Ep:12 Home Care Recruitment: What’s Working & What’s Not

Miriam Allred (00:00):

Hey, this is Miriam Allred and you’re listening to Vision | The Care Leaders’ Podcast by Activated Insights. The show where I chat with industry leaders about relevant topics providers want to hear my guest today is Andrea Cohen, the founder and CEO of HouseWorks. She’s a social entrepreneur, visionary leader, and out of the box thinker dedicated to transforming the way we deliver care to seniors at home. So today we’re going to talk about home care recruitment specifically, what’s working and what’s not. So we’re going to start on the what’s working side. I want to start by just asking a really straightforward question. If you could only pick one recruitment source to use from today for the next three months, which would it be?

Andrea Cohen (00:40):

That’s a great question. And I think that’s something that all of us think about. I think that the, the, the, the one that I would just use if I only had one choice would be just be figuring out ways to get referrals from our current employees our current caregivers. And, you know, I wish I could tell you sort of something incredibly creative and different that that might work, but I gotta tell you you know, I did some research and in the last couple of months we hired 25 caregivers in Boston and over 50% of them were in house referrals. So not, and, and I actually checked it out. So nine caregivers referred referred these 25 these caregivers. So we have some caregivers that, you know, in some ways they just see it as their job to be able to refer their friends. And it just, it seems to be over and I’ve been doing this for a really long time, and it just seems to be a strategy that works the most. That is if your caregivers are happy and want to refer their friends. And the other thing that you might, you know, you also could consider just in terms of thinking about it is circling back with caregivers who used to work with you. So it’s a little bit more proactive, so, you know, try to understand why they left and talk about what’s changed and maybe giving them a call. But again, it’s looking at your base of caregivers that somehow you’ve touched and figuring out ways for them to ask their friends, to join us in our colleagues. Definitely.

Miriam Allred (02:24):

And without getting into all the details more on the logistical side, how do you ask your caregivers for referrals? Or what does that workflow?

Andrea Cohen (02:34):

Yeah, sure. So, you know, in many ways I think about that, it’s, it’s sort of the, you know, when we all think about culture of a company, I think it’s the same thing. It’s kind of, you have to establish this recruitment culture and you have to, every time you touch a caregiver, you should be asking them. So, you know, when you speak with them, you mention it. We, we certainly send out flyers and we, you know, send out, we, we tell them about the recruitment bonus that we have, and we talk about it at orientation. We chat it up with them. We try to get them to want to do it. And you’ve just got to do a constantly it’s you can’t just send out one, you know, one piece of paper that says, you know, he, here’s the referral kind of bonus that you’re getting. And here’s what, why we would like you to do it. It’s gotta be part of your culture.

Miriam Allred (03:27):

Yeah. And consistency. Can I ask specifically the caregivers that are referring, how long have they typically been with your agency?

Andrea Cohen (03:36):

That’s a great question. I would say that most of the ones that are referring, what I, when we look at we have about 394 active caregivers in Boston of which 20% have worked with us for less than a year. And another 50% have worked with us between one and five years. I would say, it’s those folks that are referred. Yeah. They’ve been with us a little bit longer, but but yeah, we also have about 30% that have been with us five, 10 and 15 years, but I would say it’s that, those, that second group.

Miriam Allred (04:15):

Okay. I think agencies a lot, a lot refer, you don’t have caregivers referring, but some don’t. So I’m just curious at where that sweet spot was, because if you know, some agencies have so many caregivers, if they can kind of hone in and get referrals from a specific group, I think, you know, that’s where they’re going to be most productive. So honing in on that. Yeah.

Andrea Cohen (04:33):

Yeah. And I, I got to say that, that when you think about it, it’s our new, our new caregivers. Haven’t been with us as much, but, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re, and we’ll get into this as we move on, but we’re much more intentional about how we’re recruiting now. So I think that, you know, we’ll be able to get more of our new caregivers to actually refer as we really sort of standardize how we do orientation and how, you know, we just keep talking about it over and over again, because we know that recruiting caregivers from our current employees is our best strategy. Then we just have to get better and better at it. So we should be able to, to, to, to get that those early the ones that haven’t been with us as long to, to actually refer more.

Miriam Allred (05:20):

Definitely. We can’t stress the importance of those first 90 days and that’s okay.

Andrea Cohen (05:24):

First 90 days. Yeah. It still comes back to that.

