On today’s episode of A Drink with “The Hurricane”, Steve discusses not being able to staff cases and how to overcome it.
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Video Transcription:
Hi folks. Steve, The Hurricane here. And for today’s episode of A Drink with The Hurricane we’re going to talk about not being able to staff cases and how to overcome it.
So in that dramatization, and I love the dramatizations, I hope you do too. These are real situations that people can relate to and they face in their offices everyday. Here you have a marketing representative who keeps bringing you on business and she keeps trying to get it staffed and it just can’t be staffed, can’t be staffed, can’t be staffed.
There are several possible solutions here, but the first thing I want to say to you is if you have a marketing representative who’s bringing on business, signing up new clients, getting referrals and you’re not able to staff it there is nothing that will take the wind out of the sails of your marketing representative like not being able to staff their cases. When you have a marketing representative who’s working hard, who’s productive, who’s making things happen and you’re not able to fulfill what they’re doing, I guarantee that marketing representative is on borrowed time. They’re looking for another job. They’re looking for something else. They’re frustrated and they’re not going to be with you much longer, because there’s nothing that just… You want to deflate somebody? Have them do work and then not let them get the benefit from their work.
So this is something that we can’t have happen. Now, what are some of the challenges that we’re facing? Now first off, I understand the caregiver recruitment crisis. This is a challenge that a lot of agencies face, but this is where we have to get an understanding of recruiting is a full-time thing. This isn’t something that we just do every once in a while and this isn’t something that we do part-time. If you have a full-time marketer, you have to have a full-time recruiter. Maybe even two full-time recruiters because it’s something that takes 40 plus hours a week. You need to stagger your interviews so that you can have interviews in the morning, interviews in the afternoon, and interviews in the evening. You should be constantly interviewing new people.
This is also something that we have to make sure that we’re doing when it comes to the minimums. A lot of times people don’t want to increase their minimums. I have clients all the time that we talk to, they grow the business to around 2,000 hours and they can’t seem to get past this 2,000 hour mark. And that’s when I consider, it’s time to raise your minimums. The minimums shouldn’t be four hours a day, two days a week or six hours a week, or we’ll just do a bath visit once a week. No!
If your business is doing 2,000 hours a week you could afford to turn business away and only take 20 hours a week. Now 20 hours a week sounds like a high minimum and it is. That’s what our minimum was at Care Choice once we broke 2,000 hours a week. Twenty hours a week is four hours a day, five days a week. That’s Monday through Friday, nine to one, eight to twelve or two to six, one to five, something of that nature. Those are your two shifts.
This allows you, when you’re doing your recruitment effort to post that hey, we hire people guaranteed work, first off, cause you’re guaranteeing them work. Second, guaranteed minimum 20 hours per week per client. Now think about it from a caregivers perspective for a moment here. Wait a second, 20 hours per week per client. So you’re telling me at most, I’m gonna be responsible for two clients for a 40 hour work week? The answer is yes. Now think about this for a second. I have a full-time marketing representative. She’s bringing in anywhere from three to seven new referrals every single week. Can I promise that? Well, yeah you can. Because every time she’s bringing in a referral and we’re doing our inquiry management process properly, which is a whole other topic, we’re doing our closing process properly, which again is a whole other topic. Then we’re signing on clients every single week. It is much easier to get a caregiver to commit to a 20 hour a week case than it is to a one-off visit here, one-off visit there. You get a caregiver who wants 40 hours a week, but you’re giving her eight clients, she’s not gonna stay with you. She’s gonna cancel, she’s gonna leave for the first client. Or the first company that’s gonna give her 40 hours with one client. So increasing your minimums is vital to your long-term success here.
And then the other thing you want to do, when your marketing representative is working hard, they bring in the referral, they bring in the client and they sign them up. If you can’t staff it, don’t just turn the business away. This is where partnering with your competitors is super important. And I know it sounds crazy, but many of our clients who are in the same territory, we tell them to power partner with each other. Never turn a client away. Never not staff a case. Bring it over to one of your competitors.
In the 11th hour. For me the 11th hour was 2 p.m. the day before. Because I know I want to give this agency at least three hours to staff it because they need time. So we would keep calling people ourselves at 2 p.m. but we would also call one or two of our competitors and say hey listen, we have a case, it’s gonna start tomorrow at 10 a.m. Here are the hours and here are the days a week. Can you cover it? And if they say yes, they start working on it, we continue to work on it. If we get it staffed before they do, great we keep the case. If it doesn’t get staffed and the other agency’s able to staff it, give the business away. It’s okay. Because ultimately what is the best thing here? The best thing is that the client gets the care that they need.
You will always be able to get new business. You have a marketing representative. From the marketing reps standpoint, hey at least the case was staffed. She could go back to the referral source and say listen, we couldn’t staff this particular case but we did get it to somebody else. The person goes home, it is still a safe discharge and it’s being taken care of. Is there another referral? When we turn business down though, and we tell the family that they can’t get service from us, what happens is they’re gonna go back to the referral source, ask for another referral and then you’ll probably lose that referral source.
So not only is it defeating your marketing rep who spent a month, two months, three months, six months to try and develop that referral source and finally get a referral and we blew the referral. And that’s just bad business. So don’t let this happen. I gave you a bunch of different scenarios here and a bunch of different ways to overcome.
We have a whole bunch of products and services like our new Home Care Special Ops Online Training Course which talks about recruitment, talks about retention, talks about starting up cases, talks about caregiver training and how to problem solve issues like this on a much larger scale. You may want to consider that but regardless, make sure you’re not giving away business and just letting it leave. Do the right thing, do right by your client, do right by your marketing rep and you will be able to BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION!
To learn more about the NEW Special Ops Training Course, call us today at 848-444-9865!
