Home Care U - How to Retain More Caregivers From Application to Day 90 (Kristin Beckholt & Stephanie Coursey Pt. 1)

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Kristin Beckholt is a home care success story—an RN who started her own agency, scaled it rapidly, and now helps other agencies do the same. Part of her secret is her laser-focus on caregiver experience and culture, starting with the moment they apply. Come here both sides of the story as we interview Kristin alongside her lead care professional, Stephanie Coursey. Click the blue link on the left side of the screen to register.Enjoying the show? Send me a text and let me know!Learn more about Careswitch at: careswitch.comConnect with the host on LinkedIn: Miriam Allred This episode was produced by parkerkane.co

Hey, welcome to Home Care U, a podcast made by the team at Care Switch. Nobody went to school to learn how to run a home care agency, so we're bringing the education to you. Join our live audience by going to careswitch.com slash homecareu or listen on your own time wherever you get your podcasts. Home Care U is hosted by myself, Miriam Allred, and Connor Koons of Care Switch. Enjoy the session. Welcome to Home Care U is hosted by myself, Miriam Allred, and Connor Koons of CareSwitch. Enjoy the session. Welcome to Home Care U. I'm really excited for today's episode. There's a few things we're going to be doing differently and digging into some really important topics that are some of the highest demand topics we ever talk about. So I guess to get started here, let me just go through a few housekeeping things. First of all, this will not come as a surprise to anyone who's listened before,

but if it's your first time, know that Home Care U is both a live Zoom class and a podcast. If you want to join live, ask whatever questions you have in the chat. You can do so for free by signing up at homecareu, that's using university.careswitch.com. We do the Zoom classes every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern, and then we turn it into a podcast afterwards. So if you prefer to listen on your own time, maybe with the speed turned up or in your car or whatever while you're working, you can get Home Care U as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. So definitely encourage you to check out our past ones. We've had some incredible guests and some great content on there. Let's introduce our guests for today.

So I'm excited to bring on Kristen Beckholt and Stephanie Corsi. Kristen is the CEO and owner of Interim Healthcare of Macomb, Michigan. And then Stephanie Corsi is the lead care pro at the agency. I'll give you both just a minute to introduce yourselves if you want to talk about whatever I haven't touched on that would be important for guests to hear and also just, you know, how you got into home care, what you do in your current role and anything else we should know about you. Well, I'll go ahead and start. I'm Kristen. Kristen Beckholt. I am a nurse and I've been a nurse for about 15 years. I have done faucets of nursing from med-surg to emergency to hospice and administration. My last role in the field was in hospice, and it was through that that I saw a real need for proficient home care in the home.

I also had lost my mother to ALS about 15 years ago. We had our own experience at the time with some home care. And I knew coupled with the fact of what I was seeing in my hospice role, that there was not what I would deem competent home care availability. So I talked to my husband, I said, I want to step out of this role and open something up. And he said, let's go. So in 2017, we launched Interim Healthcare of Macomb and I am still serving as the Director of Operations and Director of Nursing, but I am in the stages of being able to exit daily operations slowly but surely thanks to a phenomenal team that we have built. So it's a little bit about me and my background.

Thank you. Hi, my name is Stephanie and I've provided care for 10 years. I've always had a passion for helping those in need, especially the elderly. I cared for my grandmother during her hospice time while she was at home. So that's why the care that I provide is very personal to me. And then also a little bit about the lead care pro position. A couple of days of the week, I come into the office and help with daily office needs. Go out into the community and let them know about different classes

that we offer, dementia, CPR, things like that. Thank you for that. And thanks again to you both for joining. I'm excited to kind of have the joint owner-caregiver perspective on this topic. I think that we spend a lot of time talking about caregivers in this industry and often don't spend enough time listening to caregivers. And so we're really excited and really grateful to have your experience and perspective and knowledge on this, Stephanie. So thank you. So let me give a bit of introduction to our topic and then we'll get rolling here. So high level, our topic today is retention from the point of application to the first 90 days. That's a huge topic. There's a lot in there. We'll go as deep as we can while

still trying to move fairly fast through topics. I'll explain a little bit more of how we're doing that in a minute. This is part one of two. Next week, the same group is coming back and we'll be talking about retention strategies that go beyond day 90 to help make your agency a place where caregivers want to stay for the long haul. So for today, how we've kind of structured the episode is that we'll kind of start with like a high level overview of the onboarding and 90 day retention process at their agency, especially focusing on the things that they do differently or that they maybe have a more focused or intentional strategy than lots of agencies do. I should mention that they came very highly recommended to me as an agency who has really gone the extra mile in having built out very thought through processes for these things.

And so I think they have a lot that we can learn from. Then after we kind of overview it, we'll walk through each step. So we'll go through kind of the application and interviewing hiring process. We'll talk about what their agency does and especially get Stephanie's perspective on, you know, what did she appreciate as she was going through that process? And then same thing with orientation slash kind of that danger zone before the first shift where lots of people drop off and then the first shift itself and then the remainder of the first 90 days. So for each of those, we'll talk about

what the process looks like, how it might differ from what you'd see at the average or typical agency, and then also kind of get Stephanie's perspective on, you know, as someone going through that process, what particularly did you appreciate about it? And what might other agencies learn from that? in the chat or the Q&A box in Zoom. Depending on the question, we'll either answer it as we're going or we might get to it at the end. We value those. It helps us make sure we're addressing the most important stuff that we can be. And I found that with a topic like this that's both recruitment retention focused and very in the weeds and specific, there's lots of room for people to ask questions to see how they can best apply it in their circumstances. So all that being said, let's launch into it. So Kristen,

if you just kind of want to give us an overview of like, what does your process look like? And like, how might it be different from the average process, just kind of high level, starting from application, going through day 90. And then after we do that, then we'll go in a more detailed chronological view of it. We get most of our applicants through one of two sources, either through our own employees and a referral source that they're providing us, social media or Indeed. And so we are constantly filtering through those. We have a very fine filter, if you will, phone applicant screening process. If they meet that, then they are called in for an interview. And when they're called in for an interview, we like to check references first.

That being a reason for that is we were finding we had so many no call, no, excuse me, no shows to interviews. And so we thought, you know what, let's go ahead and get a couple references before they come to the interview. So we can let them know, hey, we're already ahead of the game. We've checked your references. We don't need to do that yet after they're potentially hired, but we can also kind of get a glimpse of their work ethic and their integrity level if we already know that they are competent and have good professional references. So they submit their professional references to us. They are given an email that day thanking them for applying, letting them know all of the interview details, what they will need to bring with them, and the length of time that they need to plan to expect to be there.

Our goal really is all about timing. So it's all about calling them the day of application, scheduling them ASAP for that interview. Even if day of interview, we can get them in for a possible orientation. We make that happen. Once they come in for orientation, we do our orientation a little differently. We were finding that it was taking too much of our office staff, too many man hours of our office staff. So we created an onboarding video. And what we did is we, each of us kind of walked through who we were, our role in the business, what a day in the life of a caregiver looks like, or a care pro. We call

them care pros because they don't just give care. They are professional in the home. And when they're called a care pro, they rise to that title, I feel like. So they're given an onboarding video when they get here. We have, we make sure that their name is on the board. Welcome Amy and Joe and Tina to the best home care agency in town. And we let them know you have, you've got a seat here at a table that is highly chosen. So we want to, we want them to understand they've been chosen for this in a very selective process. So that then right there gives them kind of a feeling of empowerment, like, wow, I've made it through to a pretty prestigious position here. It's not just a caregiver at XYZ agency. Again, making them feel like if they're

expected to be phenomenal, they will be. So onboarding takes place at orientation, the video, then we have kind of a question and answer time. Then Amy, who is our field educator, she does hands-on training. We have an on-site skills lab here with mannequins and stairs, a bathtub, shower, a bed, all of the basic ADL essentials, gait belts, a Hoyer lift, and she does a walkthrough hands-on training with them to assess where their skill level is. Not only to assess where their skill level is, but to also do some hands-on training right then and there if they aren't competent or as competent as they would like to be. After that, we feel it's imperative that they walk out of our doors with a schedule. If they walk out of our doors with a schedule, we have found that we retain them so much easier. There's not a lapse there between when they leave and then we're calling

them for that first shift. A schedule is then given. Then a phone call is made. Is it made the next day? Made the next day to remind them of their shift, to let them know that somebody from the office, particularly our educator, will be meeting them at their new client's home. This is imperative. In my opinion, it gives them just that sense of, okay, somebody's got my back. I'm not walking into this alone. It also gives the client great peace of mind because there's that connection again that somebody's got their back. Yes. An extra level of security. So we really want them to know and understand we've got you. We haven't just

hired you to throw you into the weeds and make money for us. That's not what this is about. So they are then meted at the formal meet and greet with the client. Amy then stays there generally about two hours with them, making sure they're comfortable going over care plans. Again, she's constantly assessing and reassessing what their skill level is or their areas of concern or weakness that she might bring back to the office and build out an educational plan for them. After their first shift is completed, depending on whether or not they need additional training, they will then continue on the schedule. They can either be alone or

continue to need Amy's assistance. They're called after their very first shift. They are then called each week. And then from there, they're called at a 30, 60, and 90 day period. There's so much more communication that takes place between them though. We really have an open door here as I like to call it an open phone line. The phone rings all the time because they're calling to ask questions from Amy. They're calling to ask questions from Todd, who is our client care coordinator. And the more that we make them feel like they have a huge amount of resources here, the more confident they are in providing the quality of care that we expect them to provide. Okay, love this. I have lots of questions about the details of this. So thanks for going through that. I guess going back to the beginning here, and I get like, I'll kind of direct the how to questions here to Kristen,

but like, definitely feel free to jump in here, Stephanie. I'm not sure who might be best answer, which one. So, you know, definitely feel free to be part of it. And then I will want to specifically direct a couple to you in a minute here, Stephanie. So I guess like, first off, just if I can kind of put you on the spot a teeny bit here, are there any metrics you can speak to as, as far as like showing the success of this, whether it's the percentage of people who show up to interviews or first shift or anything like that. And or like what is the average time to hire or any metrics around the timing of this that you can share? Yeah. So our time from applicant to hire is typically five days. Now, that is we're really wanting to shorten that. And we're finding that the reason

that it's a little longer than we like is because if we're making those, if we're gathering those applications on a Thursday or Friday, and we can't get them in until a Monday or Tuesday. So if we were to count business days, it would really be three. So applicant to hire. And remember in between that time, we're checking references. We're doing a lot of the legwork for them to get them in the door and and let them know, hey, if if we move forward with choosing you to be part of our team, would you have the availability to onboard that day? So that's a metric as well as what was was your second one? I think just if you have any success metrics as far as conversion rates or anything like that or show up rates. Yes, so none yet on our conversion rates,

but I can tell you that our show up has really increased since we've instituted the referral calls prior to. Yeah, I'd love to provide you with hard data. That's a great that's a great metric that we need to see. I just know offhand that our no-shows have been dropping significantly because of that. Yeah, no problem. I kind of put you on the spot with that one. I'm good. No worries. Let's see. I think a few questions that I can almost like hear our listeners having just so that they know kind of like, like how to think of the circumstances of your agency and how comparable they might be.

You know, what, what types of payer sources of clients are you typically focused on? Because sometimes that can influence some of these dynamics. And then, you know, as far as whatever way to describe this makes sense, like what's the relative size of your agency that we're talking about here? Our primary payer sources are private duty, private pay. Probably 80% of our revenue is private. We also provide paraprofessionals into the school system, which has been a great additional line of revenue for us. And we do long-term care insurance, obviously, and we also do workers' comp. We're on track right now for $2 million. We're a smaller agency. We're still within that five years. But I can tell you that we are on track to far surpass that in the next two to five years.

Gotcha. And I actually like hearing this come from an agency that's kind of, as you said, on the smaller side, because I think it eliminates or addresses some of the counterpoints we might hear of like, oh, this makes sense for an agency that's at a really big scale or has all these resources. And it's like, these are things that can be done much earlier in an agency's growth than is commonly believed, I think. So I appreciate that. Stephanie, how long have you been with this agency particularly? And did your process, just kind of so we have context, like did your hiring process basically follow something that looks like what was just described? Yes. And I've been with the company for a year.

The whole process was actually very quick. From the time that I applied to be a care professional. They called me the following day, just called and asked, you know, my experience and were excited to get to know me besides, you know, my experience in the same process. After, you know, they hung up, they sent me the email, provided me with everything I needed to bring, sent the location of our office also. We've also instituted, sorry to interrupt, but I want to let you know, we've instituted a text the day before, a text the morning of, and a text the day after. So communication, communication, communication. I just feel like you can't have enough when you're trying to build that reputation already before they are coming in explicit in being like we're not just excited to like have somebody fill the shift but like we like you we appreciate you specifically and we're glad to have you on the team how to know me as a person not just my

experience i also like that they also text you with a reminder too once the interview was set up we had that option if we needed to reschedule it through the text, which I also thought was pretty neat. What did they do? I mean, besides the text, like what did they do during the process that helps to get that message through that they really cared about you and we're glad to have you on the team? Just always reaching out, seeing, you know, if we needed anything, just being, you know, on top of everything. Gotcha. I think that's probably not going to come as a surprise to anyone, but it's always good to have that reminded because there's that, that like vicious cycle that

happens as it gets more difficult to hire caregivers, then it becomes easier just to try and bring on whoever you can as fast as you can and with this process that feels less and less personal and so it's it's a good reminder to do what you need to do to be able to hire people um who are not just the right people to join the team but who feel like that and know that you think of them that way so i appreciate that We also, we want to make sure that they understand that we want their story to find out why they want to be a part of us. Is it because they're an empty nester? Is it because they've taken care of their grandparent or their parent? What brings them into this role of caregiving and care professionals? Do they want, are they a nursing student? What is their goals and aspirations as well as their history? And so then in there, once you kind of get to know each other

at that interview, it forms that relationship of there's already a little bit of an accountability of my position. That's interesting because, so you guys are the second agency I've talked to specifically about this topic on the podcast. The first one was Family Resource Home Care in Washington. And they kind of similarly have a five day timeline of doing somewhat similar things to this. And they said that the only question that they make sure to always ask in the interview, you know, the one that doesn't ever change is what made you want to get into caregiving. So it's kind of cool seeing the similarity there. As far as, I guess, how

selective you are in the process of making sure you're choosing the right people, if you have any metrics around what percentage of people of the applicants you have that you're hiring. I'm not sure if that was one of the numbers you said you don't maybe have access to good information on like right now. Like if you have numbers on that, and then also, I guess after that, I have some questions on the reference checks. So right now we average between 80 and 85%. I feel like that's high, but it's high because we've allowed it to be high because there's so much pre-screening that goes on. Typically, if we are not hiring them, it's one of two reasons either. And this, you know, not every agency may run this way and that's okay, but we found that it works for us. We here have a great sense

of intuition and discernment. And if it doesn't feel right, it's not right. But we also, we trump character over skill any day of the week. So we hire for character and train for skill. You can come in and do all the right things, but if there's a sense of lack of integrity or dishonesty, those are things that are just absolute deal breakers. And we'll stop the interview right then and there and politely tell them that we'll have somebody get in touch with them if we choose to move forward with this. We don't like to waste time around here. So that's the reason, in my opinion, that we're able to have that conversion rate higher probably than most agencies.

Higher for caregiver, or excuse me, for character trained for skill. I love that. Always. Yeah, that's a pretty high conversion right there. You mentioned having lots of kind of pre-screening. So that includes the reference checks, right? Yes. So it sounds like if I've got this right, when someone applies, like one of the first things that you're trying to do kind of alongside moving them to the interview process is you start to check their references. If you can't get a hold of their references by the time the interview happens, which I know is a very common thing, like what do you do? How do you approach that? Well, we kind of just roll with it. We at least want to be able to have had one. The whole idea behind the reference check really is so that we're not surprised if they don't show up, right? And so we're not

blocking lots of periods of time around somebody that doesn't have positive references. So as long as we have one professional positive reference, we're going to assume that they're going to show up. We've already kind of got in our mind from the additional questions on our screening process that include everything from character questions to logistics to availability and experience. We kind of already have in our mind, like I said, if they're going to be a good fit. So that's why when they walk in the door, it's just that discernment and intuition that we're able to rely on that seals the deal. That makes sense. What might be some examples of things that you would see in the interview that maybe aren't obvious, but with like discernment and intuition, like you said,

would suggest that they might not be a good hire? Sure. So I have a big issue with appearance and the way that you carry yourself. So if you're coming in in pajama sweats and your hair is a mess and you reek of cigarette smoke, the interview is not going to last long. You know, you want to put your best foot forward and we consider ourselves the elite in home care. And so because of that, we have a high standard of how our care pros represent themselves. And it's not based on looks as much as it is image, right? It's the way they handle themselves, the way they speak. Are they truthful? And does their wording and experience match up with the notes that we've taken?

How do they handle conflict? Is there good eye contact being made? Things like that. Are they late? And if they are late, we can accept that. Maybe they had a hard time finding the building. We're a little bit further out than our service area. But if they're coming in and they're walking through the door complaining about traffic and why they're late and giving us excuse after excuse,

we've already kind of said they're not for us. That makes sense. Let's kind of move to talk a little bit about orientation itself. And then, like I mentioned, the danger zone between orientation and the first shift. I love that you try to make sure they have a schedule in hand before they walk out of their orientation. I think that's huge. Is there always a shift that is going to be like their shift with their client that they can take? Or what do you do if there's not someone who it makes sense for them to take right then? Then we will bring them into the office. We want them to feel a part of things right away.

So we have mandatory videos and training that they need to complete upon hire. If there's not a shift that's available or really meets their need or they need more training, we'll bring them into the office and they can do those mandatory videos here in the office. And while that's happening, they kind of get to know the flow of the internal staff.

We get to know them a little bit better. They're still making money, getting hours and getting their training in. But potentially the goal is to either put them with a new client or get them training with a current care pro. They can at least serve as backup just to get out in the field so we can start to see some hands-on evidence of their abilities. Okay. That was also going to

be a question is whether you use like shadowing shifts and it sounds like you do often if that's what they need. Stephanie, one question that I have, so you would have gone through orientation as a much more experienced care pro. It sounds like, how did that affect your experience in it? Like, were there still things that you appreciated about how they did orientation? Can you speak at all to your experience with orientation here? So the orientation was actually scheduled pretty quickly after the interview, which I appreciated because I was ready to start as soon as possible. So the process went pretty quick, quicker than past agencies that I've worked for. I've had to wait a week, two weeks, you know, for the process to get started.

So I felt like they listened when I said that I was ready to go. I think that's huge. I hear of so many agencies that do, you know, take several weeks or whatever. And sometimes, I mean, depending on the state, there are certification processes and things like that, that can need to happen. But in general, they are usually so much longer than five days. So that makes sense. When they tested your skill set, you know, saw that you were knowledgeable, did that affect how much more like orientation and training you needed that day? Or did you kind of go through the same process regardless? Do you remember? So I just had to do their online classes that they require for all of us before we start. As far as any other additional training, I really didn't have to do any of that.

We do have our skills workshop that we do twice a year that I like. So if I run into a client that has a specific need and I haven't done that in a while, I can come into the office and practice doing that before I go to the client. Okay, that's cool. I'll definitely have more questions on the skills workshop, I think, during next week's episode. So I'll look forward to that. One other question I have is like, you know, five days is pretty fast, you know, or like you said, it's really like three if you just count business days. And you mentioned still wanting to tighten up that time. What is the goal?

Is there a specific goal where you're like, hey, this will be fast enough? Well, ideally, I would love to be able to have all of our applicants called Monday, Tuesday, orientation or interview on Wednesday, possibly an orientation later that afternoon. If we could do it all in a group setting, so we can just continually move that gear, that would be ideal so that they are out the door on Wednesday with a schedule, even if it's not until next Monday, that's fine, but applicant to hire. And when we say hire, you know, hire is at interview when they sign their job description that a lot of agencies might consider that their hire. We really consider the hire after they've onboarded, after we've orientated them and they've received their uniform, their gift from us. We've taken their picture. They're in our system. We've

introduced them. That's our hire. So the only things that would really limit us from being able to get that number any tighter, obviously, is the background check. The background checks, that's something that we like to do right away as well. Sometimes that can take a little bit of time. The drug screen we're able to do right there on site. But again, we're able to make those screening questions available to them at the phone screen. Are you able to pass a background check? Are you able to pass a drug screen? And these are the drugs that we test for. So there's no surprises when they show up. Do you have a bank account so we can do direct deposit? Do you have valid car insurance that you can provide prior to your interview?

Things like that so that they don't show up at the interview and, oh, I forgot my car insurance. Just little things that set them up for success. But in doing so, it also teaches them what kind of agency and expectations we have in being proactive. Love that. We have a couple questions from listeners about this that I think are good. So they say, when are you talking with applicants about pay rate? So like at what stage in the conversation does that happen? Is it, I guess I would add, is it just advertised in the job description or else where else

do you have that conversation? So the pay range is given on the application or on the job description, the job board. So they understand the range when they're brought in for the interview. Dependent on their experience, we have tiers. So if they don't have any experience, which generally we like at least a year of experience, they'll start out at the lower end. And then that pay is based obviously on their experience and on their availability, whether they're going to be part-time or full-time. Makes sense. We have a follow-up question here from Rose, who always asks really good questions.

Thanks, Rose. Good to see you again. She says, I know she stated the training was paid. Is it paid based on an hourly rate or standard pay upon completion? It is paid on an hourly rate. An hourly rate for the in-office training. For the video training, we pay a bundle training for that. A bundle training. Okay. Gotcha. A bundle price. So upon completion of the set of videos that they needed to complete and test that they needed to take once they, um, complete those, then they're given a lump sum. Gotcha. Okay. So a mix of the two, that makes sense. In that time between orientation and then first shift, aside from, I think you mentioned like the text that is sent afterward, and then also them having a schedule in hand, I think just those two would make a really big difference in helping more people show up to the first shift. Since that is such a problem, are there any more things that you've started to do or found it necessary to do to help ensure that people show up to their first shift? Not necessarily. Aside from communication, like I said, just verifying, hey, Amy's going to be

meeting you at Mrs. Jones' house at 8 a.m. Monday. Looking forward to seeing you, sending that text. Again, I feel like all of the work prior to that, all of the building them up, making them feel like welcome to the best team in town, you know, welcome to a very prestigious position that you have been selected for. These things all set them up for, they're not going to want to let us down. And so we haven't really had to have an issue to address the no call, no shows for those first shifts. Okay. That's impressive. And I think that speaks to the success of everything you've already described. I liked hearing you say that if I have this right, every first shift for each new care pro, they have a supervisor there at least for like the first little bit for the introduction. A couple questions there. Does that change even

if it's like a very experienced person with, you know, years and years at a different agency or? Nope. Nope. That is just company policy that we have instituted that you will have for the sake of the client and the sake of the caregiver, you will have a supervisor there that's doing the meet and greet and kind of that liaison, a handoff, if you will, of care. So we found it to be one of the selling points really in talking to our employees that they love. So that's something that I'm just not willing to compromise on when it comes to start of care. I love that. And to clarify, that is just when you are bringing on a new employee, not when someone has already been working with you, but then starts with a new client, or does that apply then too? That applies then as well. Any new client, any new employee. So our educators and lead care pros

are very busy with meet and greets. Meet and greets don't just apply to new employees, they apply to new clients as well. So. Love that. Can I ask a few more questions about this? I, this is something that I think is really important. Yeah. I guess, you know, first of all, even from agencies I've talked to that have very like comprehensive, strong, intentional plans to onboard and hire new employees, it's often very typical to hear people say, well, we only send a supervisor when we need to or something like that. How did you guys arrive at the conclusion of like, we're going to make this a zero exception policy? I just knew going into this that I worked in the hospital for a long period of time and I saw a lot of cutting corners, right? A lot

of trying to make things happen quickly or cut costs. And anytime that happens, you're compromising a little bit of quality every time. And so there were certain non-negotiables that I knew that setting this business up just wasn't going to be an option. And so that was definitely one of them. And like I said, because it's such a great selling point, it's certainly not something that we're willing to let go of. Now, has it happened a hundred percent? Has there been a time or two that we have been in a real pinch and we've had a call off and we've had to send one of our care professionals to a shift and we haven't had coverage to do that meet and greet, probably. Not that I'm aware of, but I can tell you,

it's just not something that we like to budge on. That's impressive and very cool. Stephanie, is there any thoughts or experiences you want to add to this part, either from when you were first starting here as a care pro or just like from your current experiences as a lead care pro on the other side of that? Yeah, it's just, it's very different working here than other companies as far as doing that meet and greet, making sure that you're comfortable, that the client is also comfortable, not just saying, here you go, go to the client's house and work for four hours. You know, there's that comfort level, reviewing the care plan with us, making sure we don't have any questions.

One, I think common like counter argument I would hear to this is like I've heard people say, like, well, our experienced caregivers don't really want or need someone to go to the house with them for a new client. What would you two's response to that be? I didn't feel that way. I actually appreciated that someone met me there at the new clients because it is uncomfortable. I'm appreciated that someone, you know, met me there at the new clients because it is uncomfortable. I'm going into someone else's home. I don't know who they are. I've never seen their face, you know? So I just feel like there's that extra support and comfort

for both of us. And really it should speak to, you know, if you're experienced and you have the skills that you are telling us that you do have, you should want to exemplify those to management. So what better opportunity to do that than your first shift where you're showing up and now you're giving us that stamp of approval and peace of mind like, I got this. And there's been numerous amounts of time that we've had a staff come back to the office and like, oh, that was a Maria was a fabulous hire. She you know, we're going to love her. She's going to work out great. So we haven't really ran into any issues with a pride issue, I guess I would call that. And I would assume like you didn't mention this, but it sounds like there's also the flip side of what you mentioned of if you do have a circumstance where you've hired someone who seemed good, but maybe there are problems that will show up in the first shift. This gives you an extra line of defense to spot

that and take action if needed to make sure that you don't have the wrong person working. Is that something that's been relevant too? It has a time or two. It has more than that. It's given us an opportunity to see, you know what? Either there's a confidence issue that we can work with. It might just be their previous employer didn't believe in them like we do. So we can come along and give them the resources they need to feel empowered, to be able to do confident work.

But if it's, you know, like one of the things I touched on earlier, if it's an image issue or if they're late or if their car, you know, is leaking oil all over the driveway and they know that and they pull up in the client's home, things like that are kind of, we might've made the wrong choice here, but it doesn't happen often. Yeah. That's good to hear. I think one thought that I'm having in this is that some agencies like say that they simply don't have, you know, the ability, like the resource resources or whatever, um, to fall through with a policy like this. Um, are there things you're doing differently

as far as maybe your processes or just how you're using your resources or what the roles of supervisors are that has enabled your agency to be able to do this? Well, we're instituting our lead care pros. So we have a team developer. I guess the hierarchy would be the team developer under the team. And she's in charge of all of our recruiting and retainment. Under the team developer then is the field supervisor. The field supervisor is also our educator. So she's the one that does the hands-on training and most of the meet and greets. Her name is Amy. Underneath her are all of our lead care pros, Stephanie being one of them. So our mission right now is to develop our lead care pros as we're growing to be able to go out and do those meet and greets and those 90 day supervisory visits.

So they're being groomed right now for they know the expectation. They know our standards and our quality of care that we expect. So they're able to then carry the torch and relieve some of the responsibilities that Amy has as we expand our services here. Love that. So we'll probably get more to that next episode, but it sounds like part of the purpose of that is that it also helps to create, you know, something more of a path for care pros to advance.

That's really cool. Definitely. We'll want to get into that next week. Let's see. So I guess kind of moving into the remainder of like that first 90 day period, you've mentioned communication being a big part of it. You kind of talked about like the frequency of calls and things like that. Are there other aspects of retention slash caregiver care pro experience that are relevant to talk about here? Well, I would, retention wise, I would speak to letting them know all of the things that we have to offer from the career advancement. We put out

a video newsletter every month, and that highlights our new employees. So it gets them out and kind of showcases them. We do a lot of social media. We do a weekly TikTok. There's opportunities for them to be a part of that. We just have a lot of fun. We have an office dog that's here. It's just, the more that they're able to be in the office, whether it's picking up a uniform or coming in and getting their mandatories done during those first 90 days, the more that they can get to know us, we can get to know them. They can feel like they're part of the team. The stronger that bond and relationship comes so that when the competitor, you know, runs into them and says, hey, you look like a great candidate for

services with my home care agency, I'll pay you $2 more an hour, they're not leaving us high and dry. They'll either come back to us and say, I was approached and, you know, what can you do for me? Or they'll simply say, no, because I'm making good money here, but I've got these incredible benefits as well. We also offer healthcare benefits to our full-time employees. And that's not something that's easy to do for a smaller agency, but it is beneficial for a lot of these parents that need healthcare for their families. That'll make sense. I have a couple of questions. I think first real quick, like Stephanie, is there anything that you would add to all that? I just like that there's always so much support from all of the office staff while you're going through the first 90 days.

They also call you your first 30 days, congratulate you for 30 days within the company. And they continue that on 60 day, 90 day. Ask if you have any questions or concerns, anything that the office could do better to help support us. So I just like that there's just always support within the office staff, 24 hours a day. Love that. When I used to work at Home Care Pulse, part of what I did was like doing like their benchmarking study and like research like that. And part of that was that we would like aggregate like data from like their like thousands of caregiver surveys they were doing and like see what appeared to be most important to caregivers, like which factors are most important. And like

one of the very top ones was always support from the office staff, especially early on. So that totally makes sense. Love hearing you reinforce that. We do have a reward platform too that I wanted to mention. It's called Bonusly. And we signed, have you heard of Bonusly? I've used Bonusly. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. And we found it to be phenomenal. It's managed. And from the moment that they're hired on, they receive X amount of points. There's a little video that explains how to manage that for them. And then that also gives them the availability to see and scroll through all of the other,

they're now teammates, right? Who are giving shout outs. And it's just kind of that solidification of, okay, I'm working for the right agency. There's, you know, our hashtags are teamwork, innovation, excellence, compassion, reliability, anything that we can to just consistently reinforce our core values as well as the expectations.

Very cool. Yeah. I, I have mostly heard of it used kind of in like more of like an office staff setting. I haven't heard it used as much for like the full team, which includes caregivers. So I'll have more questions for you on that next time too, but I definitely am a huge fan of like that type of software, but like specifically Bonusly is awesome. So love hearing that. Let's see. I'm looking at our questions real quick. Someone's asking if we'll send out a link to the recording. Yes, we will for sure. I'll mention this at the end again, but you can access the recording as a podcast called Home Care U wherever you get your podcasts. And then we'll also email these out. We have another question from Rose. She's asking, are you

using social media to generate client leads or care pro leads? I assume it's both, but like, are you doing more of one or the other? We do both pretty consistently. You know, we'll focus our TikToks on why you want to work with us or why you want to have our services. We'll generate our post to why we're the expert in home care to why we're the best employer to work for. So it's pretty much, I would say it's even, but it also, you know, this business ebbs and flows. You're either care pro heavy and client short or vice versa. So sometimes we have to work accordingly to how that fits into our stream. I have to ask a few questions about how you're using TikTok because it has not been easy to find an agency who is using TikTok,

feels confident in how they're using it and can speak to it. So, so, so first off, it sounds like you're using it kind of on the employment branding side, you know, show what it's like to work with you, let caregivers get exposure there. How much like, I guess first question is, are you able to like track or measure or just kind of attribute with confidence some of the success you're having in hiring to your TikTok? Well, I don't have any metrics on it. And I probably should. It's about three years in the making. We started doing TikToks weekly. Now it's, you know, it's a TikTok Friday. We try to have three fun and one educational. And the amount good reason to consistently put those out there because it does kind of highlight and showcase the office atmosphere that we do have. So we've used it for that so far, but we are going to start using it myself specifically with just my nursing background to be more of an educational platform as well.

Okay. I love that. And based on my marketing experiences too, like I would say like that's kind of like, I think it would be hard to be like, oh, we got X number of leads from TikTok, but it's like how you would see that working is exactly what you've said, which is just hearing from people casually in conversation. Oh, yeah, I loved your TikTok on this or I saw your TikTok about this or whatever. So that's really cool. I know one challenge with it is just that it can be harder to make it, you know, kind of hit more locally, if that makes sense. Have you done anything to ensure that you're kind of focused on reaching people locally, whether it's hashtags or geotagging or anything like that? Or have you just kind of gotten lucky to be found by people through the algorithm

locally? Well, not necessarily through the algorithm as much as we have, we post it to our Facebook account. So we post our TikTok to our weekly, to our daily Facebook account. Right. So we get a lot there. So, you know, you just got me thinking, I guess in terms of TikTok itself, I don't see that we have used that to the full extent as much as using the TikTok video on our social media platform, our Facebook and Instagram. Which I think is really smart because most of the rest of the platforms are able to geo-target a little bit more effectively. And so basically like you're

using those to reach people in your community, but then they see how to get to it on TikTok. So it pulls them back in. Yeah, it actually helps to address some of the challenges I've talked to other agencies about with TikTok. Are you also sharing them to Instagram or doing reels or things like that? We sure are. Yeah, we're doing that. And then we'll boost a post and you can boost your post and make your audience specific to your location. So that's been helpful. Very cool. Yeah. As a self-avowed marketing nerd, this is like super fun for me to dig into. And like I said, it's just fun because I haven't talked to a ton of agencies who have found success from this and what you're describing, I think answers some of the challenges that I hear about with it.

So that's very cool. I know we're kind of up against the end of our time just about here. I guess I want to make sure and give the two of you the last few minutes to talk about anything related to these topics that I should have asked about but haven't or just any final thoughts that either of you want to leave our listeners with for this week? You know, just coming from an owner's perspective, and if I was watching these podcasts and listening to them and

wanting to get some insight on how to build a good team and retain a good team, I think you're constantly needing to reassess the culture, reassess what your employees love about working for you and why they might leave you. So we do surveys. We do anonymous surveys that we send out because we want that feedback. So really just being a very present and intentional part of what's going on in your employee's life. What's going on? Why are they here? Like I said earlier in the podcast, what is their intention? And we have employees that, like I said, are empty nesters, and they don't want to go any further than their eight hours a week with Miss Jones.

But we have a lot of nursing students and a lot of younger want to be professionals that we want to give them the ability to work their way up there and then, you know, move on to whether it's PA school or nursing, or maybe they'll sit in my seat one day. I'd be happy to, happy to interview that for that one too. So. Love that. Thank you. Stephanie, we'll give you the last word here. Anything you want to add? Anything you want to share? It's just been a great experience. Like I said, compared to other companies, you know, they make you feel like you're at sharing your experiences, sharing your insights and knowledge here. Just as a reminder for those listening, we will be bringing back Kristen and Stephanie next week to continue this conversation and talk about the ongoing retention and caregiver experience processes that they're using in their agency to make it a place caregivers want to stay for the long haul. So thanks again. Yes. Yeah. Maybe we'll put that in the title. Thank you for that. Thanks for joining for everyone listening. You can get the recording as home care you that's you as an university, wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can

also join live and ask questions, which I highly recommend for next week's particularly by going to careswitch.com slash homecare you and then you can register free there. It's every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern. So thanks again to both of you. Thanks to those listening and have a great rest of your day. That's a wrap. This podcast was made by the team at CareSwitch, the first AI-powered management software for home care agencies. If you want to automate away the menial of your day-to-day with AI so that you and your team can focus on giving great care, check us out at careswitch.com.