Ep:32: 7 Tips to Recruit, Retain & Manage Caregivers: From a Home Care Agency Patient Turned Owner

Miriam Allred (00:06):

Welcome to Vision | The Care Leaders’ Podcast by Activated Insights. I’m Miriam Allred, your host and today I’ll be joined by Brett Ringold, the Vice President of A Long-Term Companion, a family owned independent agency out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Brett, welcome to the show!

Brett Ringold (00:23):

Thank you so much, Miriam. I am such a huge fan of yours and the Vision podcast, and it is such an honor to be here today as your guest. So thank you!

Miriam Allred (00:32):

Oh, I’m so excited. Like you said, you’re a regular listener and it’s time that we really have you share your own voice on the show. So I’ve been really anxious and looking forward to this conversation. So before we dive into the topic todayI’d love to have you introduce yourself, tell us about, you know, how and why you landed in home care. Your background is really unique. So tell our listeners a little bit about your background.

Brett Ringold (00:56):

Of course. So I have been in the home care industry now as an agency operator for over a decade, but my first experience with home care actually started a few years before that as a patient of a local home care provider. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease when I was 12 years old. And fortunately I’ve been in remission for about 15 years now, but definitely had some pretty challenging years throughout middle school, high school and early college. During one particularly bad flare up my family. And I reached out to a local home care provider who had a really great reputation and we engaged services with them for a short period of time. And this was many, many years ago, but there’s still quite a few things that really stand very clear in my mind. I remember that we basically had somebody new in our house every day.

Brett Ringold (01:47):

Everybody was very competent and really professional, but nobody really seemed to be all that happy. You know, there really there wasn’t a lot of conversation. Really smile was very rare to come by and, you know, as a young adult going through a challenging time, just the simple gestures like that would have made such a huge difference. My mother, Michelle Kilstein who went on to found a long-term companion, she’s always been really involved with my care and, you know, she called the office to ask a question or to find out about the schedule and it was just always really tough to get an answer and I wouldn’t call it a horrible experience, but it wasn’t a, a very positive experience. And it definitely did like leave a really big imprint and had a really huge effect on, on just shaping the kind of agency that we operate today.

Miriam Allred (02:40):

And that experience led your mom to founding A Long Term Companion, right?

Brett Ringold (02:45):

It did. It did. I don’t think that she had like an aha moment where she knew right then and there that you know, this is what my passion is, but she’s been a caregiver for her whole life basically. And you know, she really, after a few years after that experience she just really recognized that there was a better way and wanted to serve families in our, in our local community.

Miriam Allred (03:09):

Oh, I love, I love hearing those stories, how people kind of make it and come to this industry and start their agencies and you’ve experienced it firsthand, which is a great segue into today’s topic. We’re going to talk about some of your top tips to recruit, retain, and manage caregivers from the perspective of, you know, the owner of an agency. So let’s dive into these tips. We’ve got a lot to cover, but I’m really excited to really dive into these topics. So if you’re ready, let’s, let’s do it. Absolutely. So this first tip—why don’t you introduce the tip and then we’ll kind of work through a dialogue around the tip.

Brett Ringold (03:44):

Perfect. So this first tip is really understanding that you’re serving two clients every day, your clients who pay for your services and your caregivers, and, you know, this has just been so instrumental in our agency’s success. It’s really something that, that we’re all doing as operators, whether or not you really recognize it. And you know, most savvy operators really understand that, you know, every day we’re working for our caregivers, it’s not the other way around. And, you know, there are just a lot of agencies that treat that relationship with their caregivers as purely transactional, but that is just really, really wrong. And it’s certainly no way to operate as a home care provider.

Miriam Allred (04:27):

Yeah. Like we all know home care for our clients. It really is a 24/7 business. And we need to make sure we have that mindset on the caregiver side. You know, we are a 24/7, you know, business for the caregivers as well. What are some ways that you have that mentality or use that kind of mindset towards your caregivers kind of being available 24/7 for them as well?

