When you own an in-home care franchise, nothing is more important than trust. Your clients will rely on you to provide consistent and competent care for their most vulnerable family members. While buying into a well-regarded franchise will help attract clients, it’s up to you to follow through with quality of care.

At Visiting Angels^®, we take pride in the reputation we’ve built for compassionate home care services across the country. We’re committed to making life better for our clients, so we do everything we can to help our franchise owners do just that.

Today, we’ll go over one of the most fundamental parts of running a successful in-home care franchise: retaining your most effective staff.

Tackling Turnover at Your In-Home Care Franchise

With an in-home care franchise, your focus will often be on the well-being of your clients and any concerns they raise. However, in this field especially, it’s essential to prioritize your staff as well.

Home care is a relationship-driven industry. For the best outcomes, your clients must feel completely comfortable with their caregivers and confident in their abilities. In addition, any family members involved should feel that they can count on your care service.

Frequent turnover can be incredibly disruptive for the person receiving care as it means having to trust yet another care professional and reestablish their routine. Plus, however thoroughly you vet your new hires, there will still be variation in their skills and temperament.

With all of this in mind, when you find employees who work well with clients and with your team as a whole, it’s important to keep them on board.

What Drives Caregiver Turnover

Caregiving is demanding work that is often undervalued. This can lead to widespread burnout and professional dissatisfaction among employees.

Former caregivers who have left this field often cite the following for their decision:

Insufficient pay and/or benefits
Pressure to work long hours
Physically demanding work
Lack of respect, support, or understanding from supervisors

How to Address These Staff Retention Challenges

Whether you’ve bought a new in-home care franchise and hired all your staff or you’ve inherited the staff from a resale opportunity, it’s your responsibility to make sure your team gets the support they need.

To help address some of the most significant challenges for caregivers, we recommend the following measures:

Provide ample training
Think about what knowledge or abilities will your staff need to excel? Set your team up for success by giving them all the tools they’ll need.
Recognize good work, verbally and financially
Never miss an opportunity to recognize and reward any standout performance. Your employees should never feel that their efforts aren’t appreciated or that they’re expendable.
Offer competitive compensation and flexible benefit options
Caregiving is notoriously underpaid work. Based on caregiver salaries in your area, pay your caregivers well and don’t skimp on benefits. Show them how much you value their work.
Solicit staff feedback frequently and act on it when possible
Consider setting up regular check-ins and/or have your staff complete surveys to gauge their satisfaction and bring any issues to light. Then, crucially, read that feedback and make an effort to understand and act on your employees’ concerns.

Learn More About Franchising With Visiting Angels

Turnover may be a common challenge in home care, but it isn’t insurmountable — especially if you have the right support yourself.

At Visiting Angels, we offer initial training and ongoing assistance over the phone via online resources and through one-on-one consultations, regional meetings, and national conferences. Not only can you turn to our corporate team for guidance, you can also tap into our vast network of in-home care franchise owners who are always willing to share their wisdom.

To learn more about buying and managing an in-home care franchise with Visiting Angels, call 800-365-4189 or request more information online.