By Stephen Tweed
For the past three days, Elizabeth and I were in St. Louis with our $5 Million Mastermind group. It’s always amazing to spend time with some of the very brightest people in the home care industry.
What do CEOs and COOs of eight of largest home care companies in the country talk about at their two day meeting?
Caregiver Recruiting!
The group spent four hours on Monday sharing ideas about how to recruit top caregivers to meet the growing needs of their businesses. Even these large, fast-growing home care companies don’t have this caregiver recruiting crisis under control. Everyone in the home care industry is working hard to find ways to attract better caregivers.
They have a System 
The one thing we did observe is that the companies in this group that are having the best time finding caregivers are the ones that have developed a system, tested their system, refined their system, and work their system every day. A system is a set of principles and procedures according to which something is done in an organized way. The best systems are a combination of people and processes. It requires people who have the discipline to follow the process consistently.
If we have seen one thing that separates the large fast-growing home care companies from the small companies that have hit the “growth ceiling”, it is the discipline to work the system consistently.
In our research to Conquer the Caregiver Recruiting Crisis, we have defined a seven step system. Now we are working on filling in the blanks to define each step in detail.
- Define your Best Caregivers
- Attract the Best
- Screen and Select the Best
- Hire and On-Board the Best
- Develop and Train the Best
- Recognize and Reward the Best
- Retain the Best
How to Develop Your System
There is no one right answer to recruiting caregivers. The ten companies in the $5 Million Mastermind had ten slightly different systems for recruiting and on-boarding caregivers. There is no one right way. These industry leaders are coming together to share ideas, solve problems, and develop systems to grow their businesses.
You can develop your own system for recruiting, selecting, training, and retaining caregivers by taking this basis model and adding your own unique approach. You can begin my listening to what others are doing, and then adapting their ideas to your model and your company.
Test, Test, Test
You are living in a dynamic environment where what worked yesterday won’t work today, and what you design today will be out of date tomorrow. That means that you need to have an ongoing process of testing new ideas. You need to test recruiting ad headlines, copy, and call to action. You need to test the placement of ads. You need to test the copy on your web site careers page.
Track Everything
If order to find out if your tests are working, you need to track everything. You need to keep track of every caregiver applicant. You need to know how they found out about your company, what motivated them to call, and what they like that attracted their attention. It’s only when you track everything that you will know when a particular headline, a paragraph of body copy, or a call to action is working. It’s only when you track every incoming application that you know which recruiting web sites or which employee referral campaign is working.
Document Your System
As you develop the steps in your system, write everything down. Make sure that ever member of the team is contributing to the process, and that the actual steps they take are written down so they can be duplicated. This assures that no matter who in yoru company is working on recruiting, they can apply the system the same way.
Develop Discipline
The key to successful recruiting is consistency. Once you have a system that works, do it the same way every time until the data show that it’s not working any more. But you can’t just keep running the same old adds over and over again. You have to have a process to review, revise, and revitalize your ads. That means developing the discipline in your team members to apply the process consistently, but to allow space for innovation and creativity.
Find out what Works from Other Companies.
You can validate your own process by learning from other people’s experience. That means having regular conversations with other non-competing company owners about what is working for them. At Leading Home Care and the Home Care CEO Forum, we want to create opportunities for you to connect with other home care CEOs to share ideas, solve problems, and encourage one another. There are three ways to do that in the Forum:
- Virtual CEO Round Tables – monthly web based conversations about the steps in the recruiting process.
- Home Care Field Trips – where you get to spend a day inside one of the Top Tier companies
- Mastermind Groups – small groups of up to ten companies that come together twice a year to share ideas, solve problems, and lift each other up.
Join us for this month’s Virtual CEO Round Table
This week, the Home Care CEO Forum will host a Virtual Round Table:
Conquering the Caregiver Recruiting Crisis, Part II: Having a System for Recruiting.
Our special guests will be Andy Tysinger, COO at SeniorCorp in Virginia Beach, VA; and Tamara Rice, Director of Human Resources at SeniorCorp. SeniorCorp is one of the largest private pay home care countries in the country, and is a charter member of the $5 Million Mastermind Group. Andy and Tamara will describe their system for recruiting, selection, and on-boarding, and answer your questions.
Join us on Thursday, April 28, 2016 at 4:00 PM Eastern time.