Brett Ringold (04:50):

That is so true. Miriam home care is it’s 24/7, 365. Your caregivers, they really, they need to know that they’re supported at all times. You know, just like your paying clients. They don’t care if it’s a night, a weekend, a holiday, if your clients need services, now they’re not going to wait until it’s convenient for you as a provider to help them. So as your caregiver, if it is the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday, or if it’s the middle of the night on a Friday, if, if they need help from their office, they’re not going to be able to wait until the next business day to receive that support. So, one thing that we’ve done for a few years now at a long-term companion is we have a 24/7 caregiver hotline. And this has just been, it’s been huge in just allowing our caregivers to know that they’re always supported.

Brett Ringold (05:40):

And what happened to Miriam is a caregiver dials, one number, and anywhere from two to seven members of the admin team’s phone will ring all at the same time. And that’s really depending on the time it is or what day it is. But if you have a caregiver who’s difficulty with a client, or if their client’s refusing part of the care plan, they’re always going to be able to reach somebody who actually knows them and knows their client and not just the third-party answering service, which has been just, you know, it’s just been so huge for us

Miriam Allred (06:13):

Which is a lot for your admin team, but it’s so important for the caregivers to, to know that they can turn to someone at any time of day or night. And you know, that that’s a lot to ask of your admin team, but I’m sure just retaining your caregivers and having that Avenue for them has been so important. Any specific experiences you could share, you know, around using that hotline.

Brett Ringold (06:38):

So something that comes to mind is, is very early. When we first employed the hotline, you know, beforehand, we would all be accessible by herself phones and we would have different rotations, but it was my mother who was on, I was on our admin team. And sometimes, you know, if we’re doing something else, if we’re doing an orientation or onboarding you might not be easily accessible. Very shortly after we, we employed this 24/7 hotline really, sadly, we had one of our clients who passed away and one of our caregivers who was working with this client, you know, she dialed the hotline and she got somebody on the third ring or on the fourth ring. And, you know, generally if she had to call somebody and they were on the phone, then she’d call somebody else. It was really very quick in the process that we realized, wow, we should have really done this a long time ago. So that it’s really just so simple to dial one number and you’re going to absolutely reach somebody anytime.

Miriam Allred (07:39):

Yeah. Yeah. That’s great to hear. I, yeah, for the agencies listening, I think this is a great option and something you should definitely consider because there’s experiences times like that when the caregiver really needs to talk to someone firsthand live and in person in that moment. And if you don’t have that in place, you know, they may feel lost or feel inadequate and that’ll affect them, you know, long-term and so it’s important that those things are addressed in the moment. Absolutely. Well, on that, on that line of thought, you know, let’s talk about your office team. Tell me about the, the second tip that you have that revolves around, you know, your admin team.

Brett Ringold (08:16):

Sure. So tip number two is get your office team to feel like a family. And this is so important. You know, you look at some organizations like a Netflix comes to mind. Their culture is that they look at their employees as though they are highly successful members of a professional sports team, but in a business that’s as personal as home care. We definitely prefer to look at our employees as members of the ALTC family. And, you know, we were, we were talking about earlier that you can’t have happy clients without having happy caregivers, and you’re not going to have either without having a happy admin team. You know, as, as administrators, our jobs, our days can be pretty challenging at times. And we really do lean on one another to be successful. And you’re just never going to be able to be successful unless your admin team really, they like working with each other and they can rely on one another. And, you know, we spend so much time, you know, we spend a third of our day at work, but in home care, it’s really usually a lot more than that. So really embracing that family culture and, you know, employing different strategies where this can be cultivated is just so huge from an operator’s perspective.

Miriam Allred (09:33):

Yeah. Let’s talk about some of those ways, you know, what are you guys doing to build that or foster that family relationship? Do you have some team building activities or some weekly, you know, things that you do? What, what are what’s working for you guys?

Brett Ringold (09:45):

That’s a great question. And there’s actually a few activities that we have started fairly recently, you know, especially since we all went remote in very early days of COVID. One thing that we started recently is we have our coffee tracks where during certain weeks, every quarter, every member of our admin team is going to call another member of the admin team. It’s a 15 or 30 minute call. Sometimes they last upwards of an hour. On these calls, you’re allowed to talk about anything except for work. And you know, what we did is we Googled and we printed out a list of these great conversation starters that are just a starting point. You know, we always go way off topic, but you get to really ask questions to one another and really get to know each other on a more personal level.

