Miriam Allred (00:00)
Welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab, a podcast where I interview home care leaders across the industry and ask them tough questions about the strategies, operations, and decisions behind their success. In the lab today, I'm joined by Jessica Schultz, the Director of Franchise People Strategy at Right at Home Corporate, and also Paul Blom, the owner and CEO of Right at Home Twin Cities in Minnesota. Thank you both for joining me today.

Paul Blom (00:27)
Absolutely.

Jessica Schultz (00:28)
Thanks

for having us.

Miriam Allred (00:30)
So Right at Home is a top home care franchise system and you all have been up to some exciting initiatives lately. One in particular about recruitment and retention, which is always a hot topic. So that's what I want to cover today. Jessica, you've been involved at the corporate level in kind of a strategic capacity on the planning and executing a large scale project like this. And Paul, you are one of the top performing franchisees that participated in the project. So.

Today I want to talk about the program and I want to highlight how you all picked apart and analyze the full caregiver life cycle from recruitment and retention. And then I want to also share real recruitment and retention tactics, tools, and best practices that are working for your top performing offices. So first, let's start with some introductions and then we'll get after it. Jessica, let's go ahead and start with you and then Paul. Share some of your career highlights.

what led you to home care and then highlight your current role and responsibilities.

Jessica Schultz (01:33)
Awesome. Thank you so much again. So yeah, I've spent majority of my career in healthcare primarily, most recently of the last six years in the home care industry. So I've been working in human resources for about 20 years now. I have a master's degree in human resources management. I always knew that I wanted to work for an industry that ultimately helped people live healthier and happier.

And even though my background is human resources, I can take that knowledge really to any industry. I pride myself in working for those that are on the front lines, who really have the heart to care. And there's just really always gonna be a special place in my heart for caregivers because of the experience that my grandmother had, just being able to stay at home as long as she could was truly a blessing for my family. And I love that I get to indirectly help those that help others. So.

My role at Right at Home, I'm the director of franchise people strategy. And it's critical to really helping franchise offices hire, support, and really engage caregivers, along with office staff, to help them choose home care and really stay at Right at Home long term and developing those meaningful relationships. So my team, we work on various projects and initiatives throughout the year and focusing on improving really the caregiver experience.

Miriam Allred (02:48)
Amazing. I don't know if you said it, but how many years in home care?

Jessica Schultz (02:52)
I've been in with six, so.

Miriam Allred (02:54)
Thank you, Jessica. Excited to learn more from you today. Paul, why don't you jump in?

Paul Blom (02:58)
Alright, well I'll try to give you the short and condensed version of really a career that started in my youth.

When I was a teenager, I started mowing lawns in my neighborhood and most of them were for elderly folks. Gladys Fitzgerald was my favorite, my long-term client. She was born in 1900, so she turned 85 and then 86 in 19, you whatever. So I just thought that was kind of cool. But she had arthritis and whatnot and I would mow her lawn and she would insist that I can't mow the whole lawn because it was an oversized lot and I had to come in and have

a Pepsi in between and she would tell me stories about the depression and stuff and I just thought the world of her and when I was graduating from high school her family decided that they needed to put her in a nursing home because I was going to be moving away to go to college and she very quickly declined in the nursing home and that was very impactful for me as I watched her decline and so you know kind of fast forward on through life you know went off to college went off to graduate school I worked in the IT industry worked in temporary

staffing. My husband of 33 years, his mom is a retired nurse and she moved to Minnesota and left her Wisconsin nursing license behind and she started doing the caregiving for a small company here in town that was kind of a predecessor to this whole industry of non-medical home care. And she kept saying to us, you know, you guys should do this. Like this is right up your alley. We were living in an older neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota and we were the, we

with the boys, right? We were the neighborhood boys and all of our elderly neighbors would come to us when they needed something, often with a plate of cookies to entice us into helping them get to their hair appointment or whatever. So anyway, we started thinking about it, started talking about it, started planning for it and I was working in the IT industry, Y2K came and went and of course we all know what happened to the IT industry at that point and I started looking online which was pretty, you know, 25 years ago.

Miriam Allred (04:34)
Thank

Paul Blom (04:54)
online was not what it is today. And I ran across franchiseopportunities.com website and found Home Instead and Right at Home. And I just fell in love with Alan Hager's concept and his passion. And so we bought Right at Home franchise number three 24 years ago. And I think we're going to like it.

Miriam Allred (04:56)
Yes.

What a great story. And step back Paul, you're wearing an awesome caregiver shirt. For those that watch this on YouTube or see the video of this, look at this great shirt that Paul's got on. I love that so much. What a great story. I hadn't actually heard that all the way through. So thank you for sharing that. And we've got a lot to learn from you today as well. You have seen a thing or two in the last 24 years. And before we got on, you were just saying how some things have never changed.

Paul Blom (05:17)
⁓ yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Miriam Allred (05:36)
and so many things have changed. So that's going to also be one of the themes of this conversation today is there's areas of recruitment and retention that are universal, that are timeless, that haven't changed. But then there's a lot, obviously, that has changed. So I'm excited to hear both of your... including the facial hair. But at least you have those great locks to make up for it. Awesome hair. Okay, so let's talk about the program, Jessica. You are...

Paul Blom (05:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, including the color of my facial hair. That's right.

Jessica Schultz (05:52)
you

Miriam Allred (06:00)
like the mastermind, the brains behind this project. And so I want to hear you just explain what led to this project. What were you hearing system wide from owners about recruitment and retention that was working well, that wasn't working well? And then how did you kind of ideate this project and help it come to life?

