Two of the nation’s largest home care providers say they are getting creative and aggressive when it comes to recruiting and retaining workers in their industry’s highly competitive labor market.
During a virtual healthcare conference hosted by investment bank Barclays plc, Amedisys Chairman and CEO Paul Kusserow said his company is competing for staff with all healthcare providers, including hospitals. To get a leg up on the competition, the Baton Rouge, LA-based company has moved from a general recruitment model to a more specialized one.
“We have talent acquisition specialists who recruit only clinicians versus all positions in our care centers,” Kusserow said. “That has really juiced the number of inbound clinicians that we have coming in from an advocate perspective.”
The healthcare industry is in a race to recruit workers to care for the nation’s 70 million aging baby boomers. Demand is especially strong in the home care industry, which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects to grow by 34% in the next decade to about 4.4 million workers.
But with a relatively low median hourly wage of $12.15 and stress from COVID-19, turnover among home health and personal care workers is about 60%, according to the consulting firm ICA Group.
Turnover tracker system
Amedisys has around 21,000 employees in 39 states and the District of Columbia. In an effort to prevent valuable employees from leaving, the company has developed a turnover tracker system. The system identifies behavior and workplace issues — like scheduling — that may prompt an employee to quit. It then runs the information through algorithms to determine risk, allowing managers to intervene.
“All of our care centers and all of our leadership get an updated list each week of people that land on the high risk list. We have stay at home meetings, which means leadership is having conversations with these caregivers to discuss what some of the concerns are,” Amedisys COO Christopher Gerard said.
Career advancement
Like Amedisys, LHC Group said it has also become more focused when recruiting workers. But Chairman and CEO Keith Myers said the Lafayette LA-based company has also become more creative in helping workers carve out career paths within the firm.
“In the past, signing bonuses and things like that solved the (recruitment) problem immediately, but we’re now developing arrangements with nursing schools to develop career paths and having discounted tuition,” Myers said.
LHC Group employs about 32,000 workers in 35 states and the District of Columbia. Myers said last December and the first two months of this year were among the most successful hiring months in the company’s history.
