Home Care U - What a Successful First 90 Days Looks Like for New Hires (Bryan White)

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

How do you reduce turnover and set new hires up for success during their critical first 90 days? In this episode, Bryan White, Co-Founder of Pre-Intent and a sales leader at Activated Insights, shares insights on why most turnover happens in this period and provides a granular week-by-week breakdown of effective onboarding strategies, from the first week to day 90— we’ll cover tailored touch points, proactive engagement, impactful training, and actionable steps to address dissatisfaction.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

All right, welcome to Home Care U. Happy December. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. It's great to be back with you. I am your host, Miriam Allred, and Home Care U is brought to you by CareSwitch, the AI-powered home care operating system. Check us out at careswitch.com if you don't know very much about us. I have really been looking forward to today's session for a few weeks now. I am joined today by Brian White, the co-founder of PreIntent and who is now sales enablement at Activated Insights. Brian and I were just catching up. I think we met for the first time a few years ago at a conference in Florida and you were

just getting traction, you know, just getting started in the industry. But fast forward, your platform has hundreds of users on it today, your business got acquired. And so we've got a lot to catch up on. And I'm really excited about that. So let's first start with your introduction, Brian, some people may know you, some may not, some may know a little bit about pre intent, but not a whole lot. So I want to give you a few minutes to introduce yourself, talk a little bit about the journey of pre-intent and what you're up to today. Sure. Well, first off, Miriam, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

And I'll start off with currently I am the sales enablement director here at Activated Insights. I joined the team here in October of last year when PreIntent was acquired by Activated Insights and I am one of the co-founders of the PreIntent product. How that came to be kind of starts a few years before that. I was working in the industry at a company called Karen Homes, which is a lead generator for the home care industry. They generate both caregiver leads and client leads. And Chris, my business partner, Chris Boker, who is also one of the co-founders of PreIntent, we worked at Karen Homes together. And we were selling caregiver leads to agencies and we were coaching them on, hey, as soon as you get these leads, you got to follow up with them immediately. You got to call them, text them, leave them a voicemail, send them an email.

And you got to do this consecutively for multiple days in a row. And we kept hearing over and over again. It's like, well, we'd love to do that. We don't have the time to do that. And so we started to realize that that was the next product, was some sort of automation to follow up with the caregiver candidates. And so Chris and I left Karen Holmes and started PreIntent in January of 2020. And that's where we launched, which eventually became PreIntent, the automated interview scheduling software. Today, it is now known as Recruit, and it is part of the Activated Insights suite of solutions. So the journey

started a while ago and has just kind of built up to the point to where it is now. But now I'm really excited to be on the call today and talking about some recruiting, but probably more retention than anything else. Once you solve kind of the recruiting crisis, if you will, or get that kind of dialed in, well, now your focus typically moves to how can I keep these folks and how can I retain them? So kind of a long introduction, but that's kind of the cliff notes of who I am and why I'm here today. That was perfect. Thank you so much, Brian. The timing is perfect here. I don't know if you've

kind of followed our schedule, but I had a couple of people at CareWork on over the last few weeks that are focused on the recruiting. We dived into Indeed, and then I just had Becky Reel on. We talked about culture through the lens of retention. And so today with you, the topic at hand here is really diving into the first 90 days. We've talked a lot about that the last several years in home care, that so much of the turnover, too much of the turnover happens in that first 90 days. And so your background, your experience with pre-intent is really lasered in on some of those early touch points with these new hires after they've converted from applicant to hire. And so that's where we're going to dial in today. So I'm really excited to really just get after it. So the first question

I want to ask you is just how much of that turnover happens in the first 90 days? I've heard several different stats thrown out over the years. So I know you've got the data backed by Activated Insights at this point in time. So how much, if you could quantify, of that turnover happens in the first 90 to 100 days? Yeah, what we're seeing is 40% of folks are going to leave within the first 100 days, which is pretty devastating when you see that number. And now that 40% is also if you're not really doing anything to improve that. If you're just hiring folks and just having them go through a standard process and you haven't gone through your process with a fine tooth comb and made it more efficient and engaging, you're probably going to lose close to half of the folks within the first 90 days. Some of that you can improve upon, but other parts, other things, some of it you just have to accept. Because one of the major things that I think we forget as

business owners or recruiting managers or people that are training new hires is just because someone has accepted a job with our company doesn't mean that their job search has ended. Right. And we forget that very often that they might not. They're looking for the right job, but they will accept the right now job until the right job comes along. Right. And so so some of that you you can't do anything about. But the good news is there's a lot of behaviors that you can influence through engagement and contacting folks at the right time and letting them know that they're important and some of it you can control. And that's where we're going to kind of break that down. I have heard more lately about like positive churn, positive turnover, meaning you lose some of the people that aren't a right fit. And so I think that might be part of what you're talking about. We get these applicants and maybe these new hires that it's the right job at the right time, but it's not a long-term job and a long-term fit. And so that's

where some of this inevitable churn happens. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, right? Yes, for sure. We're going to be talking about training a little bit later, but kind of that old saying around training, like, oh, well, what if we train folks and then they leave? Well, the other side, well, what if you don't and they stay, right? Like you don't want poor performers or people that aren't trained sticking around. And so it's both sides, right? You're evaluating them as an employee, but they're also evaluating the job and if it's right for them. And so, yes, you're going to have some of that positive churn where they just leave on their own, which is a good thing. But then you're going to also have folks that aren't necessarily, they've made it past their 90 days, but they've

outgrown the position, right? They're promoting up into a position that you don't necessarily have available at your agency. And you should be excited for that employee, even though they're leaving your organization, they're staying in the industry and they're bettering themselves, right? The other thought that comes to mind when you say 40%, I think where that stings is home care agencies spend so much time and money getting these people in the door. We're going to talk about some of this, but getting people to those interviews, getting people to orientation, getting people onboarded, getting them that schedule. Owners are struggling with that whole piece. And so to lose them in the first 90 days is where that really stings because of all the work, because of all the time, because of all the money that they've invested getting them to

this point. So that's why we want to really laser in on retention is so that all of those things aren't in vain. So you're not wasting all that time and money. One of the other questions I want to ask you is what are the leading causes that these people are leaving? We've talked about some of the reasons, you just mentioned some as to why they may leave later on, but what are some of the leading causes as to why they may be leaving in the first 90 days? Yeah, it comes down to a handful of big ones. One is the job just wasn't what they were expecting, right? You can, at the interview, talk to them about toileting and helping someone go to the restroom and things like that. But then when it comes to actually doing it for the first time, there may be some apprehension. Folks that

haven't worked on their own for long periods of time, where they're used to working on a team and a group of people, and now they feel isolated, right? And so that's another one. And so the expectations may be not being clear because often at the interviews, we're just trying to sell them on why they want to work for us, right? And so we're telling them all the benefits and you want to do that. But then at a certain point, you want to pause and say, but it's not all, you know, rainbows and unicorns, right? There are things that might cause struggle, right? And talking about those, you know, so those can be prevented early on in the interview process. But then you also have lack of training. You have folks that are saying they're

being sent out and not knowing how to do certain things, right? And that's probably the scariest thing for an employee is being in a situation and not having the tools or the knowledge to know what to do in that scenario. And so a lack of training. And then scheduling. Scheduling is a big thing because once again, as agency owners, we often forget that these caregivers almost always have to work two jobs. If they're working for you, they're probably working for another agency. And the reason for that is it takes 60 hours of work to pay their bills. Right? And you're not going to be able to give them more than 30. And then, you know, someone else gives them 30 and that gives them the 50 or 60 hours that they're looking for. But if their main schedule gets switched on one job, that changes it over here. And sometimes they're hesitant to tell you, well, I actually have another job. And so that's another important part of just opening up the communications and letting

them know, hey, we almost expect you to have to be employed by multiple places at the same time. And if something happens say another piece is what I touched on earlier was feeling disconnected from the team because you are a single employee out at a patient's home, right? And you lose that kind of connection to the team. There's things that we can do as agency owners to try to build that camaraderie and that team aspect. But at the end of the day, it's them on a shift out on an island by themselves. And so a lot of those things, some of them we can improve upon just by making them aware of during the recruiting process. But then others are, they don't know until they do it. That's the difference in my mind in between anyone and everyone. Anyone can be a good caregiver,

but not everyone will be. And sometimes you actually have to do the job to determine if you're cut out for it or not. And sometimes people who think they are, aren't. And sometimes people that are going in apprehensive find out that this is actually what they really love to do. So some of that is just like finding out quickly. And if you're going to fail, fail quickly. But if you're going to succeed, succeed quickly as well. Okay. This is amazing. So many good points. I want to drill into a couple of these because I find them fascinating. The first one that you mentioned was just like expectation setting. I like the way you put it of owners are quick to sell them on all of the good things, all the pros, all the benefits, all the things that they're going to enjoy about the job. Do you think owners

and recruiters need to be more transparent and more open about the challenges, the struggles, the hard things they're going to face? I think there's a time and a place for it, right? Especially if they're new coming into the industry, right? If they have experience, you just touch on it and they say, yeah, I've been down that road before, right? But you want to sell your business and why it's great. And once you get them agreeing, say, you know, but there are some things that are challenging. In addition

to the day-to-day challenges, there's also the challenge of there's a high likelihood that you're going to lose this client because they're going to pass away, right? And that's something that has to be dealt with. And I don't know how many recruiters are even trained to have that discussion with folks. An agency owner would be more trained to, but that's something that you need to prepare folks for as well. Because there's a very good chance you'll lose caregivers when they lose their first patient or client as well. Yeah, really good points.

I agree. I think there's maybe some room for more transparency in that recruiting process, especially for new hires, new incoming care professionals that they haven't done this before. There are a lot of maybe rude awakenings or things that they're going to encounter for the first time that they haven't. You want to prepare them for that because like you said, people will leave if they don't feel trained. If they get into a home and they do not have the training to take care of a certain

situation or a certain condition. I've heard this firsthand from caregivers that they feel, they also feel guilty. They feel terrible. They feel, they feel responsible. And it's so sad that literally like breaks my heart when they feel under trained, because that's that's not always on them. Oftentimes it's on the office, on the orientation, on the onboarding process to make sure they're trained. And so you spoke to how agency owners can fall into the like well we got to do a quick speedy training and get them get them their ship because people are waiting for work oh and they might not last anyway i'm probably going to lose them in the first 90 days anyway but you got to you know what if this person was looking after your mother or your grandmother, right? And if you just keep that mentality, would I send this person to care for one of my loved ones? If the answer is no, well, don't send them to someone else's loved one, right? 100%.