Miriam Allred (05:28):

So let’s kind of move on. I want to talk a little bit about tech that you’re using, what platforms or technology platforms are using and what channels aren’t actually working? You’ve mentioned the caregiver referral side, but you know, what technology or platforms are you using and what’s really bearing the most fruit?

Andrea Cohen (05:48):

Sure. So we use you know, we use an applicant tracking system called Jazz HR. And I, you know, I can’t compare to as HR to any other applicant tracking system that is out there. But that’s really working for us. And again, I’ve been doing this for a long time and these applicant tracking systems, you know, it’s sort of like a common app for college, right. So, you know, you just, you give it to them and then they can just get it out there. And so we’re using Jazz HR, and we pay $1,200 a month actually to boost jobs on indeed as well. So we’re using, you know, that as part of our, our tracking. And so those are the tech platforms that we use the most. But the, the one thing that I have to say in speaking with the HR folks and really trying to figure out best ways to optimize what we’re doing, you know, one of the learnings that I took away from this is that number one, you have to be very intentional about tracking and what works on the back end.

Andrea Cohen (07:04):

And I know we talk, we may talk about this later where, you know, what are your metrics for tracking, but, you know, you have to be just very intentional about what you’re doing. And and I, I, I think it’s just important to to, to just understand that. And, and, and just to go with that,

Miriam Allred (07:26):

That’s definitely key with these technology products or platforms it’s, you know, you can’t expect them to deliver, you know, from zero to a hundred, you know, you’ve got to use the platform, leverage it, do things internally to make the most of that platform. So it’s, you know, hands on, on both fronts. I want to ask, when did you start using Jazz HR? You know, how long ago was that and why, why did you decide to use an ATS initially?

Andrea Cohen (07:56):

You know, we, we had been, you know, again, because we’ve been, we’ve been around for a long time. I mean, we were doing everything manually and so it just took a lot of time to just post everywhere on our own. We switched over to Jazz HR, you know, a number of years ago. I can’t tell you exactly how many years ago, and it really changed the world of how we can recruit and and how we can track. Because I think what, what, what everybody knows from this now is, is that you want to know what’s working and that’s where you’re gonna put your energy and that’s where you’re going, gonna, you know, and, and I think everyone also knows that, you know, given COVID and giving everything that’s going on in the world of recruitment, you just have to get as many applicants as you can, and then figure out the best way to sort of weed out the ones that you want.

Andrea Cohen (08:45):

The other point that I really want to make is about connection. And I think it’s really important that your applicant tracking systems, you figure out sort of, you know, how to the full use of the functionality of any applicant tracking system and, and make sure that it connects as well as it can with your backend system. That was one of the big other learnings for us is that, you know, we, we found out that, you know, we have a couple of different locations and everybody’s using the same backend system and the same jazz HR, but not everybody used it to its full functionality and everybody used it a little bit differently. So if you are in multi locations to make sure that everybody’s instructed to use it the same way and get the same information out of it and maximize what you’re doing.

Miriam Allred (09:35):

Yeah. I want to kind of talk about the analytics, to be honest, I’m not a hundred percent familiar with Jazz HR. But what are maybe the top three metrics with that ATS or what analytics are you looking at as a, as an organization?

Andrea Cohen (09:50):

So, you know, I, well, for a second, speak to, you know, the applicant, what, what you guys refer to as the applicant funnel, but sort of the, the internal applicant metric, you know, it, the bigger picture is, is that, you know, we’re looking at the number of ads, we run the number of applicants. We receive the number of applicants. We interview the number of new hires who attended orientation. You know, we’re looking at it at every piece of what our what Jazz HR is bringing us the applicants. And then we’re trying to figure out our applicant funnel. But you know, we have a, so the Jazz HR, I just want to make sure I’m getting your question right. But the, you know, Jazz HR is bringing in the applicants and then we have a screener that screens all the applicants, and then we have a whole process set up, you know, as to we want everybody to be screened in 24 hours. You know, we have our own internal metrics about that. Is that what you’re,

Miriam Allred (10:52):

Yeah. Let’s maybe get into those, those internal metrics that you were talking about. So, sorry. That was a little confusing, but the analytics that it provides, but yeah. What internally are you, are you analyzing as goal, you know, recruitment goals or recruitment metrics?