Brett Ringold (10:37):

You know, I can’t speak for everybody in the industry obviously, but I know that I really missed those interactions that come when you’re working together in the office. And you know, back in the day you used to call them water cooler moments. And now it’s really time spent, you know, around the coffee machine waiting for a cup of coffee. And so we’ve done these virtual coffee chats, which have just really encouraged this great dialogue. And, you know, you almost feel like you’re back into the office. Another activity that we do is called fun Friday. And so every day at three o’clock, we have our daily admin team calls, but on Fun Friday, we dial in 15 to 30 minutes early and we do a different team building activity. One of these activities is called two truths and a lie. So everyone has to share these three things about themselves and two are true. And one is that lie and the rest of the team has to really figure out, okay, which things are real and which one is the fib. And you know, early on, you could definitely argue that time spent working, not on work might not be super productive, but I would definitely argue that anything that you do, like this goes such a long way in creating, you know, just that family like atmosphere here that we’re all looking for.

Miriam Allred (12:00):

Yeah, absolutely love those ideas. And I love what you said at that last part. You know, it may feel unnecessary or like there’s more important things to do, but really prioritizing that team building time is invaluable and creates longterm success, you know, for the business. So it’s just making it a priority is so important. Talk to me a little bit about finding the right admin team, you know, are a lot of your staff, have they been caregivers or have they been with your agency and have worked their way up, or how do you find kind of the right fit for your office team?

Brett Ringold (12:35):

So that’s another great question. Some of our administrators have been caregivers themselves and have worked their way up, which is awesome. Everybody else on our admin team in one way or another has been a caregiver, usually with a family member not necessarily working professionally, but we really have a team that is, that is so strong. It’s a small team, but we’re really, really strong. And everybody, you know, in-home care whether you’re working as a professional caregiver directly with the client, or you are an administrator who’s working really hard to support your caregivers. You have to really have that heart, you know, it can’t just be another job, another paycheck. You have to really love what you do and love helping others. So we have been really just so fortunate to have some of our admin team actually be caregivers themselves, and then others who joined our team, but really did come from that background and had that heart.

Miriam Allred (13:35):

Yeah. That’s I love how you said that the heart, you know, last week I was talking with Barbara Karnes and it really takes the right people to work in this industry and, you know, with the, the turnover crisis and the lack of caregivers, it’s, it’s intimidating and it’s hard to find those people, but they do exist people that are compassionate and kind and caring and have that heart that you mentioned, they exist. And we just have to find them and bring them into this industry and make them feel like a part of a family, a part of a team and, you know, foster that environment where they want to stay. And it’s hard, but it’s doable.

Brett Ringold (14:11):

Absolutely very difficult, but very doable. I wish there were more people like that in this world, but there’s definitely a lot of us. So we’re in good hands. We’re in good hands.

Miriam Allred (14:21):

Definitely. Well, let’s dive into the third tip. This is a big one, but really top of mind for a lot of providers. So tell me what this third tip is.

Brett Ringold (14:29):

Yes, this is absolutely top of mind. It is all about scheduling. You know, you really have to master scheduling. It is very difficult, but it’s doable. And, you know, because scheduling is such a critical part of every agency success. We really have to take the time to, to look at it thoughtfully. And at our agency, we actually look at scheduling is three parts. You have your pre scheduling, your scheduling and your rescheduling. If, if you look at 25 different agencies, all 25 are probably doing their different scheduling, you know, in different ways, different techniques, but it’s really important to be very thoughtful in how you schedule because it’s all about finding that perfect match for your clients and your caregivers.

Miriam Allred (15:17):

Yeah. And there’s a couple of specific things that you’ve shared with me that you all do. Talk to me about kind of the ratio, the caregiver to client ratio that you have, and also staffing those invisible shifts. I really think those are important. So talk to me about both of those concepts.

