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?”
This is no doubt a seesaw most owners are familiar with today. Having to turn away new clients due to a lack of Caregivers is a worst-case scenario for an agency. On the other hand, losing unengaged Caregivers without enough hours to go around is not much better. A balance of both allows the business to grow in an uninterrupted fashion. The best way to achieve that balance? Never turn off the faucet.
Many agencies fall into the trap of “turning off” their efforts when one side of the equation begins to outpace the other. They may stop hiring Caregivers when they see new clients slowing, or pull back on sales calls when the recruiting well runs dry. Often times, this leads to a pendulum effect when the tides shift back the other direction, causing the agency to play a perpetual game of catch-up.
On the recruiting side, it’s vital to keep bringing in new candidates on a consistent basis. This establishes a pipeline, which once turned down or off can take weeks to pick up steam again. Another thing to keep in mind is when Caregivers need to be hired in a rush in order to catch up, they tend to come at a much higher cost-per-hire than those attracted through a steady strategy. It’s also important not to be lulled into a false sense of security. In an industry with high turnover and oftentimes sporadic client referrals, you can find yourself in a bind very quickly. A good scenario to run yourself through is this: If you were to lose two Caregivers and gain two new clients today, what kind of shape would you be in?
On the sales side, it’s equally important to keep the pedal to the metal. Of course you want to grow your client base and number of hours billed, which in itself is a great motivator not to ease up. But also remember with more clients comes more hours available for care staff, the ability to put new Caregivers to work quicker, and growing revenues allows you to build a more competitive offering for workers in the future.
It’s clear these two aspects of your business support one another. Without healthy Caregiver, HHA, and CNA recruitment, referral sources are turned away creating compounding loss of revenue. Without a growing caseload, business stagnates and Caregivers search elsewhere for more hours and opportunities. The home care agencies who are growing at consistent rates are the ones dedicated to scaling both nurse aide recruitment and new client referrals side by side.
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