Home Care U - How to Sharpen Your Recruitment Marketing With the 7 Caregiver Personas (Maggie Keen Pt. 2)

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

In part 2 of our series with MissionCare Collective, we’re here to talk about their Workforce Study, the seven caregiver personas it highlights, and the very specific way this information can help you upgrade your recruitment strategy. Download the report  free: https://www.missioncare.com/workforce-report-jan23Enjoying 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 CareSwitch. Enjoy the session. Welcome to this week's Home Care U.

Thanks everyone who's joining live and everyone who's listening. I'm excited to bring back our friends at Mission Care for part two of a really cool series we're doing with them on the reports that they've been publishing. Let me go through a few housekeeping items first. So as we always mention, Home Care U is both a live class and a podcast. If you want to join live, be on Zoom with us, ask us questions through the chat and the Q&A in Zoom, you can do that. Just register free at careswitch.com slash homecareu. That's U as in university. Or if you prefer to listen on your own time, have the speed turned up or listen while

you're driving or whatever, you can do that by looking up homecareu. Again, that's U as in university, wherever you get your podcasts. Typically, the episodes will be turned into podcasts and have the replays available within about five days. So I highly recommend listening again afterwards. There's always so much that's hard to catch live. And if you don't join us live, I recommend you do that too, because it's a great chance to ask your questions specifically to our experts. So with that being said, we'll let today's expert be introduced here. So you want to just kind of give us the same kind of level of introduction as last time here? Yeah.

So if there's folks on the line who didn't join us last week, I will reiterate. Connor there, absolutely recommend listening to that. We dove into some really neat insights from the provider perspective. But my name is Maggie Keene. I'm the vice president over here at Mission Care Collective. I've been in the industry for almost 10 years now. Most of that time I have spent working in partnership with Connor. So it's nice to have an opportunity to have this conversation here. For folks that aren't familiar with Mission Care, we're a mission-driven organization.

Our goal is really to make care better tomorrow than it is today. So we know folks aren't getting the care they need. And if we don't solve some of these workforce complexities, it's going to get worse before it gets better. So that's why we do what we do. And our collective operates at a couple of brands. Many folks on the line may be familiar with MyCNAjobs, the largest caregiver CNA and home health aid network in the nation. So a lot of the data, especially for today's conversation that I'm bringing today, stems from the caregivers in that community. And then CoachUpCare is an engagement and retention tool really to help

providers engage their team, build a healthier workforce, but most importantly, make sure fewer people are walking out the back door, employees are inspired, and you've got folks delivering more and better care. So excited to have an opportunity to connect with Connor and folks on the line here and talk a little bit more about our caregiver study. Awesome. Thanks for that. And for those who are interested, we will bit more about our caregiver study. Awesome. Thanks for that. And for those who are interested, we will talk more about their brands at the end and give you a chance to reach out and get more information about them if you want. Really quick, I'm just going to give kind of the overview of this and how it fits into our two-part series with Mission

Care. So basically they publish, I mean, it's at least kind of one to two reports per year, right? And they're always to do with caregivers and agencies and how we can help provide better for the workforce and understand their needs more. And so last year's was kind of more focused on through the lens of the providers specifically and how they perceive the challenges in home care and what they're dealing with. And then so we went through that report last week and there are a lot of really good takeaways. I highly recommend the episode. This week, we're going to look at the caregiver side of a lot of the same research. And specifically, we'll get into the seven caregiver personas, which we'll explain more about, but what they

mean for marketing, for recruitment marketing, and how they can be a tool to you in hiring more caregivers. So is there anything that you'd want to add to that description here of the reports, Maggie? No, I mean, I'm happy to give some more context on the report if you want me to dive in there. But no, that's absolutely a great blend. Connor and I were just chatting about another study that we have coming out next week. So maybe I'll get the invite back and we can talk about the insights from that report here later this year. But, you know, absolutely. Our goal with all of these studies and all this data is to bring it to the industry to help start great conversations. I think the conversation we're having today is hopefully one of many that comes out of this report.

And this study in particular was published in partnership with the National Association of Home Care and Hospice. So NAC for folks on the line. So really, there was a lot of thinking there that goes into how thinking, but we knew that we needed something new and different. So we started talking about the importance of really understanding who a caregiver is. And so our thinking was changing the culture of care has to start with better understanding the people who are delivering it. And so that was the idea behind this study and partnership closely with NAC and one of the world's largest data companies, we actually analyzed a sample size of over 67,000 US-based caregiver CNAs and home health aides. And we analyzed that across 90 different data sources to help better understand the profile of today's care worker. So that's the thinking behind, the data behind, the insight behind the report itself and where all this data came from.

Love that. Thanks for sharing the extra background on there. I'll just kind of frame why I think this topic is so important and some of what I think we'll get out of this today. So we'll spend the first part of today's episode talking about the findings, the report itself. And then the second part of it, we'll go through what some of the applications are from this. And part of why I think this is so important. So there's kind of like two parts of the finding that I see value in. First is just there are some things around what we can do to make the industry a better place for caregivers.

And I think that's always a worthwhile conversation. Second, when we come to the caregiver personas themselves, the reason I think they're important, they may sound kind of obvious as you hear them. You'll be like, yeah, this describes my caregiver. Sure, I kind of knew some of this. But I think having it laid out to the degree of detail here lends itself to a more scientific measurement-based, targeting-based approach to recruitment marketing than I think most agencies are doing. And we'll talk about that more at the end, but I think there's a lot

of value in that. That being said, let's launch into the findings. I'll kind of hand things off to you to drive. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot here. And so part of, I know today's conversation is, if folks want a copy of this, it's free, it's available. I know we'll both give links for folks to be able to download it and also share this at the end of our conversation. So don't memorize all of these insights as Con and I are talking through them. But the study is looking at the folks that are working in care today. And I think that, as Connor said, is really powerful when we think about what we can do

to make care better for our workforce. We also know that there's a business implication to that, right? Just talking with one of my colleagues about this, right? Happier caregivers mean happier clients. And that's good for everybody here on the line. So when we think about understanding and kind of walking in the shoes of our caregivers, I think that's an important place to start. So I hope as we dive into some of this, you switch your lens a little bit to think about what some of this data means about your workforce and what it means for your workforce as well. So the first half of the study, and I have a physical copy sitting in front of me, we've got lots of those, and then obviously some digital links we can share as well. But the

first half of the study unveils specifically insights about the lifestyle and behaviors of the direct care workforce. And the second half dives really deep into those personas that Connor mentioned. And I know as a marketer, and if there are any marketers or sales folks on the line, that persona concept is going to be especially exciting and interesting to you. But through the research, we identified seven key personas. So all of these are folks actively working in care today. The thinking behind the personas was to help inspire our industry to think differently, both about creating benefits, your messaging, your whole workforce strategy to help refine recruitment and retention for the industry and for your company. So as Connor said, that detailed scientific approach

was part of the goal here. So some insights from the study. Demographically speaking, not going to surprise folks on the line, our industry is primarily women. The caregivers working in care today are primarily women, consists of 63% people of color. And the median age working in our industry today is actually 47 years old.

Many caregivers in our industry are single parents. They come from low wage and underserved communities. Studies share that caregivers are actually seven times more likely to live in the poorest income category. 53% are on some form of public assistance, and 17% don't have health insurance. So I'll pause. There's a lot of information there, right? A lot of insight. I have as part of our conversation today, obviously, the now what, or what do you do with this information type of thing.

But I do want us to think about what the realities are that our workforce faces when they wake up every morning, their challenges in getting to work, finding childcare, right? Potentially deciding whether to pay rent or keep the lights on or buy food. Those are very real realities, likely different daily challenges than many of us listening on the conversation today. So I challenge you to step back and think about that. Probably very different from owners and leaders in your agencies, and probably even different from your recruiters or your schedulers that they talk to on a regular basis as well. So

something to think about, right? And so many of the folks in our workforce are struggling with things that all of us would consider basic needs, right? Lights on, food on the table, things we probably take for granted. Now we do see overwhelmingly, we talked a little bit about this last week, caregivers want a next step. 70% of caregivers are interested in pursuing more education. And that is either with the goal of better serving their clients, right? So getting specific dementia care training or nutritional training, or to find a pathway out of poverty. So these are individuals that also provide care despite some of their own health struggles as well. And the report dives deeper into some of those actual health struggles, but things like chronic pain, diabetes, right?

Challenges that they're facing as well. And we see that caregivers are actually seven, pardon me, three times more likely to struggle with anxiety and depression and often have higher incidence of health ailments than the average U.S. population. So a lot of information. We talk also about annual reported income. It dives deeper into hobbies, where caregivers are listening, what they're listening to on the radio, what they're reading, what they're doing when they're not at work, all things that folks might be like, why do I care that the number one radio station for a caregiver and a home health aid is an R&B station? Number two is country. These are all insights and data points you can

use when building your own recruitment and retention strategy. Maybe think about where you're finding your caregivers today, right? Or what they're doing when they're not at work. So there's a very interesting top hobbies section. Not going to talk too in detail about this, but hobbies are things like cooking, electronics, home improvement, DIY. My favorite hobby that came out of the study was grandchildren. That is a whole hobby. The whole section was grandchildren, which I think is fantastic. So when you start to think about what's important to your caregivers when they're not at work, you can help to enrich the time they're spending while they're working with you and your agency.

And you think about client match. So if you've got a caregiver who loves to cook, what does that mean for the client you choose to match them with? If they're into sewing and knitting, what does that look like, right? So there's data and insight here you can use in making a more successful client and caregiver match as well. So there's a lot of challenges we talk about in the first half of this report. And if there's anything, Connor, you want to dive into more specifically, happy to, but it's interesting, the question we often get asked after all of that is what drives our workforce to continue working in this field, right? These are very real challenges. Just briefly, let's kind of pause there for a minute because there's been so much and I want to digest a handful of the things you've said before we explore more.

So first off, the fact that caregivers are three times as likely to experience anxiety or depression. We talked about that one, I think, too, last time, but wow, that needs to be discussed more, that needs to be explored more. You know, we need to think about the causes and the impact of that more. Thanks for sharing that and highlighting that. I also appreciate the work into quantifying the demographics of caregivers. I don't think any of us are surprised. At the same time, recognizing the challenges they deal with, the income level that they're often at, the various day-to-day challenges they have, and like you said, being from underserved communities and demographics, it's very easy, you know, to have a room full of people who are high up in home care talking about the best ways to improve the industry and not necessarily, you know, have a room full of people who have good, who are coming from the perspective of caregivers. And so it is a very good reminder of the need to listen to and learn from the experiences of caregivers themselves directly. I was talking with a caregiver this morning, and she actually

touched on some things that what you said made me think of, which is that when it comes to wanting more training and learning and things like that from her employer, she drew a distinction that is not often talked about, which is that she's been in caregiving so long, she's not super interested necessarily in more on-the-job type training. She knows how to help clients with dementia and all the things like that. What she really wants is help with actual continuing ed, you know, to move up in her career. And I think that, you know, that's the type of perspective, that's the type of distinction that can often be lost when we're, you know, not listening to caregivers themselves or not taking the time to understand all the factors that are influencing them.

So I think, you know, the stats so far that you've talked about are very helpful in illuminating that way. Let's keep going. Well, you bring up a couple of interesting things there that I would love to chat a little bit more about. One is, I think when we talk about all those financial struggles, it can't be a surprise to us when we have a workforce

that is struggling with anxiety, is struggling with depression, right? If those were challenges any of us were facing, we would likely have some of those same challenges ourselves, some of those same ailments ourselves. I have seen an increase. So my 10 years in the industry, we had a new leader join us recently,

and I was talking about some of the things I've seen over the last decade that have evolved. And one of those is the benefit of an employee assistance program, a benefit of offering mental health services to our caregivers. I think a lot of that has come out of the pandemic at all levels of care. I'm lucky enough to be from a family of healthcare providers and the things that they saw and faced and went through over the course of the pandemic were incredibly challenging. All of us were challenged by some of the things we saw and felt and experienced during the pandemic, but our frontline care workforce felt that acutely. And so having some of those support services in place when you

think about benefits that matter to your workforce, I think that's an important piece to touch on as well. And from a training perspective, that's a great story. We also hear caregivers come who've been in the industry for a long time who, yeah, maybe don't want to take another course on nutrition or ADLs, but they'd love a course on financial literacy. They'd love a course on their own personal growth and development. And that's interesting. When we get into some of these personas here in a couple minutes, you'll see some of these folks see a path inside of care. And that's wonderful. And there's some folks whose path may take them outside of care. And that's not a bad thing either. And I think we that's a challenge we face in our industry, thinking everyone needs to want to be a caregiver forever. But that is going to impact a workforce

that's already challenged with enough people. So, again, hopefully starting wheels turning and folks thinking differently about those. But I love that story, Connor. Well said. And thanks for that. So yeah, go on. So, you know, when we think about folks wanting to work in this field, because we do, we have, you know, millions of people that provide care in our country every day. We can tell you, we talked a little bit about this last week, what's driving them is often not pay. And we hear that differently, right? We hear people leaving because of pay.

It's actually not the reason that they're coming into the industry, and it's not the reason that they're leaving. So I shared this last week, and we actually had that competitive wage index that we talked about. So on average, caregiver jobs have a negative $2 to $4 competitive wage index, meaning they could get another job with the same or fewer skills earning more money in a different industry. So that's a reality, right, that we're all facing. And you hear that from your recruiters. You hear that from your team when they're out in the community talking about careers in care, but we still see that caregivers persist. And overwhelmingly, they're fueled by a passion to care for others. And sometimes that's even, Connor, when their own needs are going unmet. So we learned in the study, and I know

this is the part that there's great insight here, but there's no single profile of a caregiver. And as Connor said, that's not going to surprise people on the line, right? They don't think all of their caregivers have the same background or same motivations here. But we found there were seven personas of those working in care. They, like all of us, come from diverse backgrounds, different motivations. I'm going to touch on each of the seven, and I can pause after each of folks have questions, but I want to just highlight a couple of attributes of the personas. And as I'm talking about them, I would bet that people joining us will hear some of these insights and immediately think of a few of the folks on their team today, right? As Connor said, so that's it, you know, that's Martha on my team, right?

Or that's Nick, one of my caregivers, as you think through this. So I'm going to start with the career caregiver. So when you think of the career caregiver, their their age may vary, but their biggest defining qualities that they've served, they've worked as a caregiver for three or more years. We took a random sampling of everybody listening and we pulled your job postings and Connor and I got out highlighters. I would guess that that's who you're writing your job content towards. You're attracting those folks who understand our industry lingo, know all of our acronyms. They get it. They've done this work before. They're looking to build a career in care. Hence the career caregiver name for this persona, right? So some interesting insights on them. They don't really want to work jobs outside of care, right?

They may have to if they can't get the hours they need or the pay they need in their industry, but they really want to build a career in care. They're more likely to want full-time hours, CNA certification. This is that group that's going to care deeply about client match and gaining new skills within care. So likely who you're already attracting today or who you're trying to attract today. Not every single caregiver in our industry is a career caregiver. Probably a portion of the folks working for you today are. One of the biggest things we see from a turnover perspective for this persona is the risk of a poor client match. So bad client match is someone who cares about this,

sees this as their career, sees this as their career. If they have a poor client match, they're much more likely to leave, right? When you think about pathway considerations, so the way that the study is structured is we talk through each of these personas and we say, where can you find them? What are some benefits you should offer? What's a turnover risk, right? I'm going to touch on a couple of those highlights here, but a lot more in the study itself. If you haven't had a chance to dive into it, I definitely recommend that you do. But when you think about a pathway for a career caregiver, they are going to be those folks like Connor talks to this week, which is somebody who's

content in their current role. They want to learn new skills, right? They want to better care for the patients that they're serving. And they're also interested in that continuing education. They see a path inside of our industry. So those are those career caregivers, probably the ones that you may think on the line we know the most about, right? The people working in our industry today. Any comments on that, Connor? I guess the only thing I would highlight is just that like, I don't know that I've seen a ton of data behind this, but it's very, very true. Just kind of talking to people about this and like with the available evidence that there is of how different retention and turnover look like both

in terms of it often being higher with this group, but also to your point, depending on different factors than most or all the other caregiver personas. I think that's really key to recognize. Yeah. This one stands out in that way for sure. And somebody who wants to build a career. These are the people, unfortunately, when we look at who's leaving our industry and oftentimes right now it is experienced caregivers. And those are the folks that all of us should want to keep. So when we think about retention as well, I think that that's important. The next persona is our caring homiciders. So these are middle-aged women, not as likely to have kids. They tend to work in hourly jobs in care as well as outside of care. So things like call centers, retail, fast food tend to be more transient in their work. They're heavy internet users. This is a group, and think about this cohort, they enjoy donating to liberal causes,

cultural causes, the things that they care about. And so this is a group that's working in care and outside of care. So we know that wages and flexibility are the biggest driving factors in this persona, both accepting and keeping a job. This cohort's more transient, right? They appreciate the opportunity that we provide in home care to make a difference, but they're likely working higher paying jobs outside of care. So when I saw this persona, I thought about all the agencies, especially early on in my time with Mission Care, who said, my caregivers don't work anywhere else besides here. My caregivers aren't allowed to work anywhere else besides my agency. And just how much that has evolved over the course of our industry, over the years that have gone by, and how many caregivers not only work for multiple agencies or multiple care settings now, but also work outside of care. And this is an interesting persona. So when we think about recruiting this persona,

we think about retaining this persona, it's going to be about open honesty with their schedule. So, hey, we know you've got these one or two other jobs. Let's build you a schedule that works for you. And oftentimes, one of the biggest benefits I see agencies post in their jobs is flexible shifts, flexible schedules. In reality, that's hard for many agencies to provide, right? Because it's driven so heavily by the client's needs and hours and things like that. So building that schedule and that shift, that's going to go a really long way with this specific persona. So they care about the ability to pick up extra shifts. This is a group that is both driven by money, a way that you can

incentivize them is around pay, but also they care about giving back. They care about being part of something bigger and mission driven, which everybody on the line has the opportunity to talk about and focus on as well. So this is the persona when we think about pathways who may have an individualized career path that's going to align with life skills versus perhaps some of those continuing education, caregiving type of skills that they may be interested in. So yes, they want and need to be able to learn what they need to learn to do a good job in our industry, but they might be interested in pursuing a career in HR. They might be interested in getting a certificate in a

different industry. What you could do here, consider, would be to help to make the schedule work for them or even potentially offer to partially fund them attending local college to get a certification program. Again, ways you can think about unique benefits or investing in your team to drive some of these different kinds of personas as well. So that one I think is unique. And I thought that was an interesting one to pull out of the report as well. There are one to two of the rest of the personas that are kind of similar to this one in certain aspects. And I'll probably have some questions about the nuances between those, but not yet. So let's keep going. Yeah. So the young and on the movers, which, you know, it wasn't that long ago

that Connor and I were between the ages of 18 to 24. But if anyone on the listening can go back to that time in their life, right? That's this young and on the movers. They're students, they're young professionals. They're less likely to have kiddos. They are likely to be living on a limited income. I remember that at the age of 18, right? They're interested in growing. They're interested in connecting with brands and they want to work jobs that don't get in the way of life. So this is a group that wants to work to live versus living to work. And there's some generational divides here. We could probably have our own whole other episode talking about what we see there from agency owners and this group, but there's a lot of folks

interested in coming into our industry. I think there's opportunities for everyone in the line to educate about a career in home care. If you go to your local CNA schools, they're not talking about home care in the way they could be talking about home care as an opportunity for folks to grow a career in care. And so this is a group that cares about flexibility. They care about doing good in the community, right? And you're going to find this group from a recruitment perspective and university job boards. You're going to find them out in the

industry, you know, in the community as well. This is a group that may not even be aware of jobs and care. So when you think back and we talk about, you know, strategies to recruit them, this job posting should look different than the job posting that's attracting a career caregiver, right? Not full of our acronyms, not full of our shorthand, talking about what it would mean. Hey, if you don't have experience in our industry, we're willing to train. We're interested in getting you through the door. If we all go back to this time in our lives, this is a time where mentorship, apprenticeships, training programs are all really important as there is this phase of exploration at that time in your life and in your career. So very interesting group, definitely stood out as part of

these seven personas. And I promise I'm going to consolidate these next four a little bit because there are some shared qualities between them. But I wanted to talk about those three a little bit more in depth because, again, folks on the line thinking, hey, I know who a young and on the mover is, or I know who a caring on the sider is in my team as well. Yeah. And just as a reminder for those listening too, we will hit hard on the so what of this of like, yes, it's useful to kind of like hear these distinctions, but there are concrete and very strategic reasons for understanding and considering these.

And so we will go more into that too. So let's keep going. Absolutely. So I'll touch on the next two sort of together. So these are our oodles of offspring, followed by our single moving mamas. So both of these are clearly parents, right? So you've got two groups here that either have multiple kiddos, are potentially a primary caregiver at home and a primary caregiver at work. This is a group that's going to care about their connection with the recruiter. They're going to care about working in a family-oriented culture, a family-like atmosphere.

Those are things that are going to be important to them as well. So those two are very interesting when we think about wage progression, incentives, where to find them. And then the last two personas, so we can get into the so what here, are our empty nesters and our still going strong retirees. So our empty nesters, these are young retirees. So people who have recently retired, they're looking for a way to connect, to give back. They may be looking for a way to spend their time. They may understand what it means to be a caregiver, right? What is caregiving?

But they may not understand what it would mean for them to have a career in care. I have an uncle out in Arizona who's a retired veteran, and he called me up earlier this year and said that he wanted to know if I knew any companies where you could volunteer to be a caregiver. And I said, you could actually have a career in being a caregiver, right? But you've got a group that is interested in this. The last are these stogo and strong retirees. And I think this is interesting. Many shared qualities with those empty nesters, but this is also a group that is living on limited discretionary income, and they're likely concerned about having enough money to retire. So we had over a million more people than expected retire over the course of the pandemic,

some by choice, some maybe not so much. So you've got a group of folks here who may be looking to bridge that time and looking for additional income while also looking for a career with meaning and with connection. So those are those seven personas. Regardless of their persona, we know caregivers are incredibly special people, right? And they need to be more visible. And solving this workforce crisis, right, begins, I believe, with understanding the people behind delivering care. So happy to dive into the so what here. But those are the seven personas. We do a lot more in the report on each of them, where to find them, what to say when

you do find them. But really, I think an interesting jumping off point as we talk about what does that mean for agencies that are listening. Awesome. Yeah, you ran through the last few, and I think it's definitely good that people can go and check it out for themselves, read it and get more detail. I know that we're on limited time, so it makes sense to do that, but it is kind of too bad. We have to go through it kind of quick. So a few things. First, I think for those who are listening along, let's just make sure that they can access the report. We already sent it out to those who are on with us live. I'll put this in the show notes too. I have not historically been great about remembering to do that, but I am

redoubling my efforts to do that. And then also just if you're listening, you can get the report at missioncare.com slash workforce dash report dash download dash member. It's not the shortest or most convenient one. You can listen back to that or look in the show notes for it. I recommend that you get that. So a couple, I guess my first question, like this is both interesting just for the sake of these personas, but also as a good example of how to think about this with the still going strong retirees and the empty nesters. Talk to me a little bit more about the differences in their needs and therefore how you might advertise to them differently slash how you might care for them differently as employees to kind of help highlight the importances. So, I mean, I think where you're going to find them to start is going to be different. So these

are folks that are maybe not as heavy internet users as your young and on the movers as an example. So these are folks you're going to find out in the community. So we'll have agencies tell us all the time that they have kind of a grassroots approach. This is an example of grassroots going out and finding folks. So these are people you're going to find at hobby shops. These are people you're going to find in community groups, right? So both where you find them, and then often when you find them, this is a strong caregiver referral source. So I actually had a woman come up to me after I talked about this in Chicago, who said that half of, she realized after we presented, half of her employees were still going strong retirees. And she goes, I must be doing something right to attract this persona. Likely she attracted a few folks in this persona and others followed.

So I think it's interesting to start with where are you finding them? When you talk about benefits, some of these are folks who are going to potentially be on their own benefits. So I had someone talk about social security here, right? So there are some other elements at play that are important to think about when you talk about scheduling and hours worked and things like that, when you start to talk about your empty nesters and you start to talk about your still going strong retirees. There's also a population here that they're looking to give back. I mean, I highlight the story of my uncle who's looking to volunteer. A lot of people don't realize that there's a career in care. And if they've never had, caregiving's never touched their lives, or they've never had a reason to know that this is a career,

then there's some education that needs to happen there too. So if you're on the listening and you're not carrying around recruitment cards or business cards with you everywhere you go, you will find a lot of these personas out in your day-to-day life and can say, have you ever thought about caregiving? And that's an opportunity as well. So again, both of these are personas that care about their clients. They care about understanding their client, having the skills they need. So going back to your conversation with that caregiver, this is somebody who may not have formal caregiving training, maybe looking for an agency to offer that. So again, something else, your job posting is going to look different. Your conversation around benefits is going to look different.

It's going to say, hey, don't worry, Maggie, the still going strong retiree, we're going to get you the training you need to be able to take care of Mrs. Smith, right? So there's some concern there with this persona on their end with them not having the skills they might need to do the job. Love it. A couple of thoughts here. I'm just going to kind of rant as a marketer for a minute. There's a few natural reactions I can see people have to this content. You know, the first is to say, this is all great, but I just need caregivers and I'll take whoever I can get. And it doesn't really make a difference to hear about these different personas of caregivers

because I just want all the caregivers I can get because we need them. There's a couple ways of responding to that thought that I think a lot of people listening might be having, you know, at least to a degree. And part of that is that I would challenge them to look at their workforce and they will probably find, like you referenced, that their own workforce of caregivers is probably not an even mix of all seven personas or whatever, but is probably super heavy on like one to two or three personas that either their territory is conducive to having these types of employees or something in what they have to offer as an employer is really appealing to certain types of caregivers or even just how they think about advertising and recruiting caregivers will affect that. And so this effect is probably already happening in the sense of you're probably already appealing

to certain types of employees, whether or not you realize it. The first thing is to understand that being intentional about how are you appealing to caregivers and applicants? What messages are you sending? What types of people are you attracting? And what types are you appealing to caregivers and applicants? What messages are you sending? What types of people are you attracting and what types are you not attracting? It's an exercise in making sure that you are attracting the types of employees that you are best suited to help and that are the right fits for your business. I think it's a little bit more intuitive in home care to think about right fit clients and think about

who you would and wouldn't want to market to as a client based off of things like what types of care they need and how long of visits and that type of thing. It's probably slightly less intuitive to think about the same considerations for caregivers and think, who are we trying to attract? Who really is the right fit for this company? Second to that is that there's a very longstanding proven idea in marketing that the more that you can niche down, even though it is kind of counterintuitive because you feel like you're marketing to fewer people, the more effective your marketing is. And that's true in recruitment marketing to caregivers too. And so, you know, you can go with the general message that kind of reads the same to everyone and is probably a bit bland, or you can decide which persona

or personas you're best suited to recruit and employ, have messaging tailored to them. And it might not appeal to everyone equally, but you're not trying to be all things to all people. And your messaging will become far more effective when it's speaking specifically to them. Because as we've said here, the ways you talk to these different personas are not going to be the same. The ways that they're motivated are not the same. So that's kind of my rant. That explains a lot of why I think this topic is so important and so valuable.

It's relevant to agencies from what I've seen of all sizes and in all types of territories and geographies. So I'll stop there and see what you'd add to that. Not only do I know how much Connor was going to love this report, but he's one of the first people that we got it to because I knew that this was going to set off so many bells in terms of recruitment marketing. I think, you know, I've said this over the last 10 years, if I owned an agency, my best salesperson at the organization would be my recruiter, right? Because recruiting is selling. So when you think about personas, and you think about marketing, all of that very much follows the same way that your business development folks, your sales folks, your marketers are trying to attract and bring in different types of personas for care and for clients as well. So I think, you know, when you think about your own organization's message to these different groups, it starts back with your job ads, your voicemails, what you talk about during

the interview. And you don't have to be, as Connor said, all things for all people. But I think the specificity that comes from understanding how to talk about your benefits could be the exact same benefit. You're going to talk about it differently to a young and on the mover than you might to a still going strong retiree. And that's okay. That's great. That doesn't cost you any money. That doesn't add more benefits to your benefit offering. It just means thinking differently about what you already have in place today. So thinking about that advertising, what motivates each of these personas, and we talk about that in

the study, is going to be different. So how you talk about those benefits, how you engage with them. And then once they're on board, because this persona insight doesn't stop with recruitment, it's what is their motivation? So I have a client in Pennsylvania who has this little black book. And I like to talk about this all the time. And when she told me that I was like, what's in this book? And the book does not have secrets and gossip like I thought it might. It has insights on every single one of her caregivers. And it has insights on everyone that she's currently actively recruiting. Things like who has a seven-year-old, whose kid is playing soccer this summer, right? Where is somebody from?

Who's caring for an ailing parent? So when she hops on the phone with that individual, she's not just thinking about them as a caregiver or a commodity, right? She's thinking about them as a person. And that goes really, really long way in our industry. We are people hiring people to care for people. This is a people industry. I talked with a great company this morning who said that if we don't have caregivers, we do not have a business, right? So when we think back as agency owners and leaders around how do I take this data and have it be meaningful,

leaning in and understanding each of these personas is going to help you expand your reach and ultimately help you build a bigger and a healthier team as well. So I'm very passionate, I know. So is Connor about the data and the study? And again, some of it eye-opening, some of it maybe something that was known, but now you have some more insight on it as well. So absolutely. So it looks like a good question in there. So Connor and I, do we have any good recruiters in the field that we could recommend? I'm sure that might be a future conversation on here, Connor, right? Bringing in some, I know you've had some, you have a

series happening soon, right? Or happened recently where you're talking to recruiters? Yeah. I mean, we've kind of made that a mix at various parts of like some of our topics. That's a tough question just for the sake of, you know, who is available locally and that kind of thing. There is a recruitment firm that I've talked to in the past called CareWork. They do a good job. They're not necessarily like the right fit for every agency. You know, sometimes you want somebody in-house, sometimes you don't. But I know that they are a recruitment firm with a good reputation that this question, you know, might be relevant too. Let's see. I think you were touching on something else too, Maggie. Yeah. No, I mean, I think we're both talking about this immediate opportunity to expand

your pipeline. So everyone has that. That's a positive opportunity takeaway from this. So you talked about not having all the personas. So where you may have a deficit, think about if that's a persona you do want to tap into. Overwhelmingly, everyone we talk to just wants more caregivers, right? So this can be, yes, about getting new ones, but also understanding their motivations to be able to keep them on board longer. And I think that's the other side of the conversation here, which is to think differently about turnover. So this gives you insight on, right, why people may also be leaving. So turnover in home care last year was 77%.

And there's work that needs to be done in making care an attractive career. So we talked a little bit about this last week, but I think we all need to think differently about retention. So you recruit to grow your business. And I can't tell you how many companies I talked to who are like, yeah, we hired 10 people last week or 20 people last month and they think they're growing their business. But you have to retain those folks

to be able to maintain that growth and maintain your organization. And if you're not doing both of those things, you're never gonna grow or you're never gonna grow to be as fast or grow as fast or grow to be as big as you wanna be. So I think understanding the true cost of turnover may help to reframe how folks think about that.

Sort of a generally accepted insight in the industry is that it costs on average $4,000 to lose a working caregiver, to rehire them, rehire someone new, get somebody out in the field. It's expensive, It's disruptive and it's painful to everyone's P&L, right? So when we think about the conversations we're having with personas to get them in the door, we should be using those same insights to keep them on board because retention equals revenue. So if you're not focusing on retention today,

I think folks on the line are missing out on a key growth opportunity for their business, where I don't think that's how we've necessarily thought about turnover or retention in the past as well. Love that. There was something you said a while back that I wanted to respond to, which was just around the fact that

as you start to dig into thinking, what types of people are we already attracting as caregivers? You know, who do we have the ability to attract? That kind of thing. You'll probably find that though the seven personas in this report that I hope that people will use, you know, are useful, they'll find that there are probably nuances to them in their individual, you know, territories that you might find that maybe the empty nesters in your market are more likely to be of a particular faith community. And so that may guide you to recruit through certain ways to reach them and to develop partnerships

with the organizations that could help or something like that. And so it's important to like, as you do this, as you use this way of thinking about recruitment to look for the individual nuances in your market of the different communities you can be best placed to employ and serve. And I think learning from your existing employees, right? So that woman who came up who said, you know, half my employees are still going strong retirees. One of her takeaways was I have to go figure out why. So where are they coming from? What is it? Talk to your team, right?

Figure out why it is, what it is about your organization that attracted them in the first place. What's keeping them on board? And it genuinely may surprise you. And again, data and knowledge here is very much power. And you can take that to continue to expand and get more than your fair share of applicants and work to retain and engage with those folks long term as well here. Love that. I think before we

go into kind of the last thoughts on mission care and your companies and how to contact you and things like that, I just want to make sure and give you like five minutes or whatever to say whatever else you want to make sure is said while we're on this podcast. Yeah, we talked, I think this is an important takeaway. And I told you, I was going to bring this up both times. And it's I think think that advocacy is a key takeaway from both of these studies. So if you joined us last week, you heard all about the provider side of the conversation. Now we're talking about the caregiver side. I think the caregiver's voice needs to be heard.

We are in a unique position now in our industry. Home care is in the spotlight. We're getting much needed attention. There's a unique opportunity for agencies to get involved in advocacy. I think, you know, one of the things we talked about before, Washington needs to hear more voices and more stories about caregivers and the challenges that you and your company are facing every day. And one thing I think is interesting to note here is

the federal government is the largest workforce trainer. And they're the top financer of workforce development. They train more people than anyone else in our country. So we have an opportunity as an industry to help those funds go to the direct care workforce as well. And unfortunately, there's challenges that we've come across and the industry has in working with our public workforce system, in part due to low wages of our workforce. But I think now is the time to surface those. We really need to ensure that the people that are setting policy understand who caregivers are and the impact of turning away cases and no-shows on you and your clients and those vulnerable

people in our communities that so need care. So I know there's both sides of that conversation from an advocacy perspective, but I encourage folks on the line to think about what that means for them locally and state level or federally as well. Thanks for saying that. So to kind of repeat what I saw last week as the takeaway from that is that in simple terms, if you want policymakers to have a good understanding of home care and the challenges in it, and then, you know, hopefully make policy based on that, get involved with your local and state home care associations or chapters of the Home Care Association of America and also get involved with the national stage home care association of America and let them kind of help guide you and how you can get involved and move forward our societies and our' understanding of what home care needs.

So anything else you'd add to that? I think it's an important takeaway. My goal in sharing both of these reports, and I appreciate Connor, you and the team inviting me, is to start these conversations. So if this is data that's got your wheels turning in our discussion today, we invite you to download the report, invite you to give us a call and talk more about it, share it with folks, share it with your team. If you have questions, thoughts, you're welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Maggie Keene,

or you're welcome to send me an email, maggie at missioncare.com. I think this is, again, the starting point of some great conversations. And I share with Connor, we have another neat study coming out here in short order in partnership with NAC that's going to continue to bring more data and insight and policy considerations from a caregiver's side of things and that are impacting our industry as well. So we can give folks an opportunity to get connected with that study as soon as it's released. We'll look forward to that. Let's just, you know, here's your chance to kind of say anything else about mission care and your brands and give whatever information might be useful to someone listening who's curious about my CNA jobs or coach up care or any of the other things that you do. Yeah, so we're very passionate, as you can tell, about the workforce, but also about partnering with agencies and organizations across the care continuum to really help improve and change the culture of care. We know that doesn't start or end with any single organization.

And so if you're on the line today and you're looking for a new strategic recruitment partner, invite you to come and learn more about MyCNA Jobs, the largest network of frontline healthcare workers in the country. All the personas I talked about today are in that MyCNAjobs network and happy to talk to you about connecting with those recruitment solutions as well. And we're integrated with lots of great applicant tracking systems in our industry, can help become a top converting source for you and your agency. And another side of the conversation, I know recruitment is a discussion topic in every agency across the country. And if you haven't started talking about retention, I invite you to come and chat about it with us at CoachUpCare. I think turnover no longer has to be an accepted cost of doing

business. I think there is an absolute impact we're seeing on our clients nationwide of engaging with their workforce, connecting with their workforce, creating community within their workforce, and as a result, getting great data insights, getting ahead of turnover before it even happens. So encourage you if CoachUp Care sounds interesting to you, would love to connect you with our team there. All things workforce over here at Mission Care Collective, and absolutely keep your eye out for our latest study here that will be released here at the end of the month. So I appreciate you, Connor, for including me in these conversations. They're so important. Well, thank you for joining us on here.

And, you know, thanks for the work that you and your team is doing and for the data and you're just your insights on it. It's been really good to have you on these last two weeks. I guess just to confirm, if someone is interested in any of your brands, they should email you. Absolutely. Shoot me an email or you can visit coachofcare.com or mycnajobs.com. Okay. Sounds good. Well, thanks again. Thanks to everyone who joined and asked questions. And thanks to those who are listening on their own time and supporting the podcast. We appreciate it.

And I will see everyone next week. Thank you. 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.