Target aide recruiting beyond the newspaper ad
Appeal directly to the best aides
Competition for home health aides has always been stiff, but now that managed care is forcing providers to improve everything they do, the demand for the highest quality home health aides is even greater. Some providers have found that recruiting methods need to be more targeted in their appeal than the previous basic newspaper want ads.
"The traditional methods of attracting aides is less effective now because there are so many more home care agencies, all of which need aides," explains Darcy Herr, RN, BSN, the director of home care and the indigent clinic at St. Joseph's at Home in Kokomo, IN.
Here are some newer recruiting methods providers have found to be successful:
* Ask your best home health aides to refer candidates to you.
"I ask my best aides whether they know anyone who would make a good home health aide and might be interested in working for me. This way my aides do their own screening for me. It's rare you don't find someone of the same caliber this way," says Bob Manley, BSN, the president of STAT Health Care and PRN Professional Registered Nursing in New York City.
He sweetens the pot by giving his aides $100 bonuses for every person they refer to the agency to become a home health aide.
Manley says he feels confident that this screening process works, as evidenced by the quality of referrals he has gotten. Also, occasionally when he has asked his best aides for referrals, they have told him things such as, "I know someone who's real nice, but she's not that reliable."
In the past a few referrals have been sub-par, Manley says. In these cases, the person who referred the less-than-satisfactory candidate has apologized for how things turned out.
"They know we trust them, and they want to maintain that," Manley says.
In addition to getting high-quality applicants for aide positions, this bonus system gives Manley's aides a sense that he trusts them, and that he's willing to reward them for upholding that trust. It has worked. Some of Manley's employees have earned the bonus five and six times over.
"You have to use a bonus like this judiciously. Lots of folks see kindness as weakness and will take advantage of it. But you have to respect people and expect the best from them, and you'll get the best," Manley says.
* Show potential aides there is opportunity for growth at the company.
Though there isn't much room in home care companies for home health aides to move up, there is enough room for advancement to discuss with potential home health aides, Manley says.
"I have a few aides that have moved into office positions, from clerical work to coordinator work. My office manager was an aide. It's not often that I can move aides from the field to the office, but the fact that I've done it in the past shows the aides that the possibility is there if you work hard," Manley says.
* Network with job development programs.
Manley gets additional referrals for potential home health aides from job development programs that help people get off welfare in New York City. Similar programs exist around the country to help people practice interviewing, writing their resumes, and learning new job skills.
By getting to know the directors of these programs, Manley is able to get them to do some additional prescreening for him.
"They benefit because I give their people jobs, and I benefit because I tell them what type of people I need. They don't send me people who aren't good for home care," Manley says.
Check schools for candidates
* Work with your local nursing schools.
Herr works with her area's nursing schools in three ways:
-- First, she plumbs the nursing schools for students who are willing to pick up a little experience and income while in school. Nursing school students make good aides because they're in nursing school for the same reasons that you want them to be aides: they have the caring personality, Herr says.
Check your state home health aide certification rules before recruiting at nursing schools, though, other providers say. Depending on what the rules are in your state, it might be too time consuming for a nursing student to bother getting certification for being an aide while still working toward nursing credentials.
-- Second, Herr has created professional networking relationships with her area's nursing school instructors that yield home health aide position applicants. Herr has accomplished this by working with the nursing schools to help put their students through a home care rotation. This not only exposes the students to home care, but allows Herr's home care staff to communicate with the nursing school instructors.
-- Third, all of the area's nursing students spend a full day at Herr's hospital for an orientation when they first start school, and home care is one of their stops. Herr or one of her colleagues then has a chance to sell nursing students on home care and the idea of working as an aide while in school.
"We try to share our enthusiasm for home care with them and show them how the team works together to care for patients," Herr says. For example, Herr might talk to the nursing school students about outcomes and how home care is a place where both aides and nurses get to work on the total spectrum of a patient's care.
"A lot of students think all the action is in the hospital, but the patient census in the hospital is dropping, and home care is growing more important. It's a place to get good experience, especially as an aide while going through nursing school." Herr says.
Get help from the HR department
* Work with your hospital's human resources department.
You can save time and money by using your hospital's human resources department to work on recruiting, rather than delegating this job to someone in your home care company. Herr and her hospital's human resources department developed a tri-fold brochure describing what home health aides do, to use as a promotional tool for recruiting home health aides. It's posted on job boards and at nursing schools.
"Lots of folks don't know what home health aides actually do, and we've found that by putting up a brochure, we get much better responses to our ads for people," Herr says.
To create the brochure, Herr and her management staff explained to the hospital human resources department their need to promote home care aide jobs.
* Educate your hospital human resources department about home care.
Herr's hospital human resources department employees always push home care, but they wouldn't if they didn't understand it, she says. "It's wonderful to have their support, but you can't get it unless you educate your human resources department about what home care is."
The human resources staff need to know everything about home care to be able to promote it to job applicants. They need to know what types of people are needed to work in home care, what types of positions are available, and what responsibilities home health care employees have.
When working on aide recruitment, Herr met with her hospital's human resources department and explained to them what a home health aide does and the type of personality aides need to have, including:
-- a high level of confidence about going into strange environments;
-- the ability to work without supervision, yet to work as a team;
-- a willingness to let patients and their families be in the driver's seat about receiving care.
* Play up your hospital affiliation.
With so many new home care agencies out there, being hospital-based or affiliated can make your company stand out in the crowd, Herr says. Potential aides want to work for a reputable company that is known in the community, and they will be drawn to your company because you are part of the hospital, she says. You should play this up in your promotional materials, she advises.
* Participate in high school career days.
Even though high school students are too young to be appropriate for home care aide positions, teaching them about the job can heighten their awareness of home care and result in creating some future home health aides. Herr and her staff go to local high schools' career days to talk to students about the home care industry.
Choose your words carefully
* If you use newspaper ads, use key words.
Newspaper ads aren't useless -- they give job seekers familiarity with the company name. Manley started out with large ads to get his company's name out, and then changed to using small ads.
No matter the size of your ad, the wording you use is important. The people who make the best home health aides are the ones who like a lot of teamwork in their job, yet who also like to work without a lot of supervision, Herr explains. They're also people who like to spend time with patients. Advertisements for home health aides should stress those aspects of the job to bring in the best applicants. Herr's ads also stress that home health aides are the point people of home care, and that the job requires a lot of responsibility.
These words -- teamwork, responsibility, caring -- are key words that will catch the eye of people who want these aspects in their job, and who will make good home health aides, Herr says.
* Cultivate good word of mouth about your company.
You have to treat people well and appreciate aides for what they do, says Ken Wessel, chairman of the advisory board for the Home Care Aide Association of America, based in Washington D.C. Wessel also is the executive director of the Visiting Homemaker Service of Passaic County, in Paterson, NJ.
That will make them happy with their jobs and with working for you, and that will make word of mouth bring in the best people for aide positions, he explains.
"Home care aides are the heart of the system," Wessel says.
(Editor's note: Next month, Hospital Home Health looks at how to increase morale and lower employee turnover rates among home health aides.) *
Special report: Aides add to your success
This month's article on recruiting home health aides is the first in a three-part series. The role of home health aides is becoming more important as the hospital-based home care industry becomes more competitive.
Home health aides have one of the toughest jobs a person can do for the money most aide positions pay. But now home health aides also have to be marketers, customer service representatives, and advertisers.
In the next two issues of Hospital Home Health, we'll share hospital-based home care providers' most successful methods of screening, hiring, and training to get the best performance from your home care aides. *
* Darcy Herr, Director of Home Care and the Indigent Clinic, St. Joseph's At Home, P.O. Box 888, Kokomo, IN 46903-0888. Telephone: (317) 452-6066.
* Bob Manley, President, STAT Health Care and PRN Professional Registered Nursing, 3071 Perry Ave., Bronx, NY 10467. Telephone: (718) 231-7900.
* Ken Wessel, Advisory Board Chairman, Home Care Aide Association of America, Executive Director, Visiting Homemaker Service of Passaic County, 2 Market St., Paterson, NJ 07501. Telephone: (201) 523-1224.
* Home Care Aide Association of America, 519 C St. NE, Washington, DC 20002-5809. Telephone: (202) 547-7424.
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