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Archive for August, 2021

Senior Care Businesses: 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Recruiting Caregivers 

Posted by homecare

When it’s time to hire caregivers for your senior care business, you can be easily overwhelmed. It takes a special kind of person to be a caregiver, but it’s not the most lucrative career. Therefore, there can be significant turnover. Also, other issues can arise if you don’t do your due diligence in the hiring process. Here are five mistakes you should avoid as you recruit caregivers for the elderly. 

Failing To Prioritize Recruiting

Hiring caregivers is a difficult task. It’s even more troublesome when it’s not a priority. Having vacancies for caregivers usually means that you’re short staffed. As a result, you’re likely overworking your existing staff and running the risk that they will soon suffer from burnout. Symptoms of burnout include anxiety, depression, irritability and more. The shortage in caregivers is expected to get worse in the coming years. Therefore, it’s imperative that you appropriately staff your home care agency to retain the staff you already have. 

Providing Insufficient Training

Caregiving doesn’t require degrees or state licensure. Training for these jobs rests mostly on the employer. As a result, the training you provide new caregiving employees is critical to the long term success of your business. Releasing employees who lack the experience to provide a service on behalf of your business is setting you both up for disaster. The stress experienced by overwhelmed employees fielding requests that they don’t know how to fulfill increases the likelihood that they become unhappy with their jobs. This increases the chances that you will need to hire caregivers again in the near future. 

Skipping A Background Check

Seniors are a vulnerable population that gets targeted at alarming rates. Rampant elder abuse in nursing homes is why many families prefer for their loved ones to engage with in-home caregivers. When you hire caregivers for your home care business, it is your responsibility to ensure that they don’t pose a threat to either your clients or your existing staff. Even though it can be costly, performing background checks on all of your employees can flag people who have a history of preying on elderly people. 

Offering Low Wages

Caregiver jobs pay less than $11 per hour on average. Many quality employees will not accept wages this low, especially in and near metropolitan areas with high costs of living expenses. As a result, these wages can attract young people without job experience or people who have no other job prospects. In some cases, this means that you end up having to replace the young people who leave to pursue higher wages after they’ve gained experience. In other cases, it means you run the risk of needing to replace the low quality employees you hired because of their poor work performance. Either way, this can lead to high turnover rates which can decrease employee satisfaction and increase overhead costs as you scramble to replace employees. 

Not Providing Opportunities For Advancement

One way you can combat high turnover from young people who leave after gaining experience is by establishing a pattern of promoting employees from within your organization. Failing to offer opportunities for advancement like these all but ensures that you’ll have to bear the costs of hiring new employees frequently. 

If you’re ready to begin your home care franchise journey with A Better Solution In Home Care, you need to develop a fool proof recruitment strategy. We can provide your senior care business with training, and coaching. Also, we can provide management support to help them grow their staff and business. Visit our website today to learn more about how you can open a franchise location!

What Are the Requirements to Running a Senior Home Care Business? 

Posted by homecare

Starting a senior care franchise through A Better Choice In Home Care requires a lot of planning and business sense. Home care providers often offer different levels of care based on limitations placed on them by licensing requirements. As a result, the things you need to be successful may depend upon your location. Some of the requirements for opening a senior home care business are below. 

Funding

Like all other franchise businesses, people who wish to open A Better Choice In Home Care franchise need funding. To become a franchisee, applicants must pay a one time $50,000 franchise fee. You’ll also need $125,000 to invest in and grow the business, as well as $300,000 to cover payroll and management. With $475,000 total, you can be off to a running start in opening your very own franchise. 

State Licenses

Depending upon the level of care you want to offer to your clients, there may be state licensing requirements. Most home care providers specialize in helping seniors with activities of daily living like keeping active and providing meals. These senior care services don’t require special licenses. As a result, some home care providers focus on these services and choose not to offer medical care so they can avoid these requirements. However, there are many seniors who won’t be able to receive care from your business if you don’t offer medical care. 

A Better Solution in Home Care franchisees have an advantage over our competitors. We offer the ABS Licensure Advantage Package to handle all license requirements for franchise locations nationwide. 

Appropriate Training

Your franchise location will need a variety of staff to provide companion care, personal care, nursing care and more. Before you can offer your services to the public, you have to onboard and train the staff in all of these positions. They need to know the policies and procedures that will govern their work experiences, as well as how to address any problems they encounter. 

The ABS Training Option Advantage and Onsite Training Advantage give franchisees an all-encompassing training experience upon opening a new location. The Onsite Training Advantage provides you with two coaching sessions during the first six months after you open a new franchise location. The ABS Training Option Advantage also provides refresher training sessions as needed to support you throughout the life of your business. 

Policies and Procedures

With the prevalence of elder abuse and other sensitive concerns, it’s important that new home care providers have comprehensive policies and procedures. For instance, these measures should provide employees with a roadmap to help them navigate almost every situation. They should include procedures to report suspected elder abuse, policies to guide them through routine duties, and other pertinent information to help support employees. Our ABS Licensure Advantage Package can also help with this endeavor. 

If you are considering opening a franchise through A Better Solution In Home Care to provide senior care services in your area, we provide a variety of support services to help you become successful. To learn more about how we can support your franchise ambitions, visit our website!