The way in which home care agencies are finding and hiring caregivers is evolving.
Over time, word-of-mouth recruitment via current employees is having a lesser impact on overall hires, while job hiring sites like Indeed are having a greater impact.
Of the top 10 caregiver recruitment sources last year, Indeed – between free and paid plans – took the cake as the most “successful” hiring methodology for agencies, according to data from Home Care Pulse’s annual benchmarking study.
Nearly 1,500 participating agency locations were polled on which two methodologies had been most successful for them in terms of yielding actual hires. Behind Indeed were employee referral programs and myCNAjobs.com, which 13.4% and 7.2% of agencies slotted as top two sources, respectively.
Year over year, only three sources increased in prevalence: Indeed, the “reactivation” of former employees and Care.com.
“One thing we noticed in the data is that Indeed has continued [increasing in prevalence] over the last three years, while word of mouth has decreased,” Home Care Pulse President Todd Austin told Home Health Care News. “And so I think, as an industry, we’ve got to continue to cultivate relationships with our employees to a point where they’ll refer caregivers to us that are already aligned with the values and the purpose of the industry.”
Home Care Pulse is an Idaho-based research and education firm that reports on workforce and financial developments, marketing strategies and other trends in the non-medical home care industry.
While Indeed and other internet tools for hiring are undoubtedly helpful, they are also more expensive.
For instance, the median caregiver acquisition cost through Indeed is $561, while word of mouth is just $167. Over the long haul, those additional dollars can put a squeeze on an agency’s finances. At the same time, employee referral programs median cost to acquire a caregiver is $837 – the most by far.
In addition, internet sources generally lead to a higher turnover rate than more traditional sources.
While the median turnover rate for word-of-mouth sourcing was just 23.4% for agencies that listed it as a top-two source – a fantastic rate in an industry with an overall average close to 70% – Indeed hiring led to an 84.5% median caregiver turnover rate.
Employee referral programs, while expensive, also had a low median turnover rate at just 31.6%.
“Those online sources are associated with higher caregiver acquisition costs, which is important,” Austin said. “And turnover is also worse. Then you compare that to referrals and current-employee referral [programs], and you’re around or below 30% in both of those categories, along with acquisition costs being lower from a referral source.”
The sole non-internet-based source of recruiting that increased as a successful means for hiring was the reactivation of former employees.
That is a potential trend that industry stakeholders are following closely. The hope is that caregivers who have been sidelined for a variety of reasons over the past two years are now coming back to the workforce.
“There’s people coming back to the industry that maybe were hesitant due to either regulatory issues, [personal] issues or COVID-19 that had removed themselves from the workforce,” Austin said. “And so as we continue to see normalization from the pandemic, I believe we’ll see more employees. There are also agencies actively recruiting previous employees to come back.”
One of the largest providers of personal home care in the country, Addus HomeCare Corporation (Nasdaq: ADUS), has reportedly already seen this tailwind coming to fruition.
“Anecdotally, we have heard from multiple health care providers, including some who employ personal caregivers, that the labor market has shown signs of improvement in recent weeks, particularly as the uptick in inflation has caused pressure on potential employees’ personal finances that is prompting them to either go back to the workforce or work more hours,” a recent note from the investment group Jefferies said.
Companies featured in this article:
