The following Home Care Pulse article originally appeared here: How Family Resource Used HCP to Achieve Their Best Quarter in History for Employee Retention
Family Resource is a pioneer of the home care industry. They started in 1966 as a hospital affiliated home care program, and through a series of acquisitions and changes, they’ve grown to where they are today—an agency with 1,500 employees and 22 physical locations—with more on the way.
They began gathering feedback from their clients and caregivers using HCP Experience Management in 2014, and they’ve used that ongoing feedback to continually improve client/caregiver satisfaction and identify new challenges.
“What I value about HCP is having that consistency of feedback.” – Jeff Wiberg, CEO at Family Resource
The Challenge
This past year, the HCP Experience Management surveys helped Family Resource leadership identify a common pain point among their caregivers around training.
Despite having a thorough orientation program, some caregivers felt inadequately equipped to handle the individual needs of their clients, leaving them feeling less supported than desired and unsure what to do. Many survey responses expressed that improved training would help solve this issue.
They already had an effective training solution, with a robust catalog, but they needed caregivers to understand the value of the platform and why it was provided.
The Solution
Family Resource began using HCP Training in June 2021, but they needed to improve internal communication around that training for caregivers to get the benefits.
“It’s all about feeling confident, prepared, and like your employer has your back. The feeling that you have adequate training and employer support will improve employee satisfaction”
– Jeff Wiberg, CEO at Family Resource
Family Resource’s initiative to better convey the value of HCP Training to their staff has already started to have a significant impact on employee satisfaction. As Jeff puts it, “We shared with our caregivers that we heard their feedback about training and we increased our communications with them to say ‘Hey, this is what is already available to you.’ It’s been received and perceived well. One of the improvements we made using the HCP feedback is to ensure we never stop talking about what we are actually doing.”
Of course, improved communication around training needs to be backed by an effective training solution that caregivers are excited to use. HCP Training met or exceeded expectations in three key areas by providing:
- A user-friendly interface that makes finding course materials and navigating through courses easy.
- A mobile app to empower caregivers and staff to learn when and where works best for them.
- A robust course catalog with specialized learning paths so caregivers can become specialists in new areas or refresh skills necessary for the changing needs of clients.
The Results
Family Resource has seen a 7% improvement in retention within the first 90 days of employment since they implemented their new communication around HCP training. That number continues to climb as more caregivers become aware of the training and career growth available to them.
We just had our best quarter in history for retention. We are addressing this on a range of fronts, but I have no doubt [HCP] Training and Experience Management play a big role in improving retention. We know for a fact that Experience Management has helped caregivers feel listened to because they have told us. The better we take care of our employees the better they take care of our clients. We strive to focus on the areas we get the most feedback.
– Jeff Wiberg, CEO at Family Resource
The Care Intelligence Platform has also been leveraged to improve the Family Resource employment brand, attract new caregivers, and improve retention more broadly. According to Jeff, “A lot of caregivers have commented on our Best of Homecare Awards and positive reviews which have helped them decide to choose Family Resource. This comes with effective brand management to prove that the culture cares about their caregivers…Everyone is going to say they have a good culture, but having empirical proof like positive reviews is helpful in improving the perception of that culture.”
“If you are managing with just your gut, then you may be forgetting that the gut is for digestion, whereas data is for decisions. If you’re telling me that you are not interested in growing your agency, then maybe you don’t need a product like this. But if you are interested in getting to the next level, then you need data.”
– Jeff Wiberg, CEO at Family Resource
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