What’s up everybody? It’s Steve “The Hurricane” here, and for today’s episode of “A Drink With The Hurricane”, we’re going to give you some tips on handling holiday time off for your caregivers. So raise your glass and let’s toast to your success. Cheers!

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.

All right everybody, so as you see right here, I got some festive stuff and it may be a little bit early for the Christmas stuff to come out, but the reason why we’re doing it for this episode is because you got to be on this early.

You know Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s are coming up and they’re going to be here before we know it. And you’re going to have a whole bunch of caregivers that are going to want to take off for the holiday and not every one of them is going to be able to have time off.

So, what do you do? How do you handle it? Here we go!

The first thing is to have a plan in place. Now this is what we used to do when I had my agency back in the day, and I tell all my clients this and it’s something that works out pretty fairly. You send a letter out to all of your caregivers in advance, now, the beginning of November, letting them know that ‘we are aware the holidays are coming up. Many of you have sick medically complex clients that require somebody to be there. So if you have a client that requires somebody to be there, we can only guarantee you having off one of the three holidays.’ So that is what you want to do. Let them know that they can pick which holiday they want off and then you can plan for it in advance.

The second part of it is once you make the announcement, it is done on a first come, first served basis. So the sooner your caregivers let you know what is the holiday that they wish not to work, the better you can be able to prepare for it and let the caregivers have off. And I know not every client is going to require it. This is a very, very small percentage of clients, but you got to do this well in advance so that your caregivers know and remind them that they’re going to get paid time and half. Remind your clients that you are going to bill time and a half for them working on that particular holiday. So, first come, first served basis.

And so that’s it. 1, 2, 3.

#1 have a plan.

#2 announce it early.

#3 first come, first served basis, and then you cover it.

This is just a quick caregiver recruitment, retention, operations tip to make your holiday season easier.

And as a reminder, as a gift to you for being our client or being somebody who watches my videos, you can get the Home Care Evolution Quarterly magazine absolutely free when you go to my website, homecareevolution.com/magazine, where you know I’m going to give you everything you need to “Blow Away The Competition!”.

So, I hope you have a strong fourth quarter. I hope you have a very happy, safe holiday season and a very prosperous New Year! And I’ll see you soon.