Jessica Schultz (06:19)
Yeah, so we've always had various resources available for our owners if they needed something like, a sample job posting or an interview guide. But what we didn't have that we quickly realized that we needed kind of a step by step procedure on really the how, how to implement those processes within that caregiver journey. So after talking to offices our team quickly realized that they just needed some more guidance on, for example, how to administer an orientation.

make it engaging rather than just someone at the front of the room reading slides and going through those motions, right? So what we really looked at was, you know, also how long should it take to have someone start an orientation after the interview process or how long should that orientation be to really make a huge impact? So we are always looking for ways to improve the caregiver experience. So what better way to do that than to find out what our best offices were doing.

within those journeys and really take the initiative to create a best practice and then essentially share out those best practices to all the offices so that these great things can be duplicated and obviously spread. So that's really where it started. We did keep hearing from offices that we needed to get back to the basics of caregiving. So I think a lot of our offices were getting caught up in their day-to-day tasks. They didn't really have the time.

to review what was going well and what wasn't going well. So we started to hear things like getting back to the basics, we thought we could create some really best practices as a great help to really create that experience that caregivers deserve. So the primary goal of the project was to really just give offices something tangible, easy to follow so that they could really help caregivers get that better experience.

Miriam Allred (08:04)
So let's talk about the first steps. Was the first step, you know, obviously like the concept and then it was going out and finding these top performing owners. And then next probably came the like, let's draft out basically the life cycle of the caregiver and get into it. How first and foremost, you know, maybe you know who your top offices are, but what, what was your approach to going out and finding them from like the recruitment and retention lens?

Jessica Schultz (08:19)
Yes.

Yeah, so we actually started with the data. We started capturing the data first. So we looked at offices who had really great retention scores like Paul, really great caregiver OSAT scores, which was their overall satisfaction, as well as ENPS scores, where we measure caregiver loyalty and if they're going to recommend Right at Home as a great place to work. So when we looked at these scores, we then narrowed it down by offices who had higher revenue.

And then we, as we started narrowing down the list, we were able to break down the data so we could finalize who are those top 10 offices and what, you know, what are they doing today that is giving them these high scores? And that's kind of how it started.

Miriam Allred (09:09)
Okay, Paul, let's hear from you. Jessica just kind of mentioned some of these recruitment and retention, like KPIs, if you will. Have those always been a focus for you or have they been more of a focus for you in recent years?

Paul Blom (09:23)
You know, so for Bob and I, from the very beginning, it was really important to us that the caregivers realize that we look at them as equals and that...

they know that we're only as good as the people that we hire. So I can go out and do all kinds of marketing and I can win all kinds of awards for different things and I can build revenue. But if my caregivers aren't really well taken care of and they're not really well connected to us, it's setting that culture that says you are not them. It's not us and them.

been super important to us because the reality from the beginning, I knew that if I was going to take really good care of older adults in their home, I needed to have good retention because the worst thing you can do for someone, especially someone who's got dementia, know, advanced Parkinson's disease, is to have constant turnover of caregivers, right? Every time you have to turn over a caregiver and introduce a new caregiver to a client situation, you whittle away at the client's trust.

you whittle away at the client's quality of care because they're constantly having to get to know somebody new. so we knew from the very beginning that retention was critical to us providing the kind of service that we wanted to provide. So that's always been something. I can't say that I've always known how to measure it.

but you can measure it by watching your longevity and realizing that, holy cow, we were just talking the other day about how many caregivers just in the last year or two have retired, I mean, literally have just aged themselves out because they've been with us for so long.

when we do training sessions, we have an in-person training coming up Tuesday night, and we'll go around the room of everybody that showed up for that training session, and they'll introduce themselves and how long they've been with. And it's amazing to me when we're going around the room and caregivers are saying, I think it's been 17 years. I think it's been 12 years, right? And it's just, and then you get a newer caregiver who's like, gosh, I've only been here for three, you know? And yeah, it's pretty cool.

Miriam Allred (11:22)
Bye.

a couple of follow-up questions. I love what you said about the us versus them trap. There's the leadership team and the office team that is usually pretty tight-knit in a literal office, and then there's this remote workforce that is not in the office, They're just out in the field, so it's really easy to fall into this trap of the us team versus the them team.

Paul Blom (11:57)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (11:58)
Let's just get into kind of the weeds already. How do you break down that wall? How do you help the caregivers out in the field feel like they are a part of the us team?

Paul Blom (12:07)
Yeah, it's definitely a challenge and when I think about when so we've been

For the Minnesota, we have the top workplaces through our Minneapolis Start Review newspaper. They have an outside organization that does surveys of your staff, right? And so we're competing with construction companies, we're competing with banks, we're competing with real estate companies. know, anybody can be nominated and participate in this. The questions are all the same. So how do you compete when you're an organization that has six people in an office?

and a hundred people out in the field who never come to the office once they've interviewed and oriented, right?

But you, and so to compete with that, it's hard, right? But we've never been less than number seven on the top 300 list. And that's because of culture, right? So what do we do to create a culture that says you are part of this, right? So it starts from the beginning, right? You're super honest with how the process works, right? We're not gonna sugarcoat anything. You're not gonna start next week with 40 hours, right?

to interview on the exact day that I did an intake with a client that needs you for 40 hours, right? It's gonna be a building block process. So being super honest about that. Making sure that the caregiver knows from the beginning, it's okay to say no, right? Just because I call you and describe this client situation to you doesn't mean you have to accept it, right? And it's also okay once you've started with a client to say this is not a good fit.

So we make sure that it's okay and we make sure that we express from the get-go that we're on the same page and that this has to be good for you just as much as it has to be good for the client.

