We have several clients (pretty much everyone at this point) who don’t know day-to-day what their care availability looks like due to COVID policies.
A team member wakes up and has any signs or symptoms of COVID – fever, cough, etc. They are “on the bench,” leaving the schedulers to scramble to find care coverage.
This is a nightmare for our ops teams.
This is a CRAZY zone for our marketers.
Each day they wake up, and they have pray they have availability to market.
Yesterday we had this discussion on our Monthly Mastermind call.
And the discussion was fascinating – from some members who reported “we have an influx of applicants” to “we are struggling to find caregivers because we are growing so fast!”
Each member had a turn to share their experiences, and as always, the community was so supportive and shared really great ideas with each other. Cheryl and I were SUPER impressed with their creativity and out of the box, thinking that was delivering results!
(Want to be part of the Mastermind Insiders Advantage – click here)
We have an acronym:
ABC
Always Be reCruiting
One of our Mastermind members Austin reports he tells all of his leadership team – Always Be Recruiting and Hiring and then make it “Sales” problem!
He means – get to a point where they have so much staff they “don’t have enough to do” and then its “sales” problem to go get more business! LOVE that Austin!
We have heard staffing challenges from other agencies outside the Mastermind. Maybe you are experiencing it too.
In one of the agencies, the owner shared they had to turn down 26 referrals last month – it makes me want to cry.
It made the owner of that agency actually cry.
All the time and effort you put into marketing and staffing is an issue.
Staffing has always been an issue. Most of the time, once you get the marketing plan dialed in – and marketers following the High-Performance Sales Process, you will have this problem.
You will NOT HAVE ENOUGH STAFF. So in someway you were meant for this time. We have been here before. But before we could go into the community and recruit staff.
Today not so much.
Most of your Marketers are behind desks, so what do they do, and how can they help?
- Mention you have openings when you are doing your Remote marketing weekly sales message – in case anyone knows of someone who would like extra hours or visits
- Hold a virtual job fair
- Use their social media reach to share the message of recruiting
While you are recruiting, here is how we tell our teams to manage the gap.
- Every morning call the office to understand availability and openings for home assessments or SOC.
- Market to those areas in which have availability
- Your top referral sources – give them a heads up if availability is low in their area. (Several agencies we work with update daily to Care Access or Care Navigation at the hospital on the number of opens they have for the week to be a good partner saving the Case Managers time)
This is a VERY dynamic time in the world of HC, HH, and Hospice.
You are UNSTOPPABLE!
Use these tactics in your agency to Bridge the Gap and Serve More Seniors!
Melanie
PS – We just did a webinar today with MyCNAJobs.com and they have great staffing resources – go check them out – www.MyCNAJobs.com