Andrea Cohen (11:08):

Yeah. So what we’re, we’re trying to figure, you know, one of the things, if you asked me like what my top three goals were for recruitment, one of them would be to shorten the process between the point of contact that the applicant makes with us to the point that they’re go to their first shift and our own internal metric. You know, if everything goes right, that’s about 10 days, that would be our optimal. So from the time they apply, then we screen them within 24 hours, or that’s what our goal is to screen them within 24 hours. And then to move along the process of, you know, what, what, what they have to do to sort of, they go through the screening process and then they, they interview with they interview the, so the interview with the screener. And then we have them interview with someone on the ops team.

Andrea Cohen (12:00):

So the ops team has say into it and it gets better buy in, and it gets us to understand the candidate more. And then once we hire them, we had to have someone get the paperwork done and we have them onboarded. And then we have them to the, to the first case, you know, it’s a cumbersome process and there’s points along the way that could just you know, hold it up. But again, our, our vision is to have them in within 10 days. And one of the things that you have to be careful about is, you know, in the old days we used to, you know, we, we used to have, it was a much more cumbersome, long process because we wanted to make sure we were getting the right people and we would lose applicants because it took too long. You know? So there’s this, this tension between making sure that the you get the right people signed in and weed it out, but at the same time, you want to streamline it and make it as efficient as possible. And I think that’s the dance that a lot of providers are playing now.

Miriam Allred (13:08):

Hmm. One question along those lines, and I know agencies have brought this up. Do you, at any point in time in that, you know, roughly 10 days, do you let them speak to other caregivers? You said, you know, some other people on your team, but do you ever have them interact or speak directly with another caregiver?

Andrea Cohen (13:25):

Well, the people that, that’s a, that’s a great question. I mean, the people that they’re talking to right now in operations were former caregivers, so yes, but I actually think that’s a great idea to be able to have them actually speak with other caregivers if that’s what they want. I mean, I, I have not heard that that’s something that the caregivers want, but I think that’s actually a great idea.

Miriam Allred (13:48):

Yeah. I think every agency’s a little different, but some feel really strongly about that. Others aren’t doing it. But I think like you’ve said that time to hire is priority a, but also finding the highest quality candidate and really giving them a snapshot of what the job’s going to look like through those caregivers is also really beneficial.

Andrea Cohen (14:07):

Yeah. I totally agree. I totally agree. So

Miriam Allred (14:11):

Kind of shifting gears a little bit, how are your recruiters, I’m assuming you have designated recruiters, but I want to talk a little bit about how they are, how are they feeling? You know, are they concerned? Are they stress more stress than normal, but how are they, you know, really

Andrea Cohen (14:28):

Well? I think the first thing I have to say about the recruiter is, and you know, we talk about it, you know, in many ways the recruiters have to have the same qualifications that our salespeople have to find customers. You know, the recruiter has to have the mindset of finding the caregivers, not that the caregivers are going to come to them. And so we think about it as this Hunter sales person skill set and a recruiter, meaning that they want to go out there and they’re really pumped up to do it and find them because it’s just, it, you know, again, in the old days, they used to come to you and now you have to find them. So I think that you know, w our recruiters are, are, are really of that mindset. And they are really, you know, they have strong relationship skills.

Andrea Cohen (15:20):

You know, they really try to understand who these caregivers are as people. And they really believe in what we do. So I think their energy and their sort of interest in finding candidates, because they believe in what we do is superseding what could be total burnout rush now. But one of the things that we’re doing just to keep them motivated is we are going to be building and financial incentives for this position in the next 30 to 60, 90 days, 30 to 60 days, because, you know, we’ve, you know, if you, if you, if you’re at a point in your business where you’re actually providing incentives to your salespeople, you know, in many ways to recruiters are selling what our biggest asset is, which is our people, and they’re finding them for us. So I think we ha you know, we’re really trying to figure out ways to sort of motivate them, you know, and help them feel that they’re as important as anybody else in the company.

Miriam Allred (16:20):

Definitely. Definitely. I appreciate that answer. And yeah, that’s what was going to be my next question is how as to how you’re motivating them, but you said some financial incentives, anything else that you’re doing to really just keep them pumped up and motivated?

Andrea Cohen (16:34):

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s just really, as a, as a, as an ops team, everybody’s sort of meeting and you know, and I think they, I think the other thing that’s important to the recruiters is that, you know, we’re, we’re treating and, and in incentivizing the caregivers, like they, they have to feel good about what, how we treat our own caregivers. And so we’re giving our caregivers raises and the recruiters were just thrilled because number one, they want to see us do that for the caregivers, but it also makes their life easier in some ways, cause you know, it’s just, it’s just really hard to recruit people now. And so I think it’s really important as a company that we think about ways to incentivize caregivers and to think about, you know, one of the things that we’re thinking about on the pricing side is can we pay a little bit extra if someone goes out in 24 hours or, you know, the whole idea of price elasticity and trying to figure out if there’s way, because we want to pay the caregivers more, you also have to charge the customers more.

Andrea Cohen (17:42):

In some ways in a lot of home care companies have gotten, you know, we have PPE, we have a lot of expenses that we think were going to hit our margins now. So we’re really looking at that. And at frankly, it’s sort of like a domino effect in many ways, it’s that, that, that you’ve got to start at the core, which is your people. And then, and if you want to get good people and then you want these recruiters to get good people, it’s just, everything connects. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. So the other thing that we just did that I think is going to really help is we, we actually just hired what we’re calling a director of caregiver engagement. So at the, and it doesn’t really matter what you call it, but we’re, we’re, we’ve hired someone at a pretty high level in the organization who is going to manage the recruiters in the organization.

Andrea Cohen (18:37):

And and, and I think that’s also something that’s going to, to be you know, we did that purposely because we knew that we needed to add infrastructure to how we recruit. Like if, if you said to me, what is the thing that I think about the most right now in this company, what do we have to invest in it’s in recruitment and it’s recruitment being sort of a really small world word for, you know, how do we attract new people? You know, all these people that have been sort of laid off are furloughed and service businesses, how do we get them to want to be in home care? So that’s a good, full press. The whole organization has to be able to do that at every level of the organization, but this caregiver engagement person is really charged with that. And we felt like there was so much leftover, there’s so much that has to happen in HR with compliance and everything that goes on there and getting people to do their paperwork and all of that, that we, we needed the sort of creativity of someone who could really think out of the box and help the recruiter think out of the box.

Andrea Cohen (19:46):

Cause a lot of the things that we used to do to recruit just aren’t working as well anymore. And we want to make sure that, that we did that. And then the other thing that we did was we, we took some caregivers and we’re calling them caregiver engagement specialists, and they’re actually going to be managing the, all of the caregivers in each location. So the recruiter has helped. So we’ve got this director of caregiver engagement who the recruiter will report into. And then we have these three caregiver engagement specialists in Boston who have a caseload of about 40 caregivers that report to them and hold them accountable and support them. And, and so like, so if you think about it the recruiter feels more supported. The recruiter knows that the caregivers are more supported and that just makes it, that just motivates them.

Miriam Allred (20:40):

Yeah. I love that you kind of interjected with that and getting the whole organization behind recruitment, but not as a burden, you know, not as something that you have to do, but something that’s an opportunity and like let’s get behind it as an organization and, you know, see it as our best opportunity and our best course forward. I really like that and awesome ideas with, you know, someone that’s overseeing the recruiters, but then also on the ground level caregivers that are engaging with other caregivers and just checking in, I think all of those additional roles are so important.

Andrea Cohen (21:09):

Yeah, we’re really, it was really funny because this morning when I walked into my office, the three caregiver engagements that were there were sitting there and they were getting trained in management training. Right. And frankly, a number of them had been, you know, managers in the country that they came from, you know, ran backs and did whatever, but, you know, they were so pumped up and I said to them, so like, are you excited about what you’re doing? Tell me about what you’re doing and you know, and they were just so pumped up and it gave me so much energy. So, you know, and it made me feel, you know, so what we’re going to be able to do is in the field, we’ll get these they’ll, they’ll be able to go visit all these caregivers in the field and support them and you know, not, and you know, when there’s issues, they can also talk to them about, you know, you know, what could be happening in their lives, that’s causing this to happen or just training them on PPE or whatever it is they need to train them on, but they have a person, you know what I mean?

Andrea Cohen (22:11):

So it’s going to be a lot easier for us to recruit when we can say to them, you’re going to, you have this ongoing support from this company. So be part of our company.

Miriam Allred (22:21):

And I think it’ll take off some of the pressure of the office staff or the care coordinators that kind of fill that void right now, but designating a role to it. I think it will become more personalized and a lot more beneficial.

Andrea Cohen (22:33):

And I don’t know if you’ve heard this from other companies, but sometimes I feel like it’s hard for the caregivers to understand who they report to. Is it the scheduler? Is it the HR people? Is it the is it the case managers? And like, I think just having a lot of clarity around who they report to in some way, shape or form is really helpful. And it’s something that we had to work on. And I think as you know, in, and you know, in a lot of this, it was all in gear before COVID, but COVID really pushed it because we couldn’t go out there and make the visits and we couldn’t go out there and provide as much as support as we used to. So we, you know, it was a time for us to really look at our infrastructure and figure out a way to make it stronger.

Miriam Allred (23:18):

Fantastic. So let’s kind of shift gears and talk about, what’s not working, I’m going to go, you had said, you know, you’ve changed a lot of things and you’re recruiting in a different way than maybe you were six months ago or a year ago or three years ago. So let’s talk about that. What, what have you stopped? What have you found that just really isn’t working anymore because there’s other agencies out there that may still be doing it, but, you know, from your perspective, what have you tried and seen that really just isn’t worth the time or the money?

Andrea Cohen (23:48):

Yeah, I mean, and I don’t know that any agency would do this anymore now, but you just can’t, you just can’t expect the, as I said before, you just can’t expect the applicants to come to you. So, you know, if you, if, if you’re, if, if your person who’s answering your phone is sending applicants to the website to apply, it’s not going to work. It just lacks the personal touch. You know, you got to get them interested in connected first and then send them to the website to apply and do whatever they need to do online. But I think that’s pretty obvious, but I think I just had to say it anyway, because it’s just important. And I think that, you know, we used to just sort of recruit and now we’re recruiting to meet name known demand, and that’s just, and we used to be, we used to say, we want to recruit, you know, a hundred caregivers a month and then we wouldn’t necessarily have the work for them.

Andrea Cohen (24:44):

So again, we’re talking about intentionality, sacrificing quality over quantity. And, and I think, again, I, I’m not, I, I feel like it’s not like we’re desperate, but we’re all trying our hardest to to, to find good applicants, but we, but we can’t just go out there and, you know, we don’t have the staff time to be able to just go out there and, and, and just sort of do it haphazardly again. That’s where the applicant tracking will help. We also need to do this. We used to do this recruitment technique called instant hires. And that was, that was working. That was about five, three to five years ago where we would tell applicants, if you come in, we can hire you in a day, we’ll do everything. So you’ll, you know, you’ll, you’ll come into the office, we’ll interview, you we’ll screen, you we’ll hire you if it works.

Andrea Cohen (25:44):

And we, we, we don’t do that anymore. And a lot of that had to do with sort of number one, COVID sort of stopped that, but even beyond that sort of the pressure to get everything done and you’re tempted to say yes, and you know, you just don’t want to set yourself up as a company to just take someone who, you know, just, if you could think that it’s, it has a red flag, just don’t do it. You know what I mean? And we’re all tempted now to, to do that. And so we sort of stopped the instant hiring and we stopped the lengthy hiring process. So

Miriam Allred (26:22):

Yeah, those are some of the things that we just don’t do

Andrea Cohen (26:24):

Anymore. I don’t know if you’ve heard from other organizations of things that I, you know, to me, it’s just so much more about intentionality and, you know, we’re doing, I didn’t mention before that we’re doing we’re doing a paperclip or we, we have a digital firm that we’ve hired and some of about just SEO and SEM, but some of it’s just really about recruiting and they’ve helped us. They’ve helped us find keywords that caregivers were searched under when they’re looking for work and home care. And we written job ads and, you know, to try to get people more applicants just from an SEO perspective. And that’s been working well for us too. We saw an uptick in an applicant referrals from that as well. So, whereas I might’ve said to you a couple of years ago, digital, you don’t need to do that. I would say you absolutely need to do that. Now. I think it really helps

Miriam Allred (27:23):

[Inaudible] and contracting it out, you know, most agency do agencies do, but some people try and take that on and it’s, it’s a beast and really technical, so conscious, affecting that workout is so important.

Andrea Cohen (27:34):

Yeah. And they, you know, I mean, they came back to us with like a template and, you know, they just know that part of the world. So absolutely contracting it out is another way to do that.

Miriam Allred (27:47):

Can I kind of put you on the spot?

Miriam Allred (27:53):

I’m going to do it anyway, if you could attribute, you know, maybe success from the ATS versus the PPC, what percentage of applicants are those both producing?

Andrea Cohen (28:06):

I think our applicant tracking system is absolutely bringing in the most. I mean, that’s where our, our biggest our, our that’s where we’re getting on.