Brett Ringold (15:31):

Sure. So for our agency, we always try to maintain a consistent ratio of caregivers, the clients for us, again, every agency is different, but for us, that ratio is usually around two to 2.2, five caregivers to active clients. And that works for us because many of the clients that we’re serving, they’re receiving eight, 12, 24 hours a day. So if you’re an agency who is providing shorter shifts of care, maybe one or four hours of care, that ratio is probably going to be closer to one-to-one or even heavier in favor of clients to caregivers. But whatever that ratio is, it’s just really important to find it for your agency and maintain it because, you know, like you said, you always have to staff for your clients, but you do have to staff those invisible shifts and they’re not, you know, shifts for actually invisible clients in case anyone’s asking.

Brett Ringold (16:32):

What I mean by that is if your agency is proactive you know, that there are going to be scheduled changes. There are going to be new clients that you’re going to have to staff for. And so you’re going to not only have to really master scheduling for your current clients, but you have to anticipate these changes and you really have to understand the availability of your caregivers on your roster at a long-term companion. We have, what’s called our big board, and it’s a, it’s a little bit of a funny name, but it’s actually very serious for us. We’ve been partnered with ClearCare for about eight years now as our agencies home care platform. And, you know, we love ClearCare. And within ClearCare we have three clients that we named available for daytime available for overnight and available for living. And as every operator knows, you know, our caregivers availability is regularly changing. So what we do at our agency is twice a week, we ask our caregivers to send us their current availability, and we add that availability to the big board clients. And this really saves so much time for our admin team when it comes to staff and call outs or scheduling proactively for a new client, or it even helps when you could say, okay, Hey, I know that now I really have to put forth an emphasis and recruiting new caregivers who have maybe daytime or overnight or live in availability.

Miriam Allred (18:01):

Yeah. Wow. It is such a big job. The scheduling that is, would you say that’s maybe your number one headache in your job as kind of just overseeing scheduling

Brett Ringold (18:12):

It is because, you know, again, it’s always very fluid. You do an excellent job, you have the perfect schedule set and then something happens, inevitably, somebody is not feeling well or they need to take off, or you have that new client, which is always a great thing, but all of a sudden this schedule and your caregiver’s availability, which is all set in stone, we like to say that it’s set in jello because you know, that it’s always changing.

Miriam Allred (18:37):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Wanted to hit on a couple more things on this topic. Overtime pay a lot of agencies, you know, don’t want to pay overtime or have kind of this stigma around it, but what’s your opinion on paying overtime?

Brett Ringold (18:54):

So, and that’s really understandable, Miriam, you know, I know most operators and probably most accountants will say Nope, limit limit over time. You do not want to have that increased payroll expense, but I can tell you personally that for any agency that you might be really having trouble retaining your amazing caregivers you might really want to start thinking really seriously about overtime. It’s definitely going to increase your payroll expense in the short term. But what it’s going to do is it’s going to result in lower turnover because your caregivers love overtime. So you’re going to spend a little bit extra in payroll, but you’re going to have to allocate less resources in terms of time and financial resources into constantly recruiting and retaining new caregivers. Again, we will gladly pay over time, but we offer health insurance benefits to our full-time caregivers because we just want our caregivers to be happy. And when you have happy caregivers, you have happy clients.

Miriam Allred (19:58):

I love what you said about increasing payroll in the short term, but cutting the cost of recruiting new caregivers in the long-term, which we all know that’s a big expense. Recruiting is not cheap. And so the more we can do to re retain in the short term, the better for the longterm. So love, love those points. This is kind of a branch off of scheduling, but talk to me about, you know, you schedule practice sessions with new caregivers and the client. You also want to fill in the caregiver on everything there is to know about the client before they go into the home. Talk to me about the importance of those two items.

Brett Ringold (20:33):

Absolutely. I’d be very happy to because they might not come, you know, intuitively to most non operators, but they have been so important to our agency’s success at A Long Term Companion. And it’s not possible to schedule these practice shifts, these training shifts, and if it is possible, it’s usually not an easy thing to do. But what it does is it really helps set up your caregivers to do a very successful job, right from their first shift with a client. So, you know, as I said, we, we schedule a lot of clients who are receiving around the clock care with two 12 hour shifts. And at the very least what we’ll do is we will ask our new caregiver to the team to come in a few hours early, spend some time with a caregiver. Who’s, who’s really familiar with that client and their needs.

Brett Ringold (21:25):

And this way, you know, that your caregiver has gone over your client’s care plan with a member of your wellness team. But they’re also going to get to spend some hands on time with a caregiver who is really familiar with that client’s needs and routine. And again, it’s all about setting up your new caregivers for success. If your caregiver isn’t necessarily relieving somebody, you could ask her to go in the day before, or you could even ask your client’s primary caregiver to come in for a couple hours during that new caregivers first shift. And just to spend that time, you know, working together with a new client, and then you, you mentioned care plans, which that is, you know, it’s a cardinal rule in home care that you have to share everything that you know about your clients and their home environment with your caregivers.

Brett Ringold (22:16):

If you don’t do this, you’re just asking for problems. Right. we spend a lot of time at orientation and onboarding, getting to know where newest caregivers and you do hear stories about other agencies. And there are, there are just so many amazing agencies out there, but every now and then you’ll hear a story about an agency that is just maybe less than truthful to their caregivers. You know, and they might be in a bind. They want to just staff a shift, or they have a new client that they’re working on the schedule for. But if you’re really not being fully transparent and reviewing the care plan telling everything about that client’s home environment, it’s not just not setting your caregiver up for success, but you’re really putting that client and caregiver at risk. And, you know, we talked about retention. You know, when you’re talking about the quickest way to have a very low retention rate, it’s not being truthful with your caregivers.

Miriam Allred (23:15):

Yeah. I’m so glad we hit on these two things. Kind of like with, you know, the activities for the office staff, it may feel like one extra thing, but it’s making these types of things, a priority, you know, scheduling those practice sessions or reviewing the care plan in depth with the caregiver. Like you said, we want to set them up for success and build their confidence from day one, rather than, rather than just kind of throwing them in or sending them out on a shift that they’re not prepared for. And it’s, it’s small and simple things you said most agencies are hopefully and doing it, but it’s just really fine tuning this process and prioritizing these things that will go a long way.

Brett Ringold (23:53):

Oh my gosh. Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Miriam Allred (23:55):

Yeah. Well, let’s, let’s kind of move on here to tip number four—kind of goes with everything that we’re talking about, but what’s yeah, what’s the fourth tip?

Brett Ringold (24:05):

So the fourth tip is measure caregiver satisfaction. And you know, when I was thinking of this tip, I was thinking of this great book that’s called measure what matters. It’s not about caregiver satisfaction. It’s actually about okay, ours, but it really does make for a really nice read and a great tip for home care agency operators. You know the, the theme of today, it has to be, you can’t have happy clients without having happy caregivers. And one way to really increase your caregiver satisfaction is just to listen to your caregivers, right? You have to know that everybody’s different and everybody has a different communication preference and way that they like to communicate with their office support staff. So we have some caregivers that love the talk on the phone. We have others that they prefer to text, especially nowadays, a lot of people are texters.

Brett Ringold (25:00):

So you can’t just force your communication preferences on your caregivers. You really have to reach your caregivers, how they like to communicate. And then, you know, once you figure out this proper method, you have to be really consistent and gathering ongoing feedback from them. One of the, the absolute best decisions that we made as operators in the last few years was partnering with Activated Insights and their client and caregiver satisfaction surveys. We used to before doing that for many, many years, we’d mail out our own internal surveys. And, you know, Miriam, if we would mail out a hundred surveys, we’d be lucky to get five back in the mail. And we were definitely making a couple mistakes, right? We were mailing surveys instead of talking on the phone or texting, which is how our caregivers like the communicate. And then we were also doing this on our own, you know, when many years earlier, we should have just partnered with a professional third party who really specializes in capturing this real feedback. So we just, we still do our own internal surveys as well, because we just want to, you know, especially after orientation and we want to really maintain that high level of satisfaction, but every month we’re looking forward to receiving our monthly satisfaction surveys from Activated Insights. And we love seeing the positives, but, you know, especially me, I’m a stickler. I like looking at any constructive criticism and really finding out, okay, this is an area that we have to really work on and improve as an agency.

Miriam Allred (26:36):

Yeah. I love what you said about being consistent and the frequency of this communication. You know, if there’s that we learned, we’ve learned over the last year through COVID is that things are changing on a dime and caregivers preferences and their communication and what they want, what they need is changing all the time. And so the, I think the real key here in gathering feedback from your caregivers is just that consistency in that frequency checking in with them often, you know, I don’t think you could communicate or check in too many times, you know, they want to feel that support. They want to feel like they’re part of a team part of the family and just being consistent and getting that feedback is so important.

Brett Ringold (27:15):

Absolutely. A hundred percent. I couldn’t agree anymore.

Miriam Allred (27:19):

Yeah. Well, I, there’s not much more to say on this or anything else that you want to add on, on just the satisfaction piece?

Brett Ringold (27:27):

I guess one other thing to add is, is just like our admin team. We want on our admin team to feel like a family. You definitely want your caregivers to know that they’re supported and loved and feel like a family as well. And that’s something that, you know, with that communication with that, you know, really taking a personal interest on a personal level, you’re going to be able to really achieve that. And it’s been something that for us, it’s not just theoretical, you know, I am most proud of the fact that about 30% of our team has been with us for five years or more. And another 20% has been with us for three to five years. So, you know, we really put a lot of time and effort into making our caregivers feel satisfied and knowing that they are appreciated. And, you know, if you put forth that extra effort, it’s really going to go a very long way.

Miriam Allred (28:21):

Clearly you’re doing something right. Those retention numbers are incredible. And I think other agencies will be envious, but it just shows that that communication and, you know, tracking that satisfaction, it really goes a long way in retaining your caregivers.

Brett Ringold (28:35):

Absolutely!

Miriam Allred (28:37):

Let’s, let’s jump into tip five and six here. We’re going to kind of shift gears. You know, we’d been talking about retention, but hiring, you know, it’s, it’s a tough thing right now. It’s top of mine, but it’s also tough. So talk to me about this tip number five you know, reducing your time to hire.

Brett Ringold (28:53):

So, so that’s the tip reducing your time to hire. And it has to be top of mind for every operator because in these last 12 months, just everything’s changed in regards to recruiting and onboarding your new caregivers. And you really have to know that your relationship with your caregiver, it doesn’t start at orientation. It doesn’t start their first day working with a client. It starts from that first communication, right? It’s you could have a job posting on indeed that a caregiver responds to, or you could have a caregiver, an applicant who’s calling your agency because they were referred by a family or friends, but there are so many critical touch points that you have, but you have to do it really efficiently. Right? And we have a very thorough process at all, ever cut corners. We’re always going to do our initial phone screening.

Brett Ringold (29:48):

We’re always going to have at least one round of face-to-face interviews with different members of cross-disciplines of our admin team, but you have to be really efficient in doing so. And especially over this past year, we’ve really fine tuned our process. And even though we are thorough and there’s a lot of steps. If you have an applicant that comes prepared, they have a current PPD, their professional and personal references are very easily accessible. We could actually do our whole process, our screening process in less than a week. And one thing that we are absolutely sure of is if it’s a week, if it’s two weeks, it really depends on that applicant, but we have to be in constant contact. You know, we have to be texting, we have to be emailing. We have to do a phone calls throughout the whole process, because if you’re not, there are just so many options and your caregiver is going to not really be interested for a very long time. And they’re going to start applying to other agencies.

Miriam Allred (30:48):

Absolutely. Just like our clients have so many options as to which agency to choose the caregivers have that same boat. You know, there’s a lot of agencies are stiff competition. And so you’ve just got to really reduce that time to hire and get people onboarded as quickly as possible. And you don’t want to jeopardize quality, but you want to be thorough and work quickly, you know, to capitalize on the opportunities and the people that are out there.

Brett Ringold (31:10):

Absolutely couldn’t have said it better.

Miriam Allred (31:12):

Yeah. Let’s, let’s talk about the onboarding process. I’m jumping the gun here, but tip number six, tell me what it is.

Brett Ringold (31:19):

Sure. So the onboarding process, you have to refine it. You have to be constantly willing to tweak it and refine your onboarding process to make that experience just really excellent from the get-go, right. Like you said, Miriam, your caregivers have as many options as your clients do, and it’s very likely that they are applying to and onboarding with a number of agencies in a short period of time. And even if they’re not actively applying with other agencies, they’ve definitely worked with other providers and facilities before joining your team. So you really have to treat onboarding process and orientation as a way to really establish your agency’s unique way of doing things. You know, you can’t just review your agency’s policies and procedures like everybody else, because this is going to be lost. You really have to explain, okay, this is our policy. This was the mindset. This was the thought process that led us to this policy. And it’s really just, you know, you don’t want to just explain what the policy is, but you have to look at the why and the how behind each policy, and this just really helps reinforce your agency’s policies and procedures since we all operate so differently. Although we’re all providing the same service, you really want your caregivers to truly your unique way of operating as an agency.

Miriam Allred (32:42):

Yeah, absolutely. And I I’m sure most orientation onboarding looks a little bit differently through COVID, but are you guys doing your onboarding and orientation in person now or zoom, or do you kind of give people the option now or what does that look like?

Brett Ringold (32:56):

So that’s a great question. We are still doing our onboarding and orientation process remotely, but we really can’t wait until we’re able to do this again in person. For us, when we were in person, our ideal orientation class was about six to 10 applicants, six to 10 new caregivers, because when you have a group of that size, you really are able to encourage a lot of great dialogue, some great engagement that may be a larger group or even a smaller group. You’re not really going to achieve that. Now that we’ve gone remotely, our orientations tend to be a little larger in size. And that’s just because of, you know, a one when you’re doing an orientation on zoom, the nature of the remote orientation allows you to facilitate this. But also because you know, like so many other agencies, we are experiencing a slightly higher than historical turnover rate in those first 30 and 90 days. So you just have to be adaptable with orientation and onboarding, and it’s one of the, the million things as a provider that you really have to be flexible with and willing to always improve and evolve.

Miriam Allred (34:04):

Yeah, absolutely. I know this could be a separate episode, but talk to me just briefly about the importance of ongoing training. You know, caregivers are looking for education and experience and what, what role has ongoing training that suited to your caregivers played in, you know, setting them up for success early on.

Brett Ringold (34:24):

So that would be an excellent episode because trainings are just so important, you know, in our trainings, like everything else they’ve just evolved over the years. We used to do all of our trainings in person in our office and it definitely hasn’t been possible this past year, but we actually, a few years ago made the transition to start introducing some on-demand mobile trainings. When we partnered with a professional third party training platform and our caregivers, they absolutely love just the, the robust content and the convenience of these mobile trainings. One thing that we do, and we were talking about feedback and ongoing feedback, we survey all of our newest caregivers immediately after orientation, and we want to find out, okay, what did you love about the onboarding process? What was maybe a little bit better that we could do for our orientation and one aspect of our orientation and onboarding that we constantly receive very high marks on is our training. And we actually rank in the 97 percentile nationally among all Activated Insights clients over the last year in that category of caregiver satisfaction regarding training received because of, you know, still we’d love to be doing them in person, but these mobile trainings are so excellent. And if you’re an agency operator that is maybe on the fence, or you’re still doing all of your trainings, in-house, I would definitely highly recommend considering these mobile trainings for your character.

Miriam Allred (36:00):

Just like we talked about communication preference and style training kind of fits into that same boat of, you know, you’ve got to find what works for your caregivers and for some, it could be in person for some, it could be mobile online training. I think obviously it puts more pressure on the agency to provide all those options, but if it’s what’s gonna retain and work for that caregiver, you know, having the options is always a good idea.

Brett Ringold (36:24):

That’s a great point. You know, even well after we introduced these mobile trainings, we have some new caregivers that might not be tremendously tech savvy. So we still absolutely are able to facilitate every training and person, you know, up until recently when COVID entered our lives. But you have to be willing to meet your caregivers where they’re comfortable and that is such an amazing point.

Miriam Allred (36:47):

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. One more tip, tip number seven. What is it, Brett?

Brett Ringold (36:52):

All right. So tip number seven is bringing experts designed to support your caregivers. And I am just really glad that we’re ending on this topic because it is so important to the success of any organization. You know, as agency operators, we all wear a lot of hats, but just because you’re really good at doing a number of different things, it doesn’t make you an expert in everything or really anything maybe. So you really have to bring in experts to all areas of your organization so that your caregivers really know that they are always supported in every way possible.

Miriam Allred (37:29):

What are some of the specific roles or experts that you have in place there at your agency?

Brett Ringold (37:34):

So that’s a, a really great question. A few years ago, we made the decision to pursue accreditation with the joint commission and their home care program. And we knew that just to, you know, to go through this undertaking, we had to bring in an expert. That expert happened to be my brother. We had been recruiting my brother, Matt for years and years and years. And for a long time, he was, he was the smart one in the family. He knew to stay out of the family business for awhile. But Matt’s an attorney. He has a background in law and corporate banking and just his experience is just so rich and policy and establishing processes. So when we decided to pursue accreditation, we really amped up in pestering, Matt and unhappy that he joined us about three years ago. And it’s really because of his expertise and just spearheading the whole process that we were able to achieve accreditation from the joint commission two years ago.

Brett Ringold (38:32):

And then, you know, fast forward more recently in may we recruited an absolutely amazing full-time registered nurse who before joining our team, she was actually the charge nurse in the COVID positive unit in a facility. And in, in, you know, a really short time, she’s now our wellness supervisor. She is just such an amazing nurse and an amazing person, but her experience so early on working with COVID positive patients, it just, it can’t be understated when it comes to her ability to really reduce the anxiety of our caregivers, you know, very early on in COVID, but still to this day, she is just such an amazing support system for our caregivers. And then really shortly thereafter in June, our onboarding process and our orientation process had just become so much more complex, right? We were doing everything remotely. We had to partner with a number of new vendors to facilitate our process.

Brett Ringold (39:34):

So we recruited a full-time human resources supervisor to help improve and spearhead this new process. Before joining our team, she had actually assisted in recruiting and onboarding international candidates for a fortune 500 company. And she’s just another amazing person, an amazing addition to our team. You know, and before that, we already had the most amazing administrator straighter the most amazing client relations team and just admin team in the world. But by really, especially in these times of COVID where there are just so many questions, so many unknowns these new experts have really just helped take us to the next level as an organization.

Miriam Allred (40:20):

Oh yeah. I love, I’m glad we ended on this point because it’s so important. Like you just said, there are so many questions and unknowns that any additional support we can provide to our caregivers is worthwhile and getting the right people in the right seats. You know, these people that you’ve been able to recruit sound incredible and they have relevant experience. And, you know, they’ve come to your agency and are ready to help the caregivers with any questions or things that they need. And it’s one of those priorities, you know, we’ve talked a little bit about prioritizing these types of things and finding these right people to support your caregivers should be top of mind and a priority for every agency.

Brett Ringold (40:59):

Always, you really can never stop. Every decision you make has to be with your caregivers in mind, and just always improving your organization and supporting those, you know, again, through your clients, to your caregivers or your clients, you always have to support your, your clients who pay for your services, but every decision you make has to be with that in mind.

Miriam Allred (41:19):

Absolutely. Well, Brett, thank you so much for sharing all of this great information for being an avid listener of vision and being a supportive of the podcast and Activated Insights. We just cannot thank you enough for your voice and all that you’re doing to support this industry. So thank you so much for joining me on the show today!

Brett Ringold (41:38):

Miriam, it has been truly my pleasure. Thank you and thank you for everything you do with the Vision podcast and just everything else at Activated Insights.

Miriam Allred (41:47):

Thanks for listening to this episode of Vision, to learn more about your business and how you can improve caregiver retention. I’d like to invite you to participate in the 2021 Home Care Benchmarking Study. The Study is open now through March 31st, visit benchmarking.homecarepulse.com to participate. Thanks again, and we’ll see you next time!