Under normal circumstances, growth would be at the top of your home care agency’s goal list. But, how do you strategize to take your agency to the next level, when you are looking to fill open shifts and the administrative burden for running the business takes up so much of your time?
We’ve identified five tools that can help your home care agency reduce the time it takes to optimize your workforce and build a simple infrastructure for success.
First, determine what agency success looks like for your company
Before we dive into the tools that can help your agency succeed, you first need to determine what success looks like for you. While we believe all of these tools will help simplify your workflows, defining the goal from the beginning will help determine the best course of action and ultimately help lead to growth and success.
What agency success could look like:
- Workforce Optimization
- Caregiver Retention and Growth
- Optimized Website
- Consistent Marketing
- Revenue Growth
- Workflow Efficiency
Now that you’ve determined what success looks like for your home care agency, let’s dive into the individual tools that can help you.
Home Care Agency Tool 1: Workforce optimization and HR Compliance Software
Not only has technology enabled super quick communications, it allows us to remain constantly connected. There are many resources available including apps and software,
but it is important to remember that in the home care industry, compliance and patient privacy must remain the top priority.
On top of maintaining HIPAA compliance, we recommend utilizing a workforce optimization software featuring a shiftbooking tool that can be seamlessly integrated into the rest of your agency HR software and workflow processes. This integration can help increase staffing efficiency, ensure that shifts are getting filled faster with existing caregivers, and reduce the number of missed shifts.
Home Care Agency Tool 2: Caregiver applicant tracking and scheduling software
When you begin to attract and hire new caregivers, you will need to make sure you have an efficient system set up for applicants. A streamlined applicant tracking system allows you to reduce the cost and time to recruit and replenish your workforce. On top of time and money savings, integrating an applicant tracking system into your HR software helps simplify your agency’s processes from application status, to hiring and onboarding, allowing the software to track all documentation in one place throughout the process.
Once you hire your caregiver, utilizing an integrated caregiver management software can help get your caregivers ready to work more quickly. Your caregivers care about patient care and building relationships with their patients. Better caregiver patient consistency leads to better outcomes.
Related Post – Hiring and Acquiring More Efficiently in Home Care
Home Care Agency Tool 3: Optimized website
An optimized and integrated website is an important tool your home care agency needs for success. Your agency’s website needs to be a priority because it’s the first-place prospective clients will go when looking for additional information about your agency and the services you provide. It’s immensely beneficial to ensure that your website is search engine optimized (SEO) so you reach people during their search who are exhibiting buying signals, such as Googling to search for an agency to care for a loved one.
Second, potential caregivers will be using your website to find and apply for open positions, which is why your website is important for both, new caregiver and client acquisition. Only about 35% of businesses have a mobile-optimized website currently – make it a point to stand out above competition and improve your optimization today.
Home Care Agency Tool 4: Consistent marketing plan
Word of mouth is beneficial for a company, but not predictable enough to solely rely on for agency growth. Because of this, implementing a consistent marketing strategy is essential. When planning your strategy, you need to have a comprehensive plan that appeals to both of your agency’s targets – clients (agency growth) and caregivers (employees to serve clients and company growth).
While it certainly is best to have a presence on every platform (both physical and digital) that your target audience frequents, managing multiple platforms takes time and consistent content updates. Thus, we recommend starting with a plan that you can be consistent with and build out from there. If that means marketing on one platform only, for example, your website and consistent blogging, then develop a plan for how many blog posts and landing pages you want to complete within a month – once your team feels confident with maintaining this platform and consistency, then you should expand to a second platform. When managing these two platforms is successful, then move to three, and so on. This method limits the risk of launching too many platforms (such as a website, social media, blogging, etc.) at once and risking not being able to manage them all.
Home Care Agency Tool 5: Streamlined review system
When was the last time you made a purchase and didn’t read a review or consult someone you trust? There’s a good chance you considered at least one or two opinions – in fact about 9 out of 10 consumers read at least one review before making a purchase. Of those consumers that read reviews, 54.7% read at least 4 reviews before they make their decision.
Reviews for clients
When looking for reviews on companies, Google My Business is a great place to aggregate all of your client reviews. It’s also the most popular place for people to look for reviews, with 59% of clients using it to learn more about a company. Since most people utilize Google for their research on services and companies, you want to ensure your reviews are listed on their platform! Housing your agency reviews on a system that people can’t easily find during their research doesn’t do you any service.
Related Post – Ways to Thank Your Caregivers
Reviews for caregivers
Because caregivers are more interested in employment details and company information, such as culture and benefits, employment websites like Glassdoor are great. Not only is your agency able to use these platforms to showcase your culture and what you offer to employees, but you can give potential applicants a chance to see what other caregivers think about working at your agency.
Pro tip: Show that your home care agency values your caregivers and clients by replying to each of your reviews. Not many companies make this effort, for both good and bad reviews, so this will certainly set you apart!