Demand for home health care and home care services has rapidly increased in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down. Much of this demand can be attributed to the growth of our aging population (U.S. citizens over the age of 65), projected to double in the next 20 years and reach 88 million by 2050.
Despite this increasing demand, home health care and home care agencies face many challenges when it comes to CNA and caregiver hiring, as few job seekers are interested in home health care and home care careers. On the home care side, for example, 65 percent of caregivers are always looking for a better job, while 97 percent would be open to new job opportunities.
Given the challenges of CNA and caregiver hiring, what can your agency do to attract qualified talent for your open roles? Below, we’ve outlined several ways the hiring landscape has changed in the past decade, and how you can adapt your recruitment and hiring strategy based on these changes.
1. Job seekers compare career growth opportunities
When it comes to CNA and caregiver hiring – or hiring for any role at your agency – now more than ever, job seekers are looking for far more than simply an exchange of time for money. Rather, top job seekers look for employers that can offer long-term career growth opportunities. Since most job applications have transitioned from paper to online in the past decade, job seekers have the flexibility to compare potential roles and determine which employers offer career paths that align with their long-term goals – all before applying.
Unfortunately, many prospective job applicants from both inside and outside the healthcare space have the misconception that working as a CNA or caregiver offers limited career growth.
Your team might offer career progression from certified nursing assistant to director of nursing for motivated employees who complete required certifications. Or on the administrative side, the career path might range from administrative assistant to office manager.
On your career site, highlight all possible career paths for CNAs, caregivers and any other relevant roles at your agency. You can do so by including a visual of each step along the way or by highlighting employee success stories about employees who have risen through the ranks at your agency. Defined career paths can excite prospective employees who are researching jobs online about the career opportunities beyond entry-level positions.
2. Employee reviews impact your agency’s hiring success
Similar to researching career paths, today’s job seekers also take employee reviews into consideration before applying to open roles or accepting job offers. In the past 10 years, employee review sites like Glassdoor, as well as social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, have grown exponentially. Now, employee reviews can make or break a job seeker’s likelihood of applying to your open CNA, caregiver and other open roles.
A recent study found that more than half (55 percent) of job seekers would abandon a job application if they read negative employee reviews online. To ensure employee reviews are helping rather than harming the success of your CNA and caregiver hiring, your team can take several proactive steps. First, you should monitor all reviews on a regular basis. You should also respond to feedback when possible – whether the feedback is positive or negative – and outline steps to address the feedback. This will show employees and prospective applicants who come across your reviews that employee feedback is valued and acted upon.
3. HR technology boosts new hire productivity and engagement
Each time your team has an open CNA, caregiver or other role, your overall productivity takes a hit. This decreased productivity continues as new hires get up to speed in their new roles. But fortunately for your team, HR technology has evolved significantly in the past decade, enabling you to make the transition from candidate to employee seamless.
With the right hiring and HR partner, your agency can leverage candidate information to automatically create employee profiles with everything you need to set new hires up for success from an administrative standpoint.
If your team waits until new hires arrive for orientation to share pre-boarding documents, you’ll only slow down each new employee’s time to productivity. Instead, once an offer letter is signed, you can save time and keep new hires engaged by sharing pre-boarding documents digitally – before the orientation date.
Preboarding tasks that can be completed digitally before the first day include: filling out direct deposit information for automated payroll, completing tax forms, filling out benefits paperwork and signing the employee handbook. With these tasks completed, you can have a more efficient orientation process and help your new CNA And caregiver hires get to work right away.
In addition to kicking off preboarding sooner rather than later, the right hiring and HR partner can streamline employee scheduling at your agency. In 2019, Hireology launched partnerships with ClearCare and AxisCare to simplify employee scheduling at your agency.
ClearCare data found that scheduling software can help decrease caregiver scheduling time by up to 80 percent. In addition to saving agency time and helping you avoid errors, streamlined scheduling can boost overall employee satisfaction and engagement.
Many caregivers rely on regular shifts as their primary source of income. If your CNAs or caregivers end up waiting around for shifts to manually get scheduled – and miss out on potential shifts as a result of the long process – they might get frustrated and look for job opportunities outside your agency. But more efficient scheduling enables your employees to stay engaged and manage their own time – and accept shifts as soon as they’re available.
With the right strategy in place for CNA and caregiver hiring, you can attract qualified, motivated job seekers who might have otherwise considered roles in other industries.
This year, Hireology is celebrating 10 years of helping businesses across industries attract and hire their best teams. For additional information on how you can attract qualified employees for roles across your home health care or home care agency, get a free consultation today.
