Your caregivers’ first 90 days will cost you $136,890—in annual turnover costs, that is. Find out what is causing 57% of your employees to change their minds about your agency in their first 3 months of working with you and what only you can do to prevent it.

T-Minus: 90 days… It’s been said that a child’s first 5 years are the most crucial for their development. But in the life of a caregiver, you only have 90 days at best to develop them into strong employees or risk being handed a resignation letter.

A shocking 57% of caregiver turnover occurs in the crucial first three months of employment—but it’s a statistic that is (almost) entirely preventable.

With 11 million job openings in the U.S. right now, you have just under 3 months to convince your caregivers to stay with your agency by delivering what they’re looking for as a new hire.

Make the next 90 days your top priority by addressing the 5 biggest reasons employees quit within their first 3 months to save yourself $136,890 in turnover costs this year.

The countdown begins.

5. Your Interview Questions Are Making You Hire the Wrong People

“You need to have the highest and strictest hiring standards ever in this industry,” Allen Serfas.

Retention starts with prevention. And sometimes, preventing 90-day caregiver turnover begins right in the interview.

The average agency will hire around 81 caregivers this year, but our research shows that 65% of them will quit by the end of the year. At $2,600 per caregiver, that means it will cost your agency approximately $136,890 in annual caregiver turnover costs to replace them.

So why are your new hires making it past their interview but not their first 90 days of employment?

You’re not asking them the right interview questions.

How to address this:

Interviews go both ways. While you don’t want to misread a candidate’s ability to deliver what your agency needs, your caregiver needs to be able to discern if they would honestly be the best fit for your agency too.

In the 2022 Home Care Growth Summit, John Bennett explained that your interview process should provide applicants with an accurate picture of what they can expect the position to entail:

“There are people you’re going to hire in those first 90 days, regardless of your vetting process, where home care is just not for them—that’s not something you need to change in your retention efforts. You need to do a better job in your screening process and give them a more realistic presentation of what caregiving is all about.

“We tried some different things where we painted a really “happy-go-lucky” picture about home care, which it is very rewarding, but we glossed over more of the difficulties. That increased our recruitment as we were hiring more people in the area, but our retention was worse because people weren’t getting a realistic look of what the job looked like.”

Update your interview questions to include questions about past experiences, skills, and hypothetical scenarios to accurately assess each candidate’s potential and prepare them for what they can expect on the job.

Questions about past experiences:

Skill based questions:

Hypothetical scenario questions:

Prevent 90-day turnover by hiring long-term caregivers from the start.

4. You Wait Until a Caregiver’s First Shift Before Communicating What They Need to Know

The most common retention mistake agency owners make is starting their retention efforts after a caregiver’s first shift, and not in the first few days leading up to it. If you want your caregivers to stay around longer than three months—it starts from day one.

New hires who experience a positive onboarding experience are 70% more likely to continue working for an organization for more than three years. Especially in the home care industry, a lot of new hires are economically fragile and want to start their first shift as soon as possible; otherwise, they’ll find a job who can add them to their payroll faster than you can.

How to address this:

If you don’t have your new hire’s client schedule figured out yet, don’t panic. Caregivers want to start work as soon as possible, but they also don’t want to be rushed into a client’s home without any training.

Although your new hires don’t need their weekly schedule completely planned out yet, ensure their first training shift is scheduled for as soon as they can start. Proactively share all the details of what their first couple weeks will look like to communicate that you’re ready to invest in them from day one.

As soon as you hire a new caregiver, meet with or call them to discuss:

Start your caregivers’ first 90 days on a high note by communicating what they really want to know as soon as you offer them the job.

3. Your Caregivers Don’t Feel Like They Have a Say in the Hours They’re Scheduled

In an effort to prevent 65% of your caregivers from quitting this year, it’s a knee jerk reaction to offer them everything you can to make them stay. But sometimes your employees don’t actually need more from you—they just need balance.

Even if you’ve hired the perfect caregiver, if you don’t have the hours to support what they need, you’re practically ushering them out the door.

As every 1 in 4 caregivers live below the poverty line, your caregivers will quit your agency if they aren’t scheduled the hours they need to pay their bills. Likewise, if a caregiver is overwhelmed at work, they are going to believe the job just isn’t for them and express their exhaustion with their feet.

Reevaluate what your caregivers’ work week looks like to show them your agency prioritizes their financial needs and emotional well-being to keep them coming back each day for years to come.

How to address this:

Your word of the day for the next 90 days is: balance—and it’s something only you can prioritize within the culture of your agency.

Mike McSherry, Director of Partnerships at Hireology, shares what work-life balance looks like in home care, which is easier to provide than you might expect:

“Work-life balance isn’t just about giving people more freedom from work as in less hours or even more flexible hours. It really just boils down to being accommodating and meeting your employees where they are or at least trying to do a better job of it.

“If somebody in the caregiver space needs to have Wednesday afternoons off because they have a loved one or kids at home that they need to take care of on those days of the week—help them schedule around that. Don’t penalize them because they simply have these other things in their life that require their attention.”

Help balance your caregivers’ workload:

It’s easy to stay somewhere longer than 90 days when you feel seen, respected, and know that your needs are being met. Rather than hosting a recognition party to pay back your caregivers for their hard work, spend time proactively helping your caregivers improve their daily work schedules to see a long-term increase in job satisfaction and retention.

2. You’re Expecting Your New Hires to be Experts

90 days is a long time to not know what you’re doing. Because inexperience breeds vulnerability, caregivers who feel unsure or underprepared in their position for too long will choose to save their dignity and quit to go where they feel competent.

Which is why a client’s home can’t be a caregiver’s first training room. But for nearly half of all home care agencies, it is.

Even though 94% of employees reported they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development, only 66% of home care providers use a professional training program.

Design a caregiver’s first 90-day training to help them feel confident and competent in their position and prevent their vulnerabilities from convincing them to leave.

How to address this:

In order for caregivers to feel competent in their crucial first three months of employment, refine your training program with these tips to equip a caregiver with everything they need to succeed in their first 90 days:

Competent caregivers don’t quit. Once they’ve passed their 90-day mark, the Activated Insights Caregiver Learning Ladder shows how to make your competent caregivers proficient in 6 months, and an expert after a year.

1. Your Caregivers Aren’t Hearing from You Enough

Which brings us to our number one cause of 90-day turnover. Lack of communication from an employer is the number one caregiver complaint, according to the 2021 Home Care Benchmarking Study.

In fact, exactly 57% of employees have quit their jobs because of poor leadership and communication skills from their frontline managers (coincidentally, the same percentage of caregivers who also quit in their first 90 days)!

The infamous phrase: people don’t quit their jobs they quit their bosses, may seem like a daunting concept and a heavy weight to carry on your shoulders while you are busy running every detail of your agency.

Fortunately, we know what your caregivers wish you were doing more of and we’re here to help break it down.

How to address this:

Let’s break down just how often you should be communicating with your caregivers in their first 90 days with your agency. Mark down these crucial communication touchpoints to ensure you’re communicating with your caregivers how and when they need you to:

90 Days is Only the Beginning

Mission accomplished! By addressing these concerns, you’ve successfully made it past a caregiver’s first 90 days—but your retention efforts have only just begun.

What is causing your employees to quit? Find out by getting to the bottom of what your employees think about your agency.

Read how Norwood Seniors Network kept their annual turnover rate under 30% by seeking and acting on caregiver feedback.

Learn more: