Home-based care agencies are taking a data-driven approach to solve the industry’s recruitment and retention crisis. Explore trends, tips, and strategies from the 2024 Activated Insights Benchmarking Report. 

To mark the 15th Annual Edition of the 2024 Activated Insights (Formerly HCP) Benchmarking Report, we’re breaking down the key findings from each section to help get home-based care providers a head-start on turning benchmarking data into data-driven business decisions. 

Strategize your long-term and post-acute care recruitment and retention this year with these three tips. 

Tip #1: Invest in Long-Term Recruitment and Retention Strategies

Finding: Inefficiencies in the recruitment process are causing home-based providers to trade long-term employees for short-term gains.  

Trend: Only 16.4% of home health and hospice nurses and 12.8% of home-based care applicants were hired. For home health and hospice, that’s a 25% decrease in applicant to hire ratio compared to last year.  

Threat: This may be because although Indeed continues to be the most popular recruitment source, it produces the highest turnover rate of 88%, ultimately producing a short-lived “quick win” for recruitment numbers but a devastating retention rate of 88%.  

Opportunity: Instead, word-of-mouth referrals produce the lowest employee turnover rate for almost the least in acquisition cost.

Data-Driven Strategy: Determine which recruitment sources are worth your investment by calculating their long-term Return on Investment, even if that means taking the initial loss in new hires. Some best practices to get you started are:

Tip #2: Take a Proactive Approach to Retention By Gathering Feedback

Finding: Care staff turnover is the highest it’s been in 5 years—indicating an industry employee retention crisis.  

Trend: Over the last two years, the home-based care turnover rate has increased by over 14% to reach a total of 79.2%. Compared to home care and hospice, home health is having to consistently turn down new customers the most, due to a lack of employees. Which is a shame because customers turn over the least in home health with a 26.8% turnover rate, half of the rate in home-based care and hospice.  

Threat/Opportunity: This year more than ever, providers who paid their staff above the 75th percentile saw a 35.5% decrease in turnover rate. 

Data-Driven Strategy: Take a proactive approach to retention by surveying your customers and staff to uncover what they wish you’d start or stop doing to keep them around.  

Tip #3: Solving the Industry-Wide Turnover Crisis Begins with Relationship Building

Finding: As if an industry-wide staffing shortage wasn’t enough to prove the value of recruiting and retaining home-based care employees—the median revenue per employee is the highest its been in four years. 

Trend: Revenue increased by $1,000 per care employee, resulting in $14,822 in revenue per hire, higher than in the last four years. 

Threat/Opportunity: In addition to the quantitative value of care staff, long-term and post-acute care employees are the reason why customers are the most satisfied with your company! Which is a huge improvement over the last few years where the biggest points of dissatisfaction are now your employees’ and customers’ greatest points of satisfaction. Customers ranked the ability of their care professionals as their highest satisfaction score while employees are most satisfied with the client to care professional compatibility. This increased customer satisfaction may be why there was an 18% decrease in providers who had to consistently turn down customer cases due to staff shortage.  

Data-Driven Strategy: Retain staff by capitalizing what makes the long-term and post-acute care industry different from other jobs on the market: a fulfilling career. HIreology recommends doing this in 5 steps: 

For more data-driven strategies like these, access the full 2024 Activated Insights Benchmarking Report (formerly the HCP Benchmarking Report).

Make More Data-Driven Business Decisions with Activated Insights

The best way to improve your home-based care recruitment and retention is with data-driven insights. Activated Insights offers many different solutions to help your company gain visibility into customer and employee satisfaction, recruitment tactics, and more. Explore our comprehensive solutions for home care companies like yours and discuss your needs with an Activated Insights expert today.