How To Increase Caregiver Show Up and Avoid Getting Ghosted

Tired of applicants applying and then just disappearing?

Yes, I know that you have been there.

Rachel Gartner, owner and CEO of Carework, talks about how you can increase your show up rate so that you can continue to drive results, and get more applicants that actually are hired. This is crucial so that you can service more clients for your home care business.

Let's dive in!

 Learn more about Rachel and CareWork here: https://www.careworkus.com/

Tips on Increasing Caregiver Show Up and Avoid Getting Ghosted 

One of the biggest things within this industry when it comes to recruiting caregivers for your business is the show up rate and people not showing up.

So what can owners do to really increase that show up rate and avoid getting ghosted?

Let’s first clarify that there are two places where people are getting ghosted or having a lot of no shows: 

1. The interviews
2. Raising your pay or raising your sign on incentives

A lot of what we're seeing right now in 2022 is that home care business owners are getting ghosted after the interview or before orientation.

There are a lot of short-term and long-term strategies for this.

A couple of quick short-term ones get them through the hiring process faster. That is from their application to when  they can actually start working.

You want to have that be as quick as possible.

The other one, which is harder to fix, is raising your pay or raising your sign on incentives.

That is why caregivers, like all of us, would rather get paid more for the work that they're doing.

Right? Basic fact of life.

But where people get stuck on the agency side is they know that their pay is maybe not the most competitive. From their perspective, they're thinking that their agency is a great place to work and we have great shifts. They think they’ll treat them really well and that's all great, but they only care about that if they're also making enough to pay their bills.

For some agencies, that can increase their rates for their clients.

If you are not being reimbursed at a nonadjustable reimbursement rate, then raise your rates, raise your wages.

It's just a fact of life right now, with inflation being the way it is, that's really a harder fix.

One of the really practical things that we're suggesting to our clients right now to avoid this issue is to schedule straight from a phone screen to an orientation.

So, rather than getting the applicant doing a phone screen with them or doing an interview, and during orientation to do a little bit longer phone screen like we do for our clients, we make it a little bit longer.

Add a couple more questions, go into a little more detail, and then tell them, this is great, 

• “You're qualified”.
• “We really want to work with you.”
• “We're going to bring you in on this day for orientation and process your paperwork.”

This gets the caregiver working faster.

It takes out some of the uncertainty for them and really sounds like "great you've got the job, come on in."

But a lot of clients also  start with a 15 to 20 minutes interview.

Instead of scheduling the caregiver for that interview, they schedule them for a two-hour orientation.

So everyone is ready to come in.

The caregiver knows what paperwork to bring, and they start with the interview. If that goes well, they immediately finish orientation.

This helps a lot to avoid getting ghosted after the point of interview.

That is the metric right now that the agencies were following their data.

The hardest point in 2022 is, yes, we're getting them to show up for the interview and then they never call back. They don't finish orientation.

We can get from interview through orientation on one day right away (hopefully within a day or two) of their phone screen, or even a day or two after they applied. That will help getting them straight in the door, hired, going through the paperwork, doing orientation, and letting them leave with a schedule.

It’s important that when you do your orientation, have your scheduler available. Sit down with them and give them the schedule as quickly as possible.

This is going to really reduce the amount of caregivers that either never show up to their interview or never complete the hiring process.

Changing your Mindset

Another important thing to consider is changing your mindset.

All of this falls into what we call “caregiver first”.

Applicants don't have to jump through hoops anymore. You need them more than they need you.

This is not an area to sit around and blame applicants.

Like, nobody wants to work anymore, nobody shows up.

This is your business.

One of the most important skills that it currently takes to operate and grow a home care agency is hiring.

So, it's nobody's responsibility but yours.

That means taking your hiring process and making it as streamlined as possible and as attractive as possible to potential caregivers.

Just like you market for customers, you have to be appealing.

You have to get them through the door and work as quickly as possible.

Make or break skills for home care, and there's a couple of strategies that will hopefully help.

How Can Carework Help?

At Carework, we can do all of these hard things for you. We can do your day-to-day of all of your recruiting legwork, manage your job ads, and track all of your data for you.

So if you're looking for an outsourced recruiting solution, we are ready for you! It's like hiring a new recruiter, but way cheaper.

You can go to www.careworkus.com, click the button that says book a call with a hiring expert. We'd love to help you.