We do one-on-one interviews. We never do group interviews. We don't have interview day, right? Our recruiting company, we right now use Carework. And so they do all of the upfront conversations. And that's been a process too, helping the recruiters understand, right? That don't tell people you're going to get 40 hours a week right off the bat. So they take them to the point of setting up an interview with Bob. My husband Bob still interviews.

every caregiver, one on one, they have to schedule an interview and they have to show up for the interview, right? If they have a reason and they call in advance and change the interview, they get one time to do that. But if they don't show up and they call the next day and say, gosh, whatever, you know, can I reschedule? The answer is no, right? Because if you can't show up for the interview and you can't call us, then what are you gonna do when you're assigned to a client?

So, you know, so it's that kind of stuff, but people will say, you know, and again, it starts with the office staff, right? Our most, I think, I haven't added it up recently, but I think our office combined, if you add up everybody's tenure in our office, it's about 140 years of tenure with Right at Home. And we very much focus on being the servants.

Why do we have people in an office? We have people in an office to support the people who are taking care of the clients who are paying us.

Right? And so, like I always say to like, there's this cycle and I've proven it over and over again. Most home care agencies are surveyed by Home Care Pulse or Activated Insights. And the last several years since they started doing the top 100, we've always been in the top 50 of the top 100 for overall client and caregiver satisfaction. And the reason is you take really good care of your caregivers, right?

take really good care of your caregivers, they take really good care of their clients. The caregivers stay with you a long time, the client gets to keep the caregiver for a long time. So the satisfaction circle just continues to evolve around itself.

Miriam Allred (15:55)
I love this.

That was a perfect overview because we're going to get into the weeds on some of those topics even more. But that was great, Paul. Thank you for sharing. Jessica, let's zoom out a little bit and talk about kind of like structuring this program. So you identified your top 10, you identified the Pauls, the people that are doing this really well, and you kind of step back to structure and implement this project. Explain that process.

Paul Blom (16:00)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (16:21)
analyzing the caregiver journey, putting it on paper. Like there's so many touch points and so many facets of this life cycle talk about just like outlining that and structuring that and then doing something with that with these owners.

Jessica Schultz (16:33)
Yeah, so really we just started to break out, you know, every step of that journey and started to just build questions around, you know, how could this look in an office? And so then our whole team kind of arranged a meet with the office in person. So we actually traveled to each of the top 10 offices around the country. So we could really get a sense of a feeling of what it was like to work in that office. And so we were just, again, it was kind of an interview.

to understand every step of the process. How long does it take to hire? How does orientation work? Walk me through your whole process. Tell me about onboarding. What are some uniquenesses with your caregiver and client matching? And of course, again, ways that they went above and beyond with rewards and recognition. So once we kind of documented that whole journey for each office, then we brought all that feedback back to the home office here and we started to kind of do a whiteboard.

And so then we just started documenting all those trends and those specific things that stood out that we believed were making an impact in those offices as to why they had such high scores. And then we started to separate it out by journey. And so that's when these specific best practices were really created on these amazing things that offices were doing. things that really stood out, again, were sometimes very basic, like just utilizing the technology.

to work for them, like that caregiver-client match process, or what Paul just described about making sure that the owner was included in some of those interviews. So some things are very easy and seemed basic, but then other things were above and beyond. And so we just, again, tried to document all those things, and then we then moved forward with this whiteboard project. And then once we created those best practices,

Then we put it out on our hub space for all of our offices to see them. And then we talked through the whole process and what that looked like and what we call our Takeoff Tuesday meetings, which is kind of our town hall meetings for all of our franchisees to attend. And then we walked through each of these steps and then answered any questions that the franchisee had.

Miriam Allred (18:38)
Okay, awesome. I want to talk about you going out and meeting with these top 10. was there a lot of overlap in their processes or were you surprised at how different all of their different like techniques and approaches were? was there a lot of overlap or was everyone doing things pretty differently?

Jessica Schultz (18:56)
You know, everyone was doing things differently actually, which was really cool because then we got to grasp, my gosh, this office is really known for X, right? Or they're really known for, their caregiver or client matching. We had an office in Illinois that was just amazing at client caregiver matching. And so being able to just, go through that whole journey cycle and understand what they do was phenomenal. You know, with Paul's office, was, creating that experience and talking to

caregivers and really understanding them on a personal level. Just everyone had their own way within each of those journeys. So we were able to capture a lot of data.

Paul Blom (19:27)
you

Miriam Allred (19:34)
I just think that's interesting. That's part of the premise of my podcast is there's no one right way to run a home care business. And you saw that you went out to your top 10 and some people may think like, they're probably all doing the same thing just like with small variants, but you went out there. They're all doing things totally different, which just shows that there is no one right way to recruit caregivers, to retain caregivers. Everybody does it a little bit differently. Can I ask you specifically like

What are a couple of things that stood out to you? Like you just referenced this Illinois agency and they were doing things differently. Like what's maybe one or two things that you, you and your team were just like, wow, that is so like out of the box abstract, not what we were expecting. What are a couple of examples you saw?

Jessica Schultz (20:16)
Yeah, I think, going back to this caregiver-client matching, one of the things that really stood out was just the sheer, attention to detail they had with each of their clients and understanding the needs before that caregiver would even walk in. So making sure that they prep them in advance on the same day, getting them excited about meeting the client, making sure that they took their shoes off before walking in because that client really,

didn't want shoes in their house. It was the little things I think that made a huge impact. And then that caregiver felt so comfortable going in. And then after that shift was over, the follow-up was just incredible. And making sure that the caregiver had everything that they need, all the equipment was there, went over that care plan over and over again. And then again, double checking with the client to make sure, hey, was everything good on your end as well?