One kind of topic that I see come up regularly is paying for training versus not paying for training. What's your two cents on that? Not only should you pay them for training versus not paying for training. What's your two cents on that? Not only should you pay them for training, you should pay them at a higher rate while they're training than when they're afterwards, because now they will look forward to any future training that you're offering simply by saying, and they'll be asking you, hey, is there any more training that we have? I'd love to make an extra dollar an hour while I'm doing my training or whatever it is. It's the most important part, like we were talking about. And so if you don't pay someone for something, you're letting them know that it a boost in pay. It lets them know, hey, not only is this important, this is something that is really important to the point

to where they're wanting to make sure I'm more engaged by paying me at a higher rate. And I feel maybe not necessarily about paying them at a higher rate, but as far as training and paying them for it, I have no middle ground on that. You have to pay them for it, I have no middle ground on that. You have to pay them for it. I love that. And more importantly, building a culture around the importance of training.

I think that's lacking for some businesses where training is an afterthought. Training is only for compliance, only when it's brought up. But no, building training into your culture, into your core. Ongoing. Ongoing, 100%. For sure. To me, that's so important. The last thing that I want to ask you about these leading causes as to why people leave, you threw up the scheduling topic and said caregivers need 60 hours minimum. I'm just curious where that figure is coming from. So, I mean, you can look at the dollar amount that folks make,

around about $15 an hour. And if you do that at 40 hours a week, you're only coming up to 2,400 bucks, right? And if you just start doing the math and how far that goes, and it doesn't make it very far. And so as far as like art statistics behind that, that comes more from having conversations with caregivers and from some statistics from employment and things like that. But once you know those statistics and then you start talking to caregivers about that, every one of them is like, oh, yeah, I do this and I do that. And I have my backup agency that I call if I'm not getting my hours and this and that. But they never want to talk to the agencies about that. Right. They never want to have that conversation because they think it's frowned upon.

And so it might just be a shift in the culture of like letting that be something that we care to folks who need it, right? And then if you find out that it's a competing agency, well, maybe you can work with them to share caregivers, right? Okay. I'm really glad you unpacked that because the reason I asked that was how you unpacked that is there's a lot of taboo around hours. And oftentimes we're in this maybe misunderstanding that, oh, they probably just need the 40 hours or maybe sometimes the 50 and we're willing to pay that overtime. But oftentimes it's up to 60 hours that they need. And like you said, they're not always quick to share what their full schedule looks like, what the full picture looks like. And then that's where there's room for error. There's room for friction is because the office,

your agency doesn't know what their other schedule, other jobs look like. And that's ripe for reasons for them to leave is because there's conflicts and there's issues and there's driving time. And there's all these factors that if you didn't know up front are going to become issues very quickly thereafter. Yes. And they are not going to share that unless you kind of create an atmosphere for that to be shareable. Right. And to do that, you just simply say we have a lot of the majority of our caregivers are working for other agencies as well. Are you also right? Once? Once you set the table like that, that most other ones are, they're going to be a lot more open to share with that. Be like, okay, great. So there might be some scheduling conflicts in the future. When those happen,

come to me as soon as you know, and we can work with you and your other physician to make sure you're getting the hours that you need, right? But yes, removing the taboo of it. But then I think another part of it is, if I'm wanting to get 30 hours from your agency and I'm already working 30, you might think, oh wow, 60 hours is too much to work, right? I'll only give you 10, I'll only give you 20

because I don't want you to be overworked. Right. Like, well, that's great, but I have bills that I need to pay. Right. And so they're not always going to volunteer that to you for the fear of you thinking that they're being overworked as well. And so once again, it's just about opening up that communication and letting them know that it is common in the industry. And if we all start doing that, that kind of that taboo will go away, right? And then we can all work on it together. Exactly. This comes full circle to expectation setting and transparency in the recruitment process.

We've got to break down some of these barriers that become the reasons why they're leaving at day 60, day 90. It's just these conflicts. So I love all of the points that you made. And I think this alone is just so important for owners and operators to hear the reasons why they're leaving, how they can better incorporate and communicate these things in the recruitment process to avoid some of this unfortunate turnover. So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the first 90 days. So once we've got people in the door, I want you to share and break down what a successful first 90 days looks like, what touch points there are,

what communication there are, what channels you're using. I want to let you just kind of run on what a successful 90 days should look like in an optimal scenario. For sure. And I want to preface that with saying what I'm going to share is going to, if you're looking at this as like, okay, this is what I need to do, it's going to look overwhelming. You're going to say, I don't have the time or the resources to do all of this stuff. And that's why Chris and I built Recruit, right? And then there's also Activated Insights has a tool called Retain as well, that will essentially do everything that I'm going to be laying out over the next few minutes. So if you're saying to yourself, this is amazing, I don't have the time to do all of that. The good news is we have a plug and play solution that'll do it for you. Where it all starts is with communication, right? And the communication is welcoming someone to the team. And so on day one, you want to send them a welcome message. And that can be a phone call, a text message,

or an email. The most personal is going to be a phone call, right? Because it's just that one-on-one. Text messages, 95% of all text messages are read within the first three minutes of being sent. And that's just not for our platform. That's for all text messages in general, right? And so that is without question going to be the quickest and the highest response level of communication. Email, it's good to send them, but very often our caregivers don't have company emails, right? We're not assigning those. And so it's their personal email that they might only check once a day or maybe even just a couple times a week. But I think the very first touch point should be a welcome message. And it is with our retained product, phone call or text

being the best. But that's just kind of like setting the stage, letting them know, hey, thank you for being a part of the team. We're excited to have you. We can't do what we do without folks like you, right? Like letting them know that they're the fuel in the engine that makes it run. And so, you know. Yeah. Can I jump in and ask questions maybe as we go here? I was thinking you could run through all of it, but let me insert a couple of questions here. I know you're all about automation and efficiency. And when you're hiring at scale, there's got to be some sort of automation. How customizable should that text be? You know, should it have their first name? Should it have any details that maybe you learned in the recruitment process?

