Recruitment & Retention Trends

We recently held a webinar series joining together our Caregiver recruitment trends alongside trends from the home care sales experts at Powershot Training. For many home care owners we spoke with, these trends covered the two biggest areas of focus for their business. With recruiting Caregivers being the number one reported threat to business growth year in and year out, and growing sales being necessary to scale the business, there were many key areas covered. One question often asked to the experts was “How do I balance my CNA recruiting efforts and my efforts to gain new clients?”

Recruiting CNAs and Caregivers is more expensive than ever before. Stiffer competition has led to increased sourcing costs, while the time it takes to recruit Caregivers continues to grow, raising operational costs. Home care agencies across the country are committing more resources to their Caregiver and CNA recruitment, but few are taking advantage of the best way to get some of that money back. What would your business do with an extra $50,000 each year?

In any industry, not just Caregiver recruitment, good leaders learn from others. Finding proven strategies from other organizations and implementing them when recruiting Caregivers can instantly inject new life into your business. Sometimes, it can be hard to find time to sift through the noise to find the best ideas available. Even harder can be finding examples outside of home care recruiting. We’ve found five brands from other industries who are winning at five different aspects of recruitment: Offering, experience, processing, brand, and talent creation. Each of these has valuable insights to be gained that can help improve your current Caregiver, HHA, and CNA recruitment.

Out of all the different steps in the Caregiver and CNA recruitment process, it may be most difficult to lose a candidate at the end. Having a qualified candidate who comes in for an interview, seems to be a great fit, then never makes it to their first case can be disheartening. With each new step in the recruitment process some candidates are bound to drop off, but losing those who have made it through to the end is the most devastating - and the most preventable. Did you know 24% of Caregivers report companies do a poor job of communicating the next step in the hiring process after the interview? Here are a few common areas where better communication when recruiting CNAs can lead to more hires.

Home care recruitment is facing threats from other industries now more than ever before. Fast food and retail, among others, are actively targeting the direct care workforce. Many of these jobs boast higher pay or better benefits, but new research shows the biggest threat these industries pose to Caregiver and CNA recruitment: 80% of Caregivers prefer to work for one company if they can get the hours they want. They also report it’s easier to get desired hours in retail and fast food. Recruiting in home care has always been challenged by the fact that guaranteeing hours is more difficult than in other industries. This new data shows the impact those challenges are having on the industry.

Home care recruiting is facing challenges today that it never had to worry about in the past. Increased competition from other industries is putting additional strain on an already thin labor pool. Agencies are finding ways to be more accommodating to potential Caregivers in an effort to keep them in the industry. An interesting new piece of data shows one area that could help agencies sell their positions when recruiting for home care. 35% of all Caregivers are only interested in full-time work, and 27% of all Caregivers are only interested in part-time work. What does this mean for your current Caregiver, HHA, and CNA recruitment and how can you use it to boost hires moving forward?

You’ve just finished arguably the most important part of the Caregiver and CNA recruitment process, the interview. A lovely candidate came in and you’re thrilled about the prospect of them joining your team. They appear to be a great fit and are excited to start work with you. The second they walk out the door, the clock starts. We’ve talked about processing times on this blog before (see: Home Care Recruitment Processing Times: Why Caregivers Aren’t Making it to Cases), but new data sheds additional light on the need for a quick turnaround after an interview in order be successful when recruiting CNAs and Caregivers. We asked Caregivers how long they wait after an interview before interviewing with another company. Their answers are below.

There’s a nationwide shortage of qualified Caregivers, and it’s even more challenging if you’re hiring CNAs. The cold hard reality is there’s just not enough of them to go around. Whether your agency is only allowed to hire CNAs, or if you need a mix of both certified and uncertified Caregivers, chances are it’s difficult to make enough new CNA hires to staff cases. As providers adapt to the growing gap between supply and demand, the most successful way to make CNA hires is to create new CNAs altogether. The latest research shows 80% of uncertified Caregivers would get a CNA certificate if their employer paid for it.

“What can my agency do to stand out when recruiting Caregivers?” This is the million dollar question, and providers across the country are asking it daily. Every agency is looking for ways to offer more than the other employer down the street in an effort to lure top talent. It’s no easy task, as there are more competitors in Caregiver recruitment now than ever before as retail, fast food, and other industries are targeting the direct care workforce with lower barriers to entry. But there is a way to make joining your agency’s workforce easy while offering something only a third of your competitors currently do. Only 45% of Caregivers with CPR certification report their current or past employer paid for this necessary certification before beginning work. If you want to come out ahead in your Caregiver, HHA, and CNA recruitment, be the agency who offers this to their staff.

Caregiver and CNA recruitment is always a challenge, but the calendar provides particular ups and downs along the way. The holiday season, for example, often proves to be a tough time to hire Caregivers, with agencies struggling to meet their needs from Thanksgiving through the New Year. On the flipside, many agencies find summertime to be an easier season to recruit CNAs and Caregivers to fill their open shifts. Another dip looms just around the corner for agencies across the country, for soon approaches the only time Americans are happy to receive mail from the IRS - tax refund season.