Solving Workforce Challenges in Home Healthcare

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges faced by home healthcare providers is employee retention. In an industry where finding trained, experienced and effective workers is highly competitive it is more important than ever that you have solutions to overcome workforce challenges.

As turnover rates continue to rise, having a more proactive approach to keeping your team happy is the best way to reduce turnover. You can also be better prepared to attract top-notch home health care workers. If you are facing workforce challenges, it is possible to adopt a new strategy to improve employee satisfaction.

Pay Attention to Employee Engagement

Home healthcare workers are faced with challenges not commonly found in other industries. This can include difficult schedules, overtime, and physically demanding work. Employees are also working under stringent guidelines to improve patient care that can cause undue stress. To help overcome these challenges, you can provide new ways to improve employee engagement to help reduce the unavoidable negatives of the job. This might include:

• Acknowledging patient care excellence
• Encouraging teamwork with events and rewards
• Taking surveys to find out what is important to the team and addressing the issues when possible
• Encouraging management to interact with staff and get a feel for temperament and motivation
• Effectively introducing change as quickly as possible to address employee complaints

Introducing a proactive approach to human resources and healthcare workforce management is the quickest way to maintain improved morale.

Improve Communication

The key to effective teamwork is communication. This works with patients and your workforce. When home healthcare providers feel like they are part of the team, they tend to work harder to support those around them. Although many are at patient’s homes alone, communication improves the patient experience, which leads to improved job satisfaction.

Healthcare depends on teamwork even when care providers work at different sites. Without communication, teamwork fails. Effective communication improves overall performance as errors are reduced, leadership becomes more defined and each team member understands their priorities.

Offer Recognition

A pat on the back goes a long way in letting team members know they are appreciated. Healthcare workers provide valuable work that is often overlooked. Showing they are appreciated can include a number of tactics such as a one on one acknowledgement of their special efforts, awards, bonuses or even time off after a long shift. This also adds to improved employee engagement and can help improve morale.

Encourage Ongoing Education

Supporting ongoing education provides professional development that not only helps employees meet their career goals, but also greatly improves patient care. Technical skills are important, but training should also provide essentials in patient care and communication. Training is the best way to improve productivity, which in turn improves employee satisfaction. Remaining on top of the latest technology as well as trends in patient care allows management and HR teams to offer proper guidance that keeps employees more effective in their jobs.

Create Career Paths

In hand with training, every home healthcare organization can benefit from providing career paths for their team members. While some might be satisfied focusing on their job as a nurse, for example, others might have their eye on a management or administrative role. By engaging each employee in a career plan, you can help them meet their goals.

Tracking performance and holding scheduled performance reviews allow you to address opportunities for growth and training. Employees see you care about their needs and plans while you benefit from the skills they bring to the table. Using effective home healthcare WFM software keeps your managers up to date on the progress of each team member allowing them to nurture employees and their career goals.

While many of the workforce challenges encountered in home healthcare are unavoidable, a proactive strategy can help. You provide advantages to your team to help them experience improved job satisfaction with an effective home healthcare workforce management plan in place. 

About the Author

Kayla is the Marketing Manager at Paypro Corporation overseeing all inbound and outbound marketing and sales efforts. She has 7+ years of experience working within the B2B and SaaS based solutions space and thrives on creating messaging and campaigns that introduce products and services to those who need them most.