The hot topic in home care these days is caregiver retention. Simply offering just another job is no longer enough to attract and retain top caregivers. With more job opportunities than people to fill them, agencies need to evolve to survive, and what better way to enhance your agency than by investing in a benefit that not only attracts premier caregivers but also allows you to grow them internally. In case it wasn’t obvious, we’re of course talking about training.
Getting training right is incredibly important. Cutting corners and providing a subpar training option creates a poor foundation of knowledge within your agency. This can cause damage to your reputation, as clients and staff may begin to view the services you provide as lower quality compared to competitors with highly trained staff. While the effect this has on client retention is apparent, the impact this has on your ability to retain high-quality caregivers can often be overlooked.
Why Invest in Training?
Let’s cut to the chase – why would providing a training program help with attracting and retaining top talent for your agency? The answer is simple: the best caregivers are the ones who have put in the time and effort to be the best. After all, as the saying goes, “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” These top performers hunger for the opportunity to improve themselves, and by feeding them with high-quality learning materials, you distinguish yourself from competitors as an employer who cares about their professional growth.
In addition to attracting talent, providing a powerful learning platform lets you both build up caregivers that are new to the field as well as those with some experience who are looking to further expand their skillset. Imagine a new client comes to your agency requiring home care assistance for dementia, but your available caregivers don’t have experience working for people with dementia. You could launch an expensive and time-consuming recruitment campaign, or you could simply train one or more of your existing caregivers on dementia care.
By offering training, you connect with your caregivers on a deeper level, rather than just as the person who provides them their paycheck. Investing in your caregivers builds a culture of self-improvement throughout your entire agency. Those who this resonates with (star caregivers) will want to stick around longer due to this opportunity to grow within your agency instead of having to hop to another employer to gain the experience they’re looking for.
How to Make This Happen
Don’t get us wrong, you can’t simply pass along any old boring textbook they could find at a local library that was printed 15 years ago. You need to provide them with engaging, interactive learning materials that are kept up to date. The best way to do this is by using a digital training platform with a library that’s constantly growing and updated as federal and state regulations change.
The variety of lessons is also important. Choosing a platform with diverse options allows your caregivers to find trainings on whatever they need to learn. Afterall, every caregiver is unique, and their training needs may vary depending on their current client(s) or career interests. Finding the perfect caregiver for each client can be a time-consuming and expensive process. By having an in-house method of molding your existing caregivers into the perfect candidate for any client who may step through your door, you build up your team’s knowledge while saving your agency time and money.
Choosing the Right Platform
When it comes to training, it’s important to set your team up with an option that lends itself to becoming habit forming. Otherwise, you risk signing up for a great solution, using it for only a few months, and then watching as its usefulness plummet when your staff stop logging into the platform. To avoid this and set your team up for success, your learning platform of choice should be easy to use, easy to access, and easy to see.
Easy to use means that caregivers should be able to navigate to assigned lessons or browse for relevant lessons without trouble. If the platform is frustrating to use, it’ll discourage people from wanting to spend time using it.
Easy to access refers to the difficulty caregivers have in getting into the actual platform. The more steps that are required for someone to log in, the more chances there are for people to give up. Your learning platform should be a click away, keeping it as accessible as possible.
Easy to see is simple, yet often overlooked. If you’ve ever heard the term “out of sight, out of mind,” then you know exactly what we mean here. If caregivers aren’t being reminded of your learning platform regularly, they may be less likely to use it, or worse, they may forget about it completely. Display your learning platform in a way that keeps it at the forefront of their minds.
A Solution Built for You
At Viventium, we understand the home-based care industry. Our payroll and HR solution is purpose-built for home care agencies, and we’re always looking for ways to make the lives of the hard-working admins and caregivers easier. That’s why we partnered with Nevvon to bring you a best-in-class learning management solution that’s built for agencies like you.
Retaining and growing top caregivers is the difference between a successful and struggling agency, and investing in your caregivers is a fantastic way to differentiate yourself from competitors as someone who truly cares for their professional growth. By utilizing Viventium Learning powered by Nevvon, you not only give caregivers access to the powerful features of Viventium but also provide access to the hundreds of hours of caregiver training (available in 8 different languages) to your team through their ESS portal. Easy to use, easy to access, and easy to see.
Providing your caregivers with a learning management solution that helps increase caregiver retention and elevate knowledge within your agency is just another way that Viventium and Nevvon are always and forever in it with you.
This information is for educational purposes only, and not to provide specific legal advice. This may not reflect the most recent developments in the law and may not be applicable to a particular situation or jurisdiction.