Miriam Allred (28:19):

Okay. Cause I think smaller organizations might say, wow, I don’t think we can afford an ATS and you know, a marketing firm. So that’s a good to know that I think ATS is, might be the way to go just depending on your organization and what you’re doing.

Andrea Cohen (28:34):

Yeah. And I think, you know, it might, that might be something that as an industry, we can sort of figure out ways for smaller players to either form consortiums of folks that can actually work together with an applicant tracking system. I know there’s a lot of talk, talk around that in Massachusetts now where, you know, how can we help each other recruit hat? You know, right now it’s mostly on the referral side. But like, I think, you know, when you, when you think about what the future looks like, you’ve gotta be thing, you know, we’ve got to help each other here.

Miriam Allred (29:05):

Definitely. And I love the word that you keep using, which is intentional. You keep saying all recruitment used to just be kind of a shotgun approach. You know, I hope we’re reaching caregivers. I hope we get applicants, but nowadays I think coven has only sped this up is being intentional with your recruiting. You know, we can’t just have a shotgun approach digitally or in traditional methods. It’s gotta be very specific and very intentional.

Andrea Cohen (29:30):

I agree. And it has to also be creative. I mean, I think, you know, that’s the other thing that won’t work anymore is if you don’t like put some creativity into how thinking about it. So, you know, and I get on these, well, I get on these sort of meetings with people from different parts of the country and all of messages. And everybody’s just, you know, what’s that one special thing that you’re going to do. So one of the things that we’re looking into is how can we support caregivers who have to homeschool their kids? Like, you know, and, and we were just trying different things to be able to, you know, will that work? How much will it cost? You know, what, you know, what should we be doing to, to, to get that done? But, you know, really just thinking very you know, put yourself into the shoes of your caregiver population and say, what is it that they need the most right now in this sort of COVID environment.

Andrea Cohen (30:25):

And you know, homeschooling is a big deal for all of us. And you know, the other thing that we’re looking at too, that’s interesting is thinking about, can we hire people full time? Because one of the things that, you know, and this might be, he could answer one of your questions in two directions is, you know, we’re not so sure that hiring people right out of school is these caregivers who don’t really know what they want to do and just hiring them right out of school. We used to go to job fairs all the time, and we don’t do that anymore because a lot of these folks are, you know, fresh out. And a lot of them prior to COVID, instead of wanting to do home health, they didn’t really understand that they wanted a job that had set hours and benefits because that’s what they needed. So maybe as home care companies, that’s what we should be thinking about. Can we, can we hire five full time positions? I mean, it’s a bit of a risk to do that, but I think, you know, we just have to start thinking differently about what it is that folks need to come into home care and people sometimes need a guaranteed 40 hours with guaranteed pay. Can we figure out a way to do that?

Miriam Allred (31:34):

Definitely. I love what you said about putting ourselves in their shoes. I feel like, you know, personally, I have to do that. I have never worked as a caregiver, but I have to think, you know, about their day to day. And like you guys are doing, you know, the homeschooling issue that is so specific that five years ago, we may not have addressed that, but now we have to get that creative and think that specifically and hiring full time employees, you know, that’s not maybe the industry norm, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

Andrea Cohen (32:04):

That’s right. That’s right. And you know, what’s interesting about COVID in terms of innovation right now is, is that you got to just like, think it through and test it and do some sort of a cost analysis. See if you can figure it out, you know, and if you’re in a competitive area and you’re a smaller home care company, you know, what is that one special thing that you can do? How can you build community around your organization that gets people to want to work for you? I mean, and you should be talking about this with, you know, everybody in the organization. And like you said, everybody’s gotta be, be part of it. You know, when, when, when COBIT had pretty strong and a lot of caregivers of ours were out of work who were in senior housing, for example, cause those are the folks that sort of couldn’t work first because senior housing just didn’t let us in. You know, we try to think of creative ways that we can keep them on the payroll. And you know, whether it be like delivering PPE or delivering a meal or doing something that, you know, it’s just like, we gotta take this serious, like really seriously,

Miriam Allred (33:11):

Definitely. Well, we’re kind of running short here on time, but I want to talk a little bit about unemployment. It is top of mind for a lot of providers right now. I just love to hear what you’re hearing. And also, is there anything specific you’re doing to compete or combat that in the recruitment process?

Andrea Cohen (33:29):

Yeah, sure. So, you know, when covered first hit you know, we certainly had, we had people who, whose sought unemployment because they you know, they might’ve been a little bit older or they just health wise, they couldn’t work anymore. And, but we never saw like this huge, this huge hit of unemployment. I like to say that was because, you know, the folks that work for us, you know, went totally out of their way. They just really have this strong relationship with their client and they didn’t want to leave them. And that’s not, you know, that’s not across the board, but we were really happy with how people just wanted, who could continue to work work. But you know, I think things are changing a little bit. I think we’ve seen an uptick. I was on a webinar and with a bunch of people from Massachusetts this morning and people were saying they were seeing an uptick in unemployment claims and we think that might have to do with something, you know, that folks are having a harder time just making their life work, you know, and again, like sort of what we just talked about, which is getting into the lives of these caregivers, just like all of us with homeschooling, how are they going to be working when they are single parents and have to and have to deal with their kids’ schooling?

Andrea Cohen (34:59):

So, you know, there is a chance if there’s a second surge of COVID that we’re going to see more and, you know, we’re in close communication with our unemployment reps and if people are applying for unemployment and we have work available, we’ll call them and offer them work, you know, just to, just to, to try to help that. And our HR people are really trying to, you know, talk through with applicants that, you know, this is a dependable option, but, you know, we’re trying to really take a deeper dive into when these claims come in, you know, how, how, what is the need for unemployment? And do we need to challenge anything that that’s not appropriate? And, you know, what’s hard about that is, is that it takes a lot of time to do that. And you know, we really do trust our, our, our caregivers, but, you know, again, it’s just, I think it’s really important.

Andrea Cohen (36:00):

We, we do reach out to the unemployment office and try to figure out ways that we can be supportive of our employees and still, but we just, it’s just been it’s, it’s hard and I’m expecting it to get a little bit harder. You know, I think it would be an interesting webinars to, to just understand, you know, what everybody in, you know, across the country is doing to work with this. Cause I think we’re going to see it. I think we’re going to see another resurgence of it. But like another piece of that, which we just talked about before is to offer full time positions to people. I mean maybe, maybe it would be more attractive for them. So what’s the most attractive job for them. So if, you know, if, if for, so we can’t combat unemployment claims

Miriam Allred (36:46):

We could spend another 30 minutes going on to culture. You know, just how to build a culture to where, like you said, you haven’t had a lot of people filing unemployment claims, but it’s because they have a connection with their client, but also feel part of a, an organization that cares about them and cares about their needs. And that is so important. So any parting thoughts, I mean, we could just keep going on this conversation, but you have shared so many rich insights it’s things that are top of mind, but also, you know, we kinda got into the nitty gritty, but also stayed high level. I think it was a really good balance, but any other parting thoughts or words before we,

Andrea Cohen (37:25):

Yeah, I mean the two things, number one is that I always say to people, when you run a home care company, you have two jobs. One is to ensure that your clients are taken care of in the best way possible. And the second is to build a professional workforce and empower the people who are doing very difficult work to be their best selves. And, you know, that has been true all along. And that has been something that we built our company on at houseworks. But yeah, I feel like that’s just an imperative now. It’s just like half it’s just what one is as important as another right now. There’s, there’s no there’s not nothing more to say about it than not. And the second is, is just the, have to just put a plug in that, you know, as an industry, you know, both statewide and nationally that, you know, we just have to create campaigns to entice people from other industries and service jobs to want to work in home health. And you know, I think every organ, every organization, small and large home care companies have to do that, but we really need a United front and we really need, you know, policymakers and large employers. And, you know, like if all these people are laid off, why, you know, why are they not, you know, why are they not considering home health? Is it that they just don’t know about it? They have some preconceived notion about it. Like, so I just feel like as an industry, we need to just kind of work on that together.

Miriam Allred (38:50):

Thank you so much for those, those last parting thoughts. Andrea, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your knowledge and expertise. I know providers will be grateful to hear this.

Andrea Cohen (39:01):

Oh, thank you. It was great to speak with you.

Miriam Allred (39:05):

Thanks for listening to this episode of Vision. If you’d like to learn more about Activated Insights and how we help agencies like HouseWorks visit our website homecarepulse.com. We provide more than blogs, eBooks, webinars, and podcasts, and we’d love to meet you and show you what more we can do for your agency. Head over to our website and take a look at our solutions pages, and request a demo to see our platform in action. We’ll see you next time!