers.

“As a category of home- and community-based services, the average score was higher than the senior housing and care category,” Activated Insights CEO Jacquelyn Kung told Home Health Care News. “The overall employee Trust Index score was higher, which I found surprising.”

Broadly, the Great Place to Work’s Trust Index gauges employee experience and perception of their workplaces. The positive feedback from home- and community-based care workers was striking, Kung said, because employees are so often disconnected from office support and colleagues while they’re out in the field.

“A lot of people, including myself, had the ingoing hypothesis that they would be at least equally — if not less — happy,” Kung said. “No. It turns out, on average, employees who work on the home- and community-based care side are happier.”

Closer relationships with seniors is one possible explanation for the higher satisfaction levels, she said.

Reviewing the results

Throughout its research, Great Place to Work has found that great workplaces consistently see higher revenue growth and lower turnover rates than their less-than-spectacular competitors.

That’s a point likely to get the attention of the several thousand home care and home health agencies operating across the country, especially as they juggle with the looming wave of retiring baby boomers and an inevitable caregiver shortage, Kung said.

Menlo Park, California-based Care Indeed checked in at No. 2 in the at-home category. More than 90% of Care Indeed’s surveyed employees reported that their workplaces have great atmospheres, rewards, communication and bosses.

Care Indeed provides non-medical home care — hourly or live-in — throughout parts of central California and in Seattle.

“Care Indeed takes great pride in creating a culture of kindness, compassion and authenticity,” Care Indeed COO Vanessa Valerio told Home Health Care News in a statement. “While we want Care Indeed to remain profitable and continue to grow, we will not do anything that will harm or negatively affect the things that have made our company successful. Efficiency and profitability are great, but if they threaten our company’s core value in any way, we will not go that route.”

To create a successful workplace culture, Care Indeed has taken steps to recognize caregivers through a monthly appreciation day. The company also provides food and other perks to employees, while organizing social events, sports tournaments and quarterly support groups.

“We serve two sides of the home care equation: care recipients and care providers,” Valerio said. “I strongly feel that using this achievement helps improve our market positioning in this industry. The quality of service that our caregivers provide is greatly influenced by the quality of service they receive from the company.”

In addition to Care Indeed, Cherished Companions Home Care (No. 3) and 24Hr HomeCare (No.4), Care to Stay Home (No. 6) and CompassCare, LLC (No. 9) also made Fortune’s list of best workplaces in aging services on the non-medical front.

In terms of Medicare home health companies, Great Lakes Caring earned the highest spot on the list, coming in at No. 5. Backed by private equity firms Blue Wolf Capital Parters and Kelso & Company, Michigan-based Great Lakes Caring merged with Texas-based Jordan Health Services and Connecticut-based National Home Health Care earlier this year. The three companies combined into Addison, Texas-based Elara Caring.

“We look forward to introducing these engagement attributes from the Great Lakes Caring culture throughout Elara Caring,” Scott Herman, Elara Caring CEO, told HHCN in an email. “Great Lakes Caring’s dedication to high quality patient care is representative of our mission, to provide patients with the right care, at the right time, and in the right place.”

Elara Caring serves more than 65,000 patients daily across 16 states, employing about 32,500 caregivers in total.

“Home health and Hospice workers are faced with challenging work day in and day out — taking care of the sick and aging,” Marcy Miller, chief nursing officer at Elara Caring, told HHCN in an email. “We must provide them with a support system, provide them with the tools they need to succeed, and remind them daily how important their contributions are to our patients.”

Other majority Medicare certified home health and hospice providers on the list include Constellation Health Services (No. 7), Grandcare Health Services (No. 8) and Alacare Home Health and Hospice (No. 10).

The No. 1 spot in the at-home care category went to Dallas-based Eagle Creek Therapy Services.

For consideration, companies in the 50 Best Workplaces for Aging Services list had to first achieve Great Place to Work certification. The certification process involves submitting an application and having at least 55% of employees fill out a survey, which is administered over a two-week period.

Standalone hospices and other observations 

Compared to similar Great Place to Work lists looking at other industries, the vast majority of surveyed workers were hourly employees, as opposed to salaried, Kung said. Likewise, there was a noticeable trend of more female employees, which lines up with what’s known about home-based caregiver demographics.

On a high level, aging services employees rated their workplaces more highly than in other industries in purpose and job meaning, according to Kung.

“People really feel a sense of purpose working in aging services,” she said. “That’s in terms of pride, in terms of ‘this is more than just a job.'”

Besides her role as Activated Insights CEO, Kung was one of the co-founders of ClearCare, a company that provides cloud-based software solutions to private duty home care agencies.

“When I was day-to-day looking at the data at ClearCare, you could see a huge variability in the thousands of agencies,” Kung said. “One the culture side and the people side, that’s what you see as well. The overall point is that good people practices translate into better operations.”

No standalone hospices made the inaugural list, though that’s possibly tied to the fact there are relatively few standalone hospices remaining, according to Kung.

In 2019, Activated Insights plans on further digging into best workplaces in aging serves by more closely investigating why employees feel the way they do, she said.

Written by Robert Holly

The post Care Indeed, Great Lakes Caring Among ‘Best Workplaces’ in Aging Services Sector appeared first on Home Health Care News.

To be considered for inclusion, home health and other senior care providers—such as assisted living and skilled nursing companies—had to complete an initial process by June 18, to become “certified.” With that deadline now past and the industry data being analyzed, some surprising results are emerging related to employee engagement.

“In terms of the at-home space, the surprise was how well they did,” Jacquelyn Kung, CEO of Activated Insights, told Home Health Care News.

Activated Insights is based out of the Great Place to Work corporate campus in San Francisco and is spearheading the creation of the aging services list. Kung brings industry knowledge from her time with organizations such as senior housing provider Erickson Living and home care software giant ClearCare.

To vie for a place on the “Best Workplaces in Aging Services” list, employers had to earn certification by submitting an application and having at least 55% of their workers complete a survey. It was this process that had to be completed by June 18, and since that time some home care providers have been publicizing that they achieved certification. Care Indeed, a non-medical home care provider in the Bay Area, is among these organizations.

“We strive to create an environment that recognizes employees as human beings, not resources,” CEO Dee Bustos stated in a June 27 press release. “We allow for autonomy by extending a certain amount of flexibility to help employees strengthen family ties at home. We want our employees to trust us, be proud of what they do, and see their coworkers as family. The challenge is to sustain the great workplace culture that we have achieved.”

Overall, participation in the “Great Place to Work” process has exceeded expectations.

“We expected for 100,000 employees to be surveyed this first year, and we had just under 150,000,” Kung said.

Typically, to be certified as a Great Place to Work, an organization has to achieve a score of at least 70 out of 100, based on employee survey results. For the first year of the aging services list, that threshold was lowered to 50. It will go up to 60 next year, and then to 70 the following year. However, many providers across the senior care spectrum got certified this year based on the usual standard of 70, which Kung described as “pleasantly surprising.”

That holds true in particular for companies that provide at-home services of all types.

“Medicare A reimbursed, Medicare B therapy, and private pay and Medicaid non-medical home care all did very well,” Kung said.

Some selection bias might be coming into play, she theorized. That is, providers might have been more likely to apply if they were confident in becoming certified. But some highly regarded organizations did not apply this year, Kung noted, and others applied even if they were uncertain of their chances.

“We got applicants who were not sure of their odds, or they said, ‘We’re probably not going to win, but what’s more important is knowing what our score is so we can improve,'” she said. “That was my favorite category.”

Some of those providers did in fact earn certification and were “ebullient” upon learning the news, she added.

Next, the Great Place to Work data team will take the results of all the certified providers and crunch the numbers using the same algorithm that generates the other Fortune “Best Workplaces” lists. The algorithm takes into account factors such as company size, complexity and consistency—for instance, to ensure that it is a great workplace for a diverse cross-section of people, not just a particular worker profile. This data analysis will then determine the final list, to be published in September.

Activated Insights is also starting to analyze how employee engagement scores correlate with performance metrics such as turnover, and is finding that the correlation is close. In other words, higher engagement equates to lower turnover.

This might seem to be common sense, but the ultimate goal is to actually be able to make predictions—being able to say, if a company’s engagement score goes up by X, its turnover will go down by Y.

“I think we’re going to get pretty predictive, because the correlations are pretty tight,” Kung said.

Written by Tim Mullaney

The post Home Care Providers Shine In ‘Great Place to Work’ Certification Phase appeared first on Home Health Care News.

“It’s incredible to see home health companies scoring very well—we had one get as high marks as companies like Google in some areas,” Jacquelyn Kung, who is spearheading the effort to compile the list, told Home Health Care News.

If Kung’s name rings a bell to home care providers, there’s good reason for that. She was one of the co-founders of ClearCare, the home care technology platform that raised $60 million in growth equity investment capital in 2016. With that accomplished, Kung and some her ClearCare teammates were hoping to work together on another venture related to senior care staffing, but the opportunity fell through. That led to a fateful conversation at a San Francisco bar.

“I was crying over drinks with a friend, saying this is a real issue in the industry,” Kung told Senior Housing News. “And my friend said, you know where I work, don’t you?”

That friend was Chinwe Onyeagoro, the president of Great Place to Work, the research and consulting firm that creates the many “Great Workplaces” lists that are published by Fortune each year., including the 100 Best Companies to Work For. Onyeagoro offered to call Fortune and see if the magazine would be interested in doing a list focused on aging services. A few days later, she had an answer: Yes.

The list will be a first for the aging services sector and promises to bring valuable attention to career opportunities in the field, where a labor crunch could reach huge proportions in the coming years. But the list will also be a first for Great Place to Work, which has teamed with Kung to test a new approach.

Bigger, faster impact

Flash forward to today. Kung is now leading a firm called Activated Insights, which is based out of the Great Place to Work corporate campus in San Francisco. Using the Great Place to Work methodology and resources, and drawing on Kung’s insider knowledge of the senior care industry, Activated Insights is leading the effort to compile the “Best Workplaces in Aging Services” list.

It’s the first arrangement of this kind for Great Place to Work, Kung said. While Great Place to Work has has built up expertise and collected a trove of data across a variety of industries, the organization is seeing whether working more closely with experts in particular fields will bring benefits.

“They’re trying out [this approach] to see if working with folks who know the industry well can help them meet their mission and make change faster,” Kung said. “They’ve asked us to document everything we’re doing, and they have ideas for other verticals. But they want to make sure that we can make that impact on the [aging services] industry.”

Kung does bring a wealth of experience. In addition to ClearCare, her resume includes time as a health care consultant with McKinsey, as well as in various leadership roles with Baltimore-based senior living and care provider Erickson Living. She even co-wrote a book—Old is the New Young: Erickson’s Secrets to Healthy Living—that was published in 2009. Her doctoral dissertation was on senior living workforce issues, and her awareness of providers’ staffing challenges goes back even further.

“I grew up in Texas and happened to live across the street from a nursing home,” she said. “One day I walked over there and went in, and all these residents looked at me and said, ‘Are you here to visit us?’ I said yes, and they were so excited. I volunteered every week. It was an understaffed facility. There was a workforce shortage even then.”

A high-touch process

Since the aging services list was announced last November, organizations representing more than 150,000 employees have signed up to be considered for inclusion, according to Kung. These applicants span the continuum, including independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing, home health and CCRCs, as well as Area Agencies on Aging, PACE programs, and others.

To be eligible for the list, and a variety of other “Great Workplaces” lists that Fortune publishes, a company must meet certain thresholds and be deemed “certified.” The certification process involves submitting an application and having at least 55% of employees fill out a survey, which is administered over a two-week period.

These employee surveys and other aspects of the process are typically done digitally; in one example of bringing her industry knowledge to bear, Kung was certain that a different approach would be needed for aging services.

“We’re still very much a paper-based industry,” she said.

Activated Insights has come up with senior care-friendly interfaces for the survey. In addition, a program manager is assigned to each organization that applies, to provide a high level of support.

“Senior care companies that aren’t tech savvy are going to get guidance through the process,” she emphasized. “And if their results aren’t what they want, we ask, how can we help you get there?”

That is, if an organization does not yet meet the standard for certification, it can see which areas it needs to address—and no one will know that the company applied and did not receive certification, so there’s no downside risk there, Kung stressed. A standard $995 application fee includes high-level results and a single baseline score that can be a focus for improvement.

“It’s helpful for CEOs to have one number to look at and track,” Kung said.

By paying more, companies can get their data sliced-and-diced and work with Activated Insights to devise improvement plans.

The final “Best Workplaces in Aging Services” list will likely be a mix of all types of employers, of various sizes. So, it could be a particular boon for smaller companies to be recognized right alongside industry giants, Kung noted.

The list should also be a boon for the industry as a whole, which will gain increased exposure and credibility by being featured in Fortune. In addition, companies in the sector will be able to benchmark themselves against the many other businesses that participate in the Great Place to Work process—including potential competitors for workers. These companies run the gamut from Disney and Google to Marriott and Cheesecake Factory.

Though this “Best Workplaces” journey began with Kung feeling downcast at a bar, needless to say, her spirits are much higher these days. Far from being despondent, she is passionately urging senior living and care companies to apply for the list, and quickly.

The last day to complete the certification process is June 18, and applicants are rapidly reserving available two-week slots for conducting their employee surveys. Trying to accommodate a large number of applicants is a good problem to have, though, and Kung is heartened by the level of interest.

“Everyone recognizes what a huge issue workforce is going to be, and they’re excited to see something positive is happening,” she said.

Written by Tim Mullaney

The post ClearCare Co-Founder Spearheads ‘Best Workplaces in Aging Services’ Project appeared first on Home Health Care News.