And so all of those touch points, I think, was just very much stand out to us here at the corporate team. So that's just one example.

Miriam Allred (21:15)
love that example

because you think of one shift, the amount of touch points, the level of detail, one client and one caregiver, a handful of caregivers like, you know this Paul, just the amount of detail for every single shift and then doing that at scale. How do we repeat that process over and over and over? And I think one of you said it at the start, offices are doing a lot of things right. It's just like, sometimes we get lax or sometimes we get distracted or sometimes

Jessica Schultz (21:21)
Yes.

Paul Blom (21:32)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (21:43)
we get away from the basics. Jessica, that's what you were saying earlier, is just getting back to the basics. In home care, there's just a lot of distractions. There's so many things happening every single day, and we just lose sight of the things that are most important, which are oftentimes those touch points surrounding the shift. And that's just what stands out to me, is taking the time to just document all of those small nuances, and then that really adds up when it comes back to retaining the client and the caregiver.

Jessica Schultz (21:47)
Yes.

Paul Blom (22:02)
you

Yeah.

You know, just to add on to that, one of the things that I, when I talk to people about, cause it's a business, right? There's all kinds of moving parts and there's all kinds of stuff. But at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, it's all people, right? It's all people. We have clients, we have client families.

who gain peace of mind knowing that we're involved. have caregivers and the caregivers have families, right? And we have office staff and they have families. And it's all people. We don't have any cogs that we build. We don't have any books that we bind. We have a lot of other things we have to do to make this all come together. But at the end of the day, it's all people. And so it's that soft stuff. It's the relationship stuff that really, I think if you call

culminated everything that Jessica's team kind of discovered, right? The way you do it is different, but at the heart of it all, it's about relationships. And it's about how you build those relationships. And you can do that in a lot of different ways, right? For some people, it's about using, an online, reward system.

Right? again, everybody does it differently, but I think at the heart of it, it's about what that relationship looks like and feels like to those caregivers and those clients and families.

Miriam Allred (23:29)
I want to hear both of your take on this is what you're saying, Paul, is you have to find and have people with a heart for this work, a heart for this work, because that translates to the communication, to the thoroughness of taking the time to listen and interact with people. I want to hear both of your take on, do you hire for that and or can you train that? Can you teach people?

to have that compassion and that knack for communicating. Do you have to hire for that or can you train for that?

Jessica, let's hear you first and then Paul.

Jessica Schultz (24:02)
Yeah, I do think it starts with the hiring, making sure that you are hiring people who do have the heart to care. I do think there is a difference between a good quality caregiver that wants to do great things and wants to help people stay in their homes and just really build that relationship versus people who just want to make a paycheck at the end of the day. So I do think it starts with hiring, but I also think

in order to keep those great caregivers engaged, there is a lot of effort in wanting to make that connection and wanting to build a meaningful relationship with them. So I think it takes both, but it does start on the recruitment side.

Paul Blom (24:38)
I would agree 100%. I can teach people how to help someone who's got left side weakness from a stroke get dressed. I can teach people tactics for how to do cleaning. I can teach people how to help somebody with a shower. I can teach people a lot of things to do, but you can't teach people to have compassion for other human beings. And you have to figure that out in that interview process.

and then hold on to those people really tightly, right? And call them and say, hey, how's it going? Right? Is this job what you thought it was gonna be? Is there anything we could do to make the job better for you? Right? It's also about identifying early if things aren't gonna work.

Right? That caregiver that comes on. We just recently had a caregiver who actually returned to us after a number of years of being not working with us. And she returned to us. And you know, people's lives change. And I was seeing this pattern happen with this caregiver with calling off for the next day. And then she didn't show up for a client because she forgot to set her alarm. You know, and then it's the conversation is just like, you know what? This isn't working out.

This is not how we run our business. don't have clients call us 15 minutes into the visit to say that there's no caregiver here. catching that, nipping it in the bud, as Barney would say.

Miriam Allred (26:04)
And being proactive. If you're reactive, those are the people that walk out the door. Those are the people that don't even get the chance to have that conversation with until they're gone. So you have to be proactive, which is again, another, another touch point of checking in after every single shift, checking in regularly to make sure that they're happy, satisfied, have the tools and resources that they need before again, they're walking out the door. You have to be proactive. And on top of things,

Paul Blom (26:10)
Right.

Miriam Allred (26:30)
Jessica, I want, don't want to cut you off on just anything else that you saw when meeting with these owners that really surprised you.

Jessica Schultz (26:37)
Yeah, I would say too, during the recruitment process, those that really took the time to understand the caregiver, their interview was just incredible. They would go through the process to have a phone interview and really get a chance to get to know them early. I think offices that stood out were trying to just to get to know them and to really paint the picture for what the culture was to work there. And even if they decided they weren't gonna work there,

they would then leave that interview and go tell someone else about that experience. So I think, again, where we saw some really great offices that had that conversation early on in the interview. And then, again, it kind of took it through their onboarding. And everything that they were doing, they were able to back it up in terms of just being there for them and building that relationship. So those are the things that really stood out is from the beginning and just

through the end, you know, people that were doing really well.

Miriam Allred (27:36)
Were those interviews rigid? someone has five questions, six questions that they're going to ask every single candidate and it's very, like tactical. was it rigid or Maybe it's, it doesn't feel like an interview. It's more of a conversation. Like what, what did you see? More conversation or more kind of rigid formal process?

Jessica Schultz (27:54)
More conversation, I think it was, just to get to know them on a personal level. I mean, there were some specific questions to make sure that, your schedule aligned or availabilities were there, all those things were important as well. But I think on the front end, it was really just about making sure they had the heart to care and asking some of those specific questions about learning about the caregiver and what they're looking for. Meeting caregivers where they are, I think is another thing that

offices that do this really well understand.

Miriam Allred (28:24)
I just find it interesting because back to what Paul said earlier, this is people taking care of people and maybe in other industries and other verticals, like a very formal, rigid interview process makes sense. But here it's getting to know them. What are their strengths, their weaknesses? How do you get to know their heart? How do you get to know their compassion? How do you learn, who they are more than, the schedule, the pay, you know, all of those tactical things are important. Don't get me wrong, but.

I think the interview process should just be a lot more conversational, open-ended, so you can really gauge the individual. I'm just curious about technology utilization. We'll hear from you in a second, Paul. There are a lot of tools and technologies that help with these touch points. Jessica, I'm curious with those top 10, I think you may be referenced like

Were you surprised that some of them were under utilizing technology or were most of them like in the trenches of the technology? What was kind of the gamut of those top 10 when it came to just using technology for these things?

Jessica Schultz (29:19)
Yeah, I think what surprised us is, some offices they really didn't understand the scheduling in and out, those that were using technology or not, which was interesting because, you'd ask them questions about where are you tracking some of this? And they're like, it's all right here, you know? And so that was really interesting to understand, but there were also other offices that were.

utilizing some of the technology in terms of WellSky, so, learning where these clients are located on a map and where caregivers are located in terms of travel time and just trying to understand how far that caregiver is gonna have to go to meet a client. And there are some technology help within WellSky that can help them do that. And so I think it was just interesting to see

schedulers who are utilizing that feature, know, schedulers that weren't. And so there's just a lot of learnings across the board, you know.

Miriam Allred (30:14)
Yeah, I again, the reason I asked that is I think it's fascinating. In my mind, I would maybe think the top performing agencies, there's not a lot of that, like there's so much of this still living in our brain. I would think that they are all very, hands on when it comes to technology and documenting things and making sure everything's in a system and not in people's brains, but

You see, even the top performers, they have great schedulers that have a lot of the information in their brain. And that's not wrong. It's just, you my conception of some of these things. Paul, talk about maybe you and your team. you and your team, are they still, retaining a lot of information in people's brains or what's your kind of process for making sure everything's documented?

Paul Blom (30:52)
Yeah, we do a lot of documentation in WellSky. That's really important. We have fairly clear roles.

And we try to make sure that everybody has contact with caregivers on a regular basis. and we deliberately have different people do different things because if I introduce the care, if I did the intake with the client and I bring the caregiver out and introduce them, I've offered it to the caregiver. They say it sounds like a good fit. I go out and I do that, one-on-one introduction to make sure that I think it's a good fit in person. And then if I

call the caregiver and say, how's it going with Mrs. Jones? Right? The caregiver, to some degree, wants to say positive things about it.

But Lisa, who didn't introduce the caregiver, who didn't ask the caregiver to do that, calls after their first few visits and says, hey, I'm just calling to see how it's going with that client that you just started with. Now she has no vested interest, right, like I do, because it's my client and I want, right? So she will be more honest with Lisa about how it's going. And then Lisa might come to me and say, you know, that client follows her around and tells her every little thing to do and is kind of bugging her.

a little bit, right? And so can we intervene on that? So we deliberately have different people do different things and have different contact with clients and caregivers for some of that follow up just to give them like a person that doesn't have a vested interest in that. one of the things that Bob is really good at is tracking when a caregiver has been talked to. Because one of the things that's easy to do, you have these really great caregiver, right? ⁓

is a great example, right? Sue is this great caregiver. She never calls off, she's always on time, she does her job, her clients love her, and she doesn't need anything, right? She's never like, I need something, I need something, right? She's just that caregiver that you never hear from because she's just that good. It's easy to forget about Sue, right? You have to track.

who you've talked to, right? So that sometimes you just call caregivers and say, hey, I'm just calling to see how it's going.

because we haven't talked to you in a couple weeks. Right? And so that's just as important as the 30 day follow up call to say, hey, is this job what you thought it was gonna be? Right? And we want you to be really honest with us and just to have that random like, hey, I'm just calling to say hi, because you're doing a great job and your clients love you, but we just wanna make sure that we're in touch. But using that technology is really important for that.

Miriam Allred (33:18)
Yeah.

And you said, you said Bob is really good at tracking this. Is that automated? Is your phone system tracking calls in WellSky or is your team documenting those calls manually?

Paul Blom (33:27)
Yeah, no, they're all documented in WellSky. So, and there's a tag for everything. So is it a concern about a client? Is it just general, you know, general call to see how things are going? And then you can search on that.

within WellSky to see how that goes. The other aspect of it is that Bob hears everything, right? He's in his office, two offices down from me. He probably can hear me, especially if people whisper, he hears everything. so he's really good at knowing like, okay, today I heard Lisa call Jodi and Tina and whoever about fill-in shifts. And so I know that they've been talked to. And so he does the same thing with clients, print out a client list every so often and just cross them off as he's, hears people.

talking. So some of it's anecdotal but some of it is that technology supported documentation.

Miriam Allred (34:11)
Okay.

Paul, not to age you, but you've been doing this longer than a lot of this technology has even been around. We're talking longer than even Wells Sky, longer than all of this technology. You said a lot of your office team has been with you for a lot of years. Some of them probably even predate this technology as well. How

Paul Blom (34:17)
you ⁓

my gosh. Yeah.