Like how in-depth and how customized should it be versus how generic it should be maybe for automation? What's the balance there? Right. Um, the customization, as far as like their name goes, that's, you know, everybody's favorite word is their own name, right? They like hearing it when you're recognizing folks in public that's always good to recognize them by name in front of

front of other folks and so making it personable as far as using their name and then using your company name as well keeps it personal you know thank you for for joining our you know as a care professional on on on this team right trying to get personal for joining our, you know, as a care professional on this team, right? Trying to get personal with each individual one, you know, and mentioning something that they brought up. You, that's amazing. You would lose the ability to be able to automate that, right? Once you're getting super personal about a story they told you about their grandparent, right? You can't automate that.

If you have the time and resources to do it, it will go a long way, right? It will. But realistically, that's probably a higher level of customization than most people are going to have the time or resources to be able to do. But just using their name and your company name will go a long way. Yeah, that's great. That's great. I just wanted to hear what you had to say as far as like what's easy and scalable versus what's not. I do think, you know, just that last point you made, if you go above and beyond, like it will resonate and go a long way with them. And that's, I think, what we're all striving for is how do we keep this personal touch,

personal feel in this very digital heavy world, even with caregivers? You know, a text, a phone call is great. But how do we really personalize the communication to where they feel like I'm being talked to by someone that knows me personally? So that was perfect. is that if you are using text messages, which we highly recommend, using emojis and using abbreviations and the way that we talk today, right? And not keeping it so clinical like their work is. Like their work has to be very professional, right? And so they need, when you're communicating with them openly, you want to give them a little bit of break from that, you know, professionalism and just talk to them like me and you were talking, right? Yeah, write like you talk. And I think that's important too in this very, like, spammy digital

world that we live in. I just got, you know, like a spam text this morning and it's like, it's so quick. Well, it's not so obvious anymore when things are spammy. So I think just best rule of thumb is write like you talk, use emojis, use abbreviations, use shortened versions of things. And that will create kind of that personal connection. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Let's keep going. So this was day one. This is where you're getting started. What does that first week continue to look like? Yeah. Day one is that kind of introduction and the welcome. And then at the

end of the week, if possible, a check-in with their manager, right? And so those are, you know, this is after kind of training has taken place and or has begun at the end of that week. And, you know, that doesn't just need to be a check-in over text message. That either needs to be in person or over the phone because because this is hey you know is there anything that you're missing that that you need that i can provide to you within that first week and that's probably the most important part of that check-in are you getting everything that you need don't feel like this is all that you're getting right but that personal touch point so if they start on a mond, it's a welcome message on a Monday.

And then on that Friday, it is a personal check-in with them to see how the week went. And they might tell you right then and there, you know what, my expectations were wrong and this is not a good fit for me. And if you didn't have that check-in with them, they would get scheduled

for a shift and you would send them to someone's house, right? And so that piece right there, also making it okay for them to back out, right? Because most often we're just done, well, what else do you need to feel comfortable moving forward? Right. And sometimes there's like there's nothing that you could provide me that's going to make me feel comfortable moving forward. My expectations were wrong. Right. About this. And so giving them an out, I think, is really important as well.

And we definitely forget to do that. Right. Like, I know we do because I do as well. Right. And so asking how things are going, what they need going forward, and then saying, hey, how's it going? Did we just miss the mark? Is this just not a good fit? Are you excited to move forward, right? So if you're going to fail, fail fast. Do it within the first week and get someone else in there.

I like that slight paradigm shift. Usually, the conversation looks like, what can we do to keep you going maybe with this client because it's best case for us to not try and do a shuffle. But I like what you're saying of maybe giving them an out. Again, this puts the office in a little bit of a pinch, but if it's to keep this employee and keep them happy and keep them around, it's worth probably the shuffle and figuring out, you know, what's not working with this client or this situation and how do we give them something that is more suitable to their skill set. So I like that paradigm shift, less of how do we keep going to what's working well, what's not, is there a better fit for you that we could help you find? For sure.

I like too that you were saying, you know, this could look a little different for everyone. Some people, it might be a phone call. For some, it might be having them come to the office for an in-person. I've also heard of some businesses where they go and meet them at the home, meet them at the shift. Maybe it's that Thursday or Friday and the nurse or their manager goes out and actually meets them in the home, which can also be good for them to kind of talk in real time about the circumstances about the client, not in front of the client, but just in the home and in the setting where things are top of mind and prevalent to them. So again, I think

there's different ways to approach this, but most importantly, it's a real conversation with kind of an open dialogue about how they're doing. And as the care professional is going to feel supported that someone came to them and that they're not being like called into the office right for something because like well what's this about right and if they just show up and say hey you know i'm just here i wanted to see the environment that you're working in every day right not just to make sure that you have everything that you need but make sure that you know the client does and that no one's in danger. And, you know, I know that's being done during the in-home assessment. But, you know, things can change from the in-home assessment to the time you're actually providing care.

Right. And make it a conversation. Shoot them a text. Hey, would you prefer a phone call or would you prefer that I meet you out in the field? Or would you prefer to come to the office? Every caregiver has a different preference. Some may want to come to the office for that camaraderie. Some may want you to meet them. I think this is a piece where it could be automated and a phone call is probably

the easiest way to go, but you want to go one step further, ask them what their preference is and meet them where they are. We talk about that in the recruiting process all the time. For years, I was asked questions, what gets a higher show up rate, in-office interviews or virtual interviews? And my response was always the same. People are more likely to attend the type of interview that they wanted to schedule. So simply by giving them the options, you're going to increase the likelihood that they're going to show because they're booking the type of interview that you wanted. And so saying, hey, we can do this over the phone or you're welcome to drop by the office and have a cup of coffee with me.

They're going to choose the one that's more comfortable for them. And if there's something that they're wanting to share with you that's negative, some folks might not want to do that face to face and they would be more comfortable doing that over the phone. And so, yes, options is key. But we often think, you know, we make things easiest on ourselves. And it's like, what would be easiest on me? Oh, well, that's a phone call. So they're all going to be phone calls, right? Or they're all going to be in office. And we have to turn that thinking around into what's easiest for them

and what's going to give us the best feedback. Exactly. And we're not talking about five or 10 options here. We're talking about probably two to three, which is doable. You know, I do think you're right. Options are key for them and less about our convenience and more about their preferences. Just these paradigm shifts at each of these touch points of what would they prefer and how can we make them comfortable and what setting would get them to open up to us. And that's really what's key here. And so that goes into kind of the next touch point, which we recommend to happen at day 15. So basically two weeks in. And part of the retain software that's a part of activated insights, it's a mid-month feedback survey. So this is when we're actually going to kind of start kind of prodding them a little bit more for their responses and how things are going

during that process. We also recommend that there, in addition to the feedback survey, that there is a one-on-one with the manager, and then even if possible, a check-in with a peer for them to feel not just connected with the team, but to ask questions. Sometimes we don't want to ask questions to our boss. We would be more comfortable asking it to a peer because we don't want to look silly for not knowing the answer to that. And so as business owners, sometimes we forget that people have hesitance to ask us certain questions. And so if you remove yourself from that and give them someone who's up against it every day that they're up against as well, they can kind of convey those questions through you or even just get the answers directly from a

peer. Because we have to remember that these folks were sending them out onto an island every day by themselves, right? And so making sure that they're connected with some other caregivers that are up against it every day as well. But basically two weeks in, this is where the surveys kind of need to start. And you want to start elicit them for feedback. And then I think the biggest point of that one-on-one is to acknowledge any feedback that they gave. If they said something like, I'm not connecting with my client

or I'm not getting the shift that I need. And then you have a one-on-one with them and you don't acknowledge any of that. You just ask them about like how training go. Well, now you're doing worse than if you wouldn't have even had a meeting with them because now you had a meeting with them and you didn't acknowledge their concerns, right? And that's worse than just not having one all together. And so part of it is the surveys and the touch points that you're having with these folks. It's not just for the sake of having a touch point. It's not just that like none of these things by themselves

are going to help. Sending surveys isn't going to help the employees stay longer. Taking what they said in the survey and doing things about it is what's going to make them stay longer, right? And so if you implement any of these, you know, tips that we're talking about today, you have to be prepared to take a look at your own processes and your own and make changes to those. And if you're not, well, then you shouldn't even start a program like this, right? So you have to be willing to look inward on that and make those changes. Can I ask a question about this 15-day survey? Likely, it's relatively short because we know most people don't like long surveys. They don't want to take a lot of time and we want just kind

of some quick feedback. Can you share what topics or even maybe specifically what questions you ask in that initial 15-day survey? Yeah, typically it's like three to four questions. So it's really, really short. It's need to ask about training, right? Do you feel like you've gotten all the training that you need and prepared for your role? Are you happy with the schedule that you have? And then the client, any questions that they have about the client. So really just that first, are you happy with the environment that you're working in? Do you feel prepared to do it? And those are the ones that are most important at that phase, right? Because those are the ones, if you're not getting the shift or they're uncomfortable with, they don't feel like they

have the skills to do the job they're not necessarily going to tell you that they're just going to leave right and so you're stuck well why do all these people leave and you know so yeah that's the reason yeah that that was perfect really just like a quick check-in with them you know three questions how are the training schedule client like you want feedback on that because again, this is why we're breaking down the 90 days. You might have people leave in the first 15 days because they're not trained. They don't like their schedule or they're struggling with the client. If you don't know that, they could be the next no call, no show and not be showing up

for the next shift on day 16. So that's why we're getting so granular here. And then I love what you're saying about this follow-up, another one-on-one with a manager. This might sound like a lot again, but another one-on-one with a manager at the end of week two, because they've had enough time, spent it with a client, worked the hours, done the travel. They're kind of getting into the groove of things and there might be things that they didn't feel comfortable sharing in the first week that are getting to them in the second week. And you want to make sure, again, that you identify that as early as possible. And then the last one that you said actually stands out to me the most, which is this peer to peer check-in. And this to me looks like some sort of mentorship or maybe career ladder where

you've got other caregivers. It could be anyone, but likely someone that might also be working out in the field with clients, but that also has maybe a slightly more, I don't know, managerial or mentor type role that they can relate to and feel comfortable sharing information with. I think that's still underutilized in this industry is having some of these kind of mid-level people that caregivers can relate to and sympathize with and can give open and honest feedback to that can then be taken to higher ups in a setting and in a way that makes sense. So all great, all great points. Anything to add to what I just said? But yes, it is very important. And having the, you mentioned something about having a mentor, and I like the idea of mentors, but having multiple and not putting that all on one person. Because we, as business owners, we've all done that.

Someone who does a great job at something gets rewarded with more work. So just making sure that that is spread across different caregivers and that you're not loading someone down that has 10 mentees that they're a mentor for, right, can be overwhelming as well. That's a good point. And it's back to giving them options. It might be a lot of pressure to put on, say, the scheduler to build all those relationships, maintain those relationships, and do their day job of scheduling. That's a lot to put on someone. So maybe even giving them options. I've talked to a lot of caregivers recently and I've asked them, who is your point of contact? A lot of people will say that scheduler, that client coordinator. Some will say the owner. Some will say someone else in the office, HR. So giving them maybe multiple points of contacts in hopes of there being at least one person that they relate to and connect with, and that can be their point of contact. Because I think that's so important that they have someone that they can call when they have

a question, when they have feedback, or when they need help. For sure. And moving on to day 30, so they've been with you for 30 days. And you'll see as we're going through this, we want to stay high touch, but never ask them for more than three or four questions. And so there's never going to be like, all right, can you sit down and answer these 20 or 30 or 40 questions? It's always just going to be three to four. And that's why you want the first one to be short as well, because now you're setting the expectation that, hey, all of these are just going to take me a quick 60 seconds to complete. The other part that I would say is if you're sending them these surveys, always send them during business hours. And don't say, hey, well, once your shift's complete, can you complete the survey? No, that's something that they need to be paid for, even if it only takes them 60 seconds, right? Like send it during business hours. And you'll probably get a higher response rate by doing that as well. But on day 30, they've been with you for a full month. We recommend sending another text message with a kind of personal, professional support, and then asking them once again,

three to four questions, right? And then the retained software at Activated Insights will once again, automate all of this for you. But it's similar questions. Have you made a connection with someone in the office? If you need support, do you know the right person to go to to get it? Which is a big question because like you were saying earlier, we've interviewed a lot of caregivers that when you ask them who their boss is, sometimes they think their boss is the scheduler because that's the only person that they communicate with after training. If your caregivers think their boss is the scheduler, you need to look inward at your process. only person that they communicate with after training. And if your recruiter, if your caregivers think their boss is the scheduler, you need to look inward at your process, right? And change

something, right? Because that's not their boss and they shouldn't feel that that is the case. And so just by doing the regular touch points, finding that out, who their connections with, but another three to four questions at the 30-day point. Okay, that was great. I was kind of jumping the gun. I didn't actually know what this 30-day was, but I can't understate just how important that is, having the right person that they can call and communicate with in the office. And I love that that's incorporated into the survey because I've heard the same thing. People say that their boss is a scheduler. They don't really know the structure or the've heard the same thing. People say that their boss is a scheduler. They just, they don't really know the structure or the hierarchy of the office. And I think that's

important. You know, they're working for you. They're working for your company. The office is their team. And so you should make sure they are familiar and acquainted with several people, again, especially so they have a point of contact that they're comfortable reaching out to and contacting. One quick question. It sounds like all of these surveys are sent out via text and it's probably a link to take the survey. Can you just share kind of what that looks like so people understand? Sure. Through Retain, it is a text and an email. And so we send both. I would say 95 percent of them are done via text message.

Right. And and it is just a link to a quick three or four question survey. And so if you're trying to build this out on your own, I mean, it's something that you could do inside of, you know, Google Forms and create that. What's hard about this is you have new hires starting every single week. And it's like, okay, this group, when did they come in? Are they on the 15-day check-in or the 30-day check-in? And so once again, it's really hard to manage on your own, even if you have the very best expectations around it. And so that's why you almost always need some automation around it to help you with that. 100%. Let's keep going and get through the 90 days here.

Yeah. What comes after, yeah, day 30. For sure. So, you know, you've made a contact with them their very first day, day 15, and now day 30. So they've been coming pretty regularly. We want to give them a little bit of a break at this point and touch base with them again after 60 days, right?

So a full month later at that point. And then you need to celebrate that milestone with them again after 60 days, right? So a full month later at that point. And then you need to celebrate that milestone with them, that they've made it two months, right? And so just the message, letting them know that they are part of a team and hoping that they're integrated with their job. And then the main thing that you want to discuss with them is career paths. Hey, you've made it over the hump. What are plans moving forward? Do you like the role that you're in now? Do you see yourself working here for the next three months, six months, a year, two years, right? Everyone is going to have a last day here at this organization. Right. And if you see that light coming, let us know. There's not going to be any hard feelings.

But if you'd like to grow in your path here, let's talk about what that would look like. Right. And so I think it's good to start talking about that. And we've done research that have found you start talking about that at day 60. Now you start talking about what it's going to look like with them working for you six months down the road. So you move them away from, I'm a new employee. Hey, what's it going to look like six months or a year from now? Where do you see yourself?

And if they haven't put much thought into it, have a couple of suggestions for them. So you can continue on doing exactly what you've done. And we'll be extremely happy with that. But just to let you know, if you want to grow with inside of the organization, we have these paths as well. And so you don't have to tell me right now, but next time we meet in 90 days and you've had 30 more days to think about it, right? We can talk about where you see yourself going.

This is so good. Talking about the career path in the first 90 days. Again, I've talked to caregivers that are a year, two, three years in with a business and they don't know what's next. They don't know where they're going. They don't know what their options are. And so have this conversation day 60, like you're saying, that's 60 days in. Some people might be caught off guard, like, oh my gosh, wow, I've only been here 60 days and you're talking about my future. That is so powerful for these people, giving them options, helping them paint their own future.

Because again, they may think, oh, you know, all I have is this job and all I'm doing is this job and I'll be doing this for 10 more years. But give them hope and excitement and options. And again, some people, many people will say, this is what I love. This is where my passion lies. This is what I want to do forever. But for some of them, you will be opening their mind to options and opportunities that they would have never otherwise thought about.

Yes. But I think like you just touched on, it's also important to let them know if they're happy with what they're doing, that that will be available and open to them forever and always. Right. That there's no pressure to move up that ladder, because I think sometimes we start talking about that so much that in our minds, we think that that's the path that everyone wants. right and that isn't necessarily the case and some of the very best caregivers that are out there settle into the role that they're happy with and they're like i found where i'm supposed to be right and you shouldn't try to push that person into doing something that they're not comfortable with and it's back to the adage that you mentioned at the beginning of you know if you train them to leave versus training them to stay i think some people think if I give them options

or opportunities, you know, they're going to leave in a matter of time, but that's not a bad thing. If they go on to become LPNs, RNs, nurses, educators, whatever it may be, you're helping them. You're improving their lives. You're improving their career opportunities. And I had Becky real on a couple of weeks ago, and this was part of her mission was helping caregivers move on from caregiving. And again, we find the diamonds in the rough that love this and want to do this forever. And I think we all want more of those people. But it's equally as satisfying to help people move on from this profession and find something

bigger and better out there for them. Absolutely. Because we think about it, almost every client that needs home care will eventually need other services as well, right, throughout the process. And so, yeah, setting the stage and just helping build that kind of care continuum and being excited for folks moving forward. They're moving away from your organization, but they're moving forward and moving up. And celebrating that for them

and letting them know that, hey, that might be an expect, you might outgrow this organization. And if you do, we're going to be excited for you, right? Genuinely excited and supportive for what's next. Yes, for sure. Not just lip service, but really genuinely wanting them to succeed and to move on. So this is day 60. What happens from

day 60 to day 90? Yep. And so once again, we say another 30 days and then touching base with them on 90 days. Once again, through text message, having them complete a survey. Anytime you schedule a meeting with them, there should be a survey that goes out beforehand because that's going to color the meeting and the conversation that you have. Once again, you have to address all the things that you have asked them through day one all the way up until now. So you want to go back and talk about training. Do you feel like you have all the tools and all the training needed? Because by 90 days they should. And if they, you need to offer them more training and not that it's, if you're not ready, there's more training available,

whether you need it or not. And you might not know if you need it, but if a week from now, you come up against something, know that we have that training ready for you. And then the biggest thing for that is talking about the potential career path, if that is something that they're interested in. Because now they've had 30 days to kind of sit on that and think about that is, is this a ladder that I want to continue to climb? And then if it is, setting it a plan to do so. That's the most important part. And that is what's going to keep that person there six months, a year, and then longer than that, is creating what that plan looks like. But don't create a plan that you can't follow through on, right? Make sure that you can. But once again, celebrating that milestone that they've been there, how important they are to the lifeblood of the organization, and then setting that plan

in place to make sure that they get where they want to be in the time that they want to get to it. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Is that everything you have for the 90 days? For the first 90 days, yes. That was awesome. I hope everyone listening to this is writing that down. Again, like you said, it's a lot, but it's doable. And again, anything that you can do to avoid the churn in the first 90 days is worth it. And so I love that you just really detailed that out. And I think the thing that not enough people are doing are surveys.

That's a pretty quick, easy thing you can automate. Get that real-time feedback and then act on it. So often there's things that are happening out in the field and their lives and their personal lives that you just have no idea about. And people leave and just nobody knows why, what happened. There's just so much room for miscommunication. And when you have 50, 75, 100 caregivers, you can't manage all of that up here. You can't be like, oh, well, 100 caregivers, right? You can't manage all of that up here, right? You can't be like, oh, well, Miriam's allergic to cats. And so we can't put her here. And she actually has another job. So like that has to be documented, right? You have to have a process to follow

through on that. Absolutely. And make it personal. Although it's like this balancing act of automating and digitizing, which frees up your team to then have the phone calls, bring them into the office, have the one-on-ones. I think that's where you and I are on the same page of automate the things that can be automated and streamlined to then free up the time and the resources and the bandwidth for people to have the phone calls, go out in the field and meet them where they are and have those one-on-one in-person conversations. 100%. I want to ask about like exit interviews.

I don't know if that's baked into your process or what your sentiment is there. But when these people are leaving, you don't want them to just leave and leave things hanging and not know what happened. You really want to learn from these people and learn, you don't want them to just leave and leave things hanging and not know what happened. You really want to learn from these people and learn from your mistakes or their misunderstandings or their miscommunication. So what's your take on maybe exit interviews, if and when you can have them? Yeah. And so setting the stage that there will be like at orientation, letting them know there will be an exit interview and also letting them know, hey, we know everyone's going to have a last day here. No one's going to retire

from this home care organization, right? And so when that last day comes, we're going to want to know about all the good things, all the negative things, and all the things that we can change to make it better for the folks that are here now or that are coming after you. But part of that is doing the engagement and the surveys to where when they are leaving, hopefully you've known all the things that were issues at that point. But yes, an exit interview or exit survey is part of the retain platform. And what we have found is it's, you know, it's better to do that as a survey and not face to face, because if there are things that they weren't happy with, they're not always going to be the most comfortable to share that with you face to face. But often people will be, you know, keyboard warriors and tell you every single thing that

they had a problem with behind a small screen. And that's okay because that's what you're wanting, right? And you also have to realize that some folks are leaving. And so you might have to read through some of the kind of like anger that's in some of the messages that they're leaving. But at the same time, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? Like there's things in there that you can improve on, even if you have someone that's disgruntled, right? Is always take it back as like a reflection. Is there things that we can change to make things better going forward? And then the biggest thing is how often do we hear about folks that have worked for the same agency multiple times, right? And what you do when they're leaving is how they feel if the door's open for them to come back or not,

right? And if there wasn't an exit interview and you didn't care about any of the time that they were with you, well, if their situation changes, are they going to think about coming back, right? And so part of that is just keeping the door open for them later down the road and a quality exit interview will do that. Okay. I love this. My head was going to exactly the same place is the experience they have when they leave will be top of mind if they ever consider returning, returning to your agency, returning to the occupation, open search for jobs again. I love that your mind's going there. Any automation or things

that you could share about what that could look like, reaching back out to people after 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, automating that outreach to people that have left? Because like you said, people come back, people return to agencies. That's not uncommon here. So anything that you could speak to about what you could do to help in that area? engagement campaign with former employees, because those are the easiest to bring back because you typically don't have to orient them and they're familiar with your processes, or at least there's an abbreviated orientation, right? Because they've been through it. You can typically get those folks back to work quickly. And so we have a campaign built into the recruit product that will systematically follow up

with those folks and say, hey, you've worked for us in the past. If your situation changes or you need some extra hours, we would love to have you back full-time, part-time, whatever makes sense for you. And so, yes, keeping the door open and then reminding them that it is open. And to bring this full circle, if they have a really incredible first 90-day experience, even if have a really incredible first 90 day experience, even if they leave in that first 90 days, the surveys, the check-ins, the texts, the conversations with managers, those things will stay with them. They may leave to another agency and not have that experience and remember the experience they had and come back to you or refer people to you. Or refer people, yep.

Refer people because they're not having that experience at other agencies. And so you really want to give them, you know, what we could call that white glove five-star experience in the first 90 days, because even if they leave, if you give them a memorable, lasting experience, good things will come out of that, even if they leave. Again, they might refer people to you. That also happens. They may have another job or moved on, but if they had a good experience, they will refer people your way. And who doesn't want more referrals? That's right. You want to be the basis that they kind of compare every job to moving forward. It's like, oh, well, this isn't

as good as it was at my last place, or I wish they did it like this, or I wish I did it like that. But you want to kind of be the reference for that. And an easy way to think about this too is all of us have worked many jobs inside and outside of home care. And we should think back to our first 90 days at any job that we've had. What do we remember? What stood out to us? What do we wish they could have done better? And we can learn from our own experience. You know, again, we've all been onboarded at probably lots of different companies and some do it well, some don't. Some do things really out of the box that we like. And so putting ourselves in their shoes and then what this is all, we've talked about several times today, just getting their feedback. Ask them, how was your first 90 days? How was your first 30 days? What could we

do better? You know, just getting feedback and then acting on that. That's the biggest takeaway. You know, get feedback in a way that they're most apt to provide it to you and then be actionable about that, right? If that's the only thing that you take away from it, you know, that's still a positive. Absolutely. Well, Brian, I know you were worried about us getting to 60 minutes. Look how fast that went by.

I knew I was going to squeeze you for so much good information. This has been awesome. I think you have shared so many good insights just sprinkled in throughout here. And I hope everyone leaves here with this 90 day plan. If anything, this is what you can start implementing today. Maybe you have bits and pieces of this, but you could layer in some more of what we talked about. You can engage with Activated Insights if you are struggling. Maybe you're small and looking to scale and you need help automating a lot of this. That's what they're here for. And so, Brian, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. You've shared so many great nuggets today. Well, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. And hopefully I'll be back. Absolutely. So next week, I'll be joined by the president of Activated Insights, Todd Austin, to discuss metrics to keep a closer eye on in 2025. Today, we're talking about recruit and retain. We're going to zoom out a little bit with Activated Insights.

And I'm going to interview Todd about metrics to keep a closer eye on in 2025. So join us again next Wednesday, 3 p.m. Eastern for the live session. For those of you listening to this as a podcast, you can go to careswitch.com backslash homecareu to subscribe and get the link to access these live sessions or search homecareu wherever you get your podcasts. We'll go ahead and wrap here. Brian, thank you so much. We'll talk to you again soon. And I hope everyone has a great rest of their day. Thank you so much. 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.