Steve “The Hurricane” (00:00):
What’s up everybody? It’s Steve the Hurricane, and for today’s episode of a Drink with the Hurricane, we are going to discuss how to best retain your caregivers. So raise your glass and let’s toast to your success. Cheers.
(00:23):
This is a Drink with “The Hurricane”, the Talk show discussing all things growing your home care business. This video is sponsored by Home Care Evolution where we help home care agencies adapt to changing circumstances, transform their business so that they can thrive for years to come. I want to start off by referencing, or referencing rather, a book that you really should grab a copy of, and this is a framework for Understanding Poverty, A cognitive Approach by Dr. Ruby Payne. This is the fourth edition. This is the one that I like. It came out in 2014, but the reason why I mentioned this, and for those of you who are clients of mine, if you’ve been in the momentum class specifically, lesson five, I talk about the day in the life of a caregiver, and I’m consistently referencing this book. What I love about this book, and the reason how it’s going to help you better manage your caregivers and retain caregivers is understanding the mindset of a poverty level employee.
(01:33):
Why is it so important that we understand the mindset of a poverty level employee? It’s real simple, folks. Our caregivers do not earn enough money. Now, I’m not saying that you need to pay more because I understand the margins. I understand how much you’re charging the patients, how much it costs to run the business, how much to pay the care. I understand all of it. I’ve been doing this for over 12 years. I’ve literally worked with thousands of agencies, so I get it. But what you have to realize in which a lot of people fail to recognize is the standards that you’re placing on your caregivers, such as showing up to work on time, clocking in, filling out a time sheet, clocking out, all of those things that they’re supposed to do and be responsible for. Those are what I call and what you know to be middle class expectations.
(02:29):
Well, with middle class expectations should come middle class income. So therefore, it is wrong, and it is extremely difficult to hold someone to middle class expectations when I’m paying them. Poverty level income, this just makes sense. So I’m not saying you need to lower your standards, but what I am saying is we need to have a better understanding about what the poverty level employee is going through, and then what are we doing to help support the person who’s living at poverty level so that they can go to these standards? And here’s a perfect example. Something that has happened to me many times and something that has probably happened to you many times when you have your home care agencies caregiver calls out because her car broke down. It happens every single week. Some of us have caregivers that have been working for us for months, and it seems like every two weeks, every three weeks, the car breaks down and man, is it frustrating because now you have a patient who’s not getting the care, you got to drop everything and go and restaff it, and people blame the caregiver.
(03:44):
People get mad at the caregiver for not having reliable transportation. Well, last time I checked, the average car is like $35,000, and the average caregiver nationwide makes less than $35,000 a year. So how can she afford a brand new car? The simple truth is she can’t afford a brand new car. So most of your caregivers are probably driving a vehicle that’s 15 or 20 years old or even older than that. Those cars with 250, 300,000 miles, yeah, they’re going to break down frequently. This happened that happened. The car is literally held together with bubblegum duct tape, and then they’re driving on hopes and dreams. So a way that we can overcome that is if we understand that, if we know this, we can set up Ubers. We could maybe buy a company car and let caregivers use it, or we could even go as far as to hire a caregiver or promote them to just drive the company car, and they’re literally driving caregivers to and from shifts all day.
(04:54):
You could even charge a small dollar one way fee or something of that nature, but that is a way to come up with a solution for your caregivers. Another thing that I talk about in this Momentum class with great detail is showing your caregivers how they can eventually ascend and get out of the role of being a caregiver, having a career path. In the most recent issue of Home Care Evolution Quarterly magazine, my partners over at Home Care Pulse wrote an article about companies that promote from within and have a career path for their caregivers, have a significantly greater retention of caregivers than agencies that do not. You create this career path and show your people how they can go from a position where, yeah, they got to work hard right now, put in their due diligence at the poverty level, but in 18 months or so, they could grow and earn middle class income and literally change their life. There’s so many other ways to be able to do this. So if you need help increasing your caregiver retention, if you need help getting more caregivers, the best thing that you can do is invest in yourself and in your business by signing up today on my website for the next Home Care Evolution bootcamp, home care evolution.com. Register right now because you know I’m going to give you everything you need to blow away the competition.