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!