The Home Health Care Industry is Growing
In 2019, the number of 65+ Americans was 54.1 million. That number is expected to reach 72 million by the year 2025.
As the average life expectancy continues to climb, new and growing industries are being created to meet the needs of our senior citizens. One of those emerging markets is Home Health Care. The home health industry is poised to grow by 54% by 2026.
The Home Health Care industry suffers from an extremely high turnover—65.2% in 2020—so it's vital for Home Health Care organizations to create a recruitment strategy that will reduce employee churn, while at the same time cultivating a rewarding and engaging workplace.
So what can Home Health Care providers do to meet their recruiting and retention challenges?
Six Tips for Recruiting (and Retaining) Home Health Care Workers
1. Get Organized
It is vital for Home Health Care providers to have accurate and detailed documentation to manage the recruitment process. This starts with creating and storing compelling job descriptions for positions with heavy churn. Having your applicants stored electronically can help with the management process as well, both from a compliance standpoint, but also for the ability to create solid candidate database pools for future consideration.
2. Background Checks and Assessments
Given the lower barrier to entry and a high degree of turnover, selecting applicants that fit with the desired personality traits of these positions is crucial. Identifying key characteristics, and employing effective assessment tools to measure these traits is critical. Equally important is to ensure that potential employees will not present a danger to those that you are entrusting them to care for.
3. Design an Effective Job Advertising Strategy
In addition to compelling job descriptions, Home Healthcare Providers need to be able to formulate an effective strategy for advertising their positions.
- Start with a solid applicant management platform (like HiringThing) to help you organize the process.
- Find niche job boards specifically geared to the healthcare industry – healthjobsusa.com, careervitals.com, and healthcarejobboardnetwork.com are all great examples of targeted job boards.
- Look out for local events and job fairs to meet directly with potential applicants.
- Utilize social media to reach out to potential applicants where they live online.
- Create a cohesive strategy across all of your external sources that reflects the brand and image you want your organization to display to job candidates.
4. Monitor Results
Be sure to have effective procedures and reporting in place that will let you know how your recruitment strategy is working. You will want to make sure you are effectively monitoring the following reporting criteria:
- External recruitment sources to see where you are getting your best applicants
- Cost per hire
- Time to hire
- Job post response over time
5. Brand Your Organization
Given the highly competitive market for care providers, you need to make your organization stand out from the competition by effectively marketing your company as a place that values the needs and motivations of your work staff. As with your job advertising strategy, you will want to create a campaign that captures the values of your organization and makes it attractive to potential employees.
6. Create, Analyze, Modify
Remember that creating a recruitment strategy isn’t the end of your journey, but merely a start in the process to help improve future results. Monitor the process and be open and flexible to changes in the strategy to improve its overall effectiveness.
About HiringThing
Approachable and adaptable, the HiringThing platform empowers everyone, everywhere, to hire their dream team. Try HiringThing’s easy-to-use, feature-rich applicant tracking system with a free 14-day trial today! Is your home health care organization part of a franchise or have multi-locations? Our private label ATS solution might be for you. Sign up for a demo today!
