HCAOA The Voice Fall 2020

8 HCAOA The Voice MEMBER NEWS Home care staff represent a key component of the efforts to lessen the strain on the hospital system in the COVID-19 era and with the proportion of seniors over 60 expected to double by 2050 the need to hire and retain high quality home care workers to meet the growing demands has never been higher. As revealed in the 2020 Home-Based Care Technology Survey, more than half of respondents chose caregiver shortage as a primary obstacle their home care agency faces today. Limited caregivers and high turnover rates can be very taxing and could have a dwindling effect on your business and healthcare infrastructure at large. A common solution for this problem would be to incentivize employees with raises, benefits, and other compensations, but this might not be an economically viable solution for your agency. Here are some other practical solutions that could help you maintain or grow care worker retention without hiking up your business expenditures to show recognition for these extremely valuable employees: 1. ACCOMMODATING SCHEDULING While ensuring patients are receiving essential visits and care is the number one priority, working with your caregivers to coordinate schedules that are manageable for them should also be of high impor - tance. AlayaCare’s home care software optimizes scheduling with features like SMS notifications to allow caregivers to conveniently receive and accept shift offers on mobile for high accessibility and flexi - bility. By finding flexible options for caregivers, your agency can improve the caregiver work experience to increase satisfaction and make your agency a place where caregivers want to stay. Ways to Reduce Home Care Worker Turnover 5 By Adrian Schauer, Founder & CEO