Yeah.

Miriam Allred (34:33)
How have you navigated the adoption of technology? Again, you established a lot of processes pre-technology and some of those still probably translate to today where other things technology has supplemented or taken over. What has that just transition been like for helping your team really latch on and embrace technology?

Paul Blom (34:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I would say most of this gray hair is from technology changes over the years. And I come from an IT background, so I like technology. When we started 24 years ago, our scheduling system was called People Scheduler.

Miriam Allred (34:56)
Amazing.

Paul Blom (35:06)
And you literally had to copy and paste the schedules from week to week and recreate all of those schedules, right? We had paper time cards. The caregivers had to turn in a signed paper time card every week in order to get paid. You know, there's all these manual processes. We had Maximizer as our CRM. you know, and so then, then eventually, know, Home Track, we transitioned to Home Track. And that automated is like, holy cow, you can actually have reoccurring schedules and you

have to replicate your schedules every week. So you kind of grow with that. The hard thing about starting with that is like I had this great database CRM and all of a sudden Maximizer went away and it was no longer supported. so then we ended up eventually in WellSky. so every transition to a different platform, you have some data integrity issues at times.

And so things don't always translate. So that's been really difficult over the years. We're now in the process of kind of moving over to Zoho, which I'm super excited about, but it's also another transition and it's another concern about how that data transitions.

Miriam Allred (36:15)
And so I want to ask specifically, sometimes people are resistant to technology and I don't know the demographic of your office specifically, but oftentimes in home care operations, the demographic isn't the most technology forward or tech savvy or let alone come with like IT backgrounds. Like traditionally in the office, it's people that have the heart for this.

maybe have clinical backgrounds, but oftentimes don't have this, this like knack for technology. And so sometimes there's just like resistance. Sometimes it's just a matter of training. How do you, how do you encourage like good behavior when it comes to the technology? Because it's one more thing to write that down and in WellSky to make that note, to add that tag. Like it gets really monotonous really quickly, but how do you like incentivize or motivate people to maximize the technology?

Paul Blom (36:51)
Yeah.

So my focus on technology always is focusing on the aspect of technology that makes your job easier.

Right? So if you focus on that and you can say, okay, well, this seems like one more tedious thing to do. The reality is, is if you tag things properly, when you go back to find something, it's going to be super easy. Right? That's going to be, you're not going to be digging through, that kind of stuff. And I think for the most part, every time we have advanced technology, the team has been able to see what the benefit of that technology is going to be. not that long ago we started

using a texting platform, Because we find that, we all love to email, but not all caregivers read their emails, right? And so all of a we're like, and then caregivers were saying, you know, if you texted me, that would be better.

And you're like, ⁓ come on, right? so then, but then all of a sudden then you have, staff in the office texting on their personal cell, know, their individual cell phone. Well, you can't have that because then the caregiver starts texting individuals who may not be in the office that day. And then you miss things, right? So this way with, there's multiple texting platforms. We happen to use texting.biz, but then everybody in the office has access to everything.

Miriam Allred (37:49)
Thank

Paul Blom (38:14)
every

text message that comes and goes. And so often, like I'll be out at appointments, and when I walk back into the office, Lisa will say, don't miss that text that came in for you from so and so, or if it's time sensitive, just take care of it. So I think for the most part, I do have to say that there's been a fair amount of irritation with my new security system for our network,

Um, and the system captures junk mail, spam mail, and, sends you a message once in a while with the spam that it caught in the last three hours. So, you know, those changes are hard and they're hard for me too. I, know, like I was trying to log into a website the other day and it wanted to send me an email, right? Well, of course the email got caught in my spam filter, which I can't access until I get that quarantine message so I can release it. Well, by then the 10 minute

Miriam Allred (38:53)
Thank

Paul Blom (39:01)
time had expired and my code wasn't good anymore. Yeah, so you're like, I'm foiled, foiled by technology. But I think for the most part, if you focus on what's the benefit of that technology going to be and how is it going to make your job easier, better, more effective?

Miriam Allred (39:02)
And then it starts over. It's an endless cycle.

Yeah, I love that point of just focusing on how it makes their life and their job easier. There's still, in my humble opinion, too many manual tasks taking place in these home care offices. And I think a lot of it is just that resistance to change, that resistance to technology. And we have to just break down that barrier and drive home this point of it will really make your life easier. It will really make your job easier.

Paul Blom (39:45)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (39:45)
And so it's just

a matter of time and breaking down those barriers. Jessica, I'm sure you've seen this at the corporate level, working with a lot of owners, you see that resistance. What are some things that you've learned to help owners, operators, office teams break down some of that hesitancy?

Jessica Schultz (39:59)
Yeah, we talked to a lot of new owners as well coming in to the franchise system. so a lot of times what we say is, look for people who are curious about technology, you know, people that may not know a lot about it. If they're curious and they're willing to learn it. So going back to kind of what Paul was saying, I think it's really critical that, you get people that find the I want to know how to do it because it is going to make my job easier. Right.

So looking for some of those efficiencies. And I think, as we continue to evolve with technology as well, you know, I don't know how you could hire anyone without it. You know, I think it just kind of should go without saying ⁓ with our time and as we've kind of evolved that it really should be first and foremost, something that people are looking for during that interview process.

Paul Blom (40:38)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (40:46)
I agree with that. It's table stakes at this point in time, we're in 21st century, 2025. think it's table stakes at this point, but I like what you said about people that are curious about technology, people that are curious about AI, people that are tinkering. It's like we should be encouraging our office teams to be trying new technology, playing with different things, bringing ideas to the table of how we can create more efficiencies in these different processes. Go ahead.

Jessica Schultz (40:49)
Yeah.

Paul Blom (40:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I think,

I think even caregivers, the technology has changed. They used to turn in time cards and then eventually we did electronic visit verification through telephony, right, using the client's telephone to call in. Well, now most clients don't even have a landline. I mean, it's amazing to me how many clients I have that only have cell phones. And then it's sort of advancing to the app where they have to be within a geo-fence to clock in and clock out. And the resistance that we had with some of

of

our caregivers that were older adults themselves. Like, I'm not gonna learn this app. I don't do apps, I don't do apps. And I'm like, come into the office and we'll practice, right? I'll put in some dummy shifts. I'll load the app on your phone for you. We'll put in some dummy shifts and we'll practice clocking in and clocking out and completing tasks. And all of a sudden they're like, this is the coolest thing ever, right? Like you can get directions, you can call the daughter and tell her, I mean, it's like you can do everything.

Miriam Allred (42:03)
my god.

Paul Blom (42:09)
because of that app, where before it was calling the office and saying, know, gosh, the client wants to go to, whatever next week, is the daughter okay with that? And then we got to call the daughter and ask the daughter if that's okay to do, you know, right? Where the caregiver can from the app, just, you know, contact the emergency contact. anyway, so even the most resistant caregivers will call me and say, I'm so glad that you talked me into and talked me through.

doing that because it's so much easier than telephony, right? And it do so many more things with it.

Miriam Allred (42:38)
Exactly. It's ever evolving. I

like you bringing up even clients not really having landlines anymore and primarily having cell phones. In the next probably 10, 20 years, there will be no landlines. It's all going to be cell phones. You think about cameras and microphones and all of this other consumer technology that will be placed in these people's homes. It's just a matter of time before we're in a whole other era of technology in home care where the clients and the caregivers are just

Paul Blom (43:00)
yeah.

Miriam Allred (43:06)
autonomously using technology for almost everything that they do. um, to be continued on just where, where that takes us. I've taken us down this technology rabbit hole. That was intentional because I'm just curious. I think it's fascinating. Paul, I want to talk about some of your specific retention strategies, You mentioned your office team, your caregiver numbers, you have people that have been with you for 17 plus years. Like that is almost unheard of. And so I want you to just share a couple of specific

Paul Blom (43:12)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (43:33)
retention strategies that you all have deployed over the years. You talked about like one-on-one calls and check-ins and different things, but what are a couple of just kind of top of mind retention strategies that you all have deployed that have helped?

Paul Blom (43:46)
Sure.

Sure. So at the...

again at the heart of it is the relationship, right? And so one of the things that I do as the CEO and co-owner is I'm super transparent and I know transparency is a buzzword and all that kind of stuff. But so an example is I send out an email every Friday and of course now I also send out a text. The same thing comes in email and in text so they can choose what platform they want to view it on. And that correspond

Miriam Allred (44:08)
you

Paul Blom (44:16)
That communication always starts with, and the title is, if people get a kick out of it too, because the title is Friday afternoon email from Paul, right? Very, very creative, total creativity. And it starts with, here's how my week has been, right? This is what I, last weekend Bob and I went to,

Bayfield, Wisconsin with our godson and here are a few pictures, right? And I'll make a little collage of pictures of our weekend. And then I'll say, next weekend we're just hanging out here. I'm officiating a wedding or whatever it is that, and so they're getting to know me and they're getting to know Bob. And I can't tell you how many times I've had caregivers say to Bob or somebody in the office or myself, like I've never worked for a company where I actually felt like I knew the owner.

of the company, right? And so there's this personal touch that happens in that correspondence. When we bought our RV a few years ago, I actually had people say to me like, you're not honestly going to, like let your staff know that you just spent a hundred and whatever thousand dollars on this RV. And I'm like, why wouldn't I? We actually did a naming contest because we name all of our vehicles. So we did a naming contest with all of our staff.

Miriam Allred (45:24)
Thank

Paul Blom (45:26)
Caregiver's office that everybody submitting names and we had we had tickets to a show that we were giving away for you know a drawing for everybody who submitted a name and people were submitting names left and right and it just happened that we came back from vacation a camping trip and we hadn't picked any of the names because none of them were just jumping out at us yet and that that week a caregiver stopped by the office on her way to her client's house because she thought it was so cute that she found these chocolates that were caramel pecan

chocolates like turtles, but her client's name was Myrtle and this company had made these chocolates called Myrtle's and it was Myrtle's hundred and seventh birthday and Bob and I looked at each other and went, Myrtle!

That's it, our RV's name is Myrtle. And so we have Myrtle inscribed on the side of the RV with a little heart, and Myrtle got the biggest kick out of it. And last summer, when Myrtle was 108, I drove by her house with the RV and took a picture of her with her walker in front of it. And of course I sent that out in the email, one Friday. so that kind of stuff, right, that helps people feel like I know these guys. I know that they are here to do.

this right and many of know we didn't take vacations for years right we've been doing this for 24 years for those first 10-15 years or so we didn't have vacations until they started the President's Circle and we got to go on a free trip through right at home but so that's what so then the rest of the email is kind of like some reminders upcoming training opportunities and then we do a description of clients that we haven't staffed right especially during the pandemic we started having real issues with have

having

a client wait list. So I would send out, 13 blank blank Elm Street, 93 year old female needs help with a bath three times a week, whatever it is, just a general description. And found that caregivers actually reply to that and say, hey, I might be interested in that Galany Dina.

And I'm like, hey, we were filling a lot of cases just by caregivers. And then I had one week where I didn't send out the email and I had seven caregivers email me and say, did you not send out an email this week?

So they were actually paying attention to it. So that's one thing, that communication is one thing that's really important. Every year we take all of our staff and a guest to the Chanhassen Dinner Theater. Chanhassen Dinner Theater, for those of you who aren't in the Twin Cities, is a union...

dinner theater. do Broadway style live shows. They just wrapping up Grease, amazing production. The theater that seats over 500 people with dining tables in front. You eat dinner and then the show and then you have dessert. And it sets us back. We usually have about 75 % participation in this event and it probably costs $14,000, $15,000. We have a pre-theater event in one of the side theaters that they have that they use for weddings.

and stuff, and actually do an annual meeting. So I get up on stage, right, so we have kind of cash bar cocktail time, and I get up on stage and I have a slideshow, and I walk through a variety of things, including financials, an overview of how we did the last year, and then variety of different things that I talk about from the stage. And then we dismiss people to the dining room, where we all sit together in this huge group.

in the middle of this 500 seat theater and then of course they announce that Right At Home is there. And yeah, it's just like, most of our caregivers are female, right? And so that's just the world that we live in. husbands come up to me when we stand at the door to greet people as they're leaving and say, you know what, I've worked for 3M for 35 years. I don't even get a turkey for Christmas anymore.

Miriam Allred (48:58)
Thank

⁓

Paul Blom (48:58)
Right?

And my wife has this amazing part-time job that she loves and you take us out to this evening, mean everybody gets all dressed up and it's a really fun evening. I could give everybody a 15 cent an hour raise or I can save that money as again their Christmas gift or however they want to think about it and spend it all at once and that's what I choose to do.

So there's a whole bunch of other things, I mean we call everybody on their birthday, So even on Saturday and Sunday, like and even clients we call everybody on their birthday and when I get up on Saturday morning after I've read my paper and all done my stuff and I make my birthday calls You can't even believe how impactful that is the CEO the owner of the company called me on set people say are you in the office? And like I'm just calling from the app on my phone

But they just can't get over that I would call them on their birthday and they got a birthday card. I don't know, like, wow, I got your birthday card yesterday, whatever, thanks, but now you're calling me. And I usually tease, call them to remind you that it's your birthday in case you forgot. But that's the kind of stuff that, sympathy cards, when you find out that somebody lost their dog.

or their cat, or they call in because they have to go to a funeral because their favorite cousin died. We send sympathy cards left and right. Kim always teases like, another dog? But that's the kind of stuff that helps people feel connected. And that annual meeting that we have where I share the state of the business, that helps these staff people, these coworkers who are never in the office, feel connected to something.

Miriam Allred (50:20)
Yeah

Paul Blom (50:40)
because, and I worked in the IT consulting business, I worked in the temporary staffing business, same thing, right? The model is you have employees who work as a consultant in a company. You have employees who work as a receptionist at another company, but they're employed by you. We have employees, coworkers, who work at Mrs. Smith's house and Mr. Jones' house and Mrs. Zobel's house, right? And it's easy for them to have loyalty to the client, that they see every

day who they help take a shower and they make a meal for them and they do that stuff. It's hard work for the employer to develop the loyalty to you as an employer because again that relationship they have with the client is super intimate. So the lengths that I go to are really deliberate to make sure that my caregivers are as loyal to me and to our organization as they are to the clients that they serve. That's challenge.

Miriam Allred (51:31)
⁓ so,

so good, Paul. I love all of those examples. And I love where you were just landing with that at the end about loyalty, trust, honesty, loyalty. They go both ways. If you want that or expect that from your employees, you have to be willing to give that as a CEO, it goes both ways. You can't expect those things and not give them in return. And I think that's just...

the common pitfall is we expect or demand these things from these caregivers, like be open with us, be honest with us, call us when X happens. But if we're not calling them proactively, how can we expect them to call or text in when that relationship isn't already built on trust and on honesty and loyalty? And I love the weekly newsletter and how personal it is. I agree. I have heard, I have interviewed and talked to a lot of caregivers.

Paul Blom (52:02)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah. Right?

Miriam Allred (52:21)
that just say they don't know the owner. don't, they only know the scheduler. They only know their one point of contact. The rest of the office, the owner, the operator, it's like a black box to them. And I just think that's such a missed opportunity for them to have a relationship with the CEO and owner of the business. And look at you just all out sharing the personal side of you and your life. And they can connect over that and you can bond over that. And you're setting that example for them to share, you know, the personal

Paul Blom (52:32)
Right. Right.

Yeah.

Miriam Allred (52:50)
intricacies or nuances of their own life back to the office and that goes such a long way.

Paul Blom (52:53)
Yeah.

If your caregiver's only relationship is with a scheduler, the only person that they ever interact with is always asking them for something. Can you pull this extra shift? Can you stay longer at that shift? you, know, caregiver's sick today, can you go fill in there? Right? They're always being asked for something. And that's not a two-way relationship like you just pointed out.

Miriam Allred (53:02)
Mm-hmm.

ask owner CEOs like you, what are your top priorities? I think not enough owners are saying this, writing a weekly personal email that goes out to every single caregiver. I don't hear a lot of CEOs saying that. I don't hear them prioritizing calling a list of caregivers on their birthday. That is why, your OSAT and ENPS scores and your retention numbers are off the charts is because you as an owner.

These are your priorities. It's not putting out fires, it's not hiring, it's not KPI. Your priority is talking to people, texting people, calling people, writing that email, and it shows in your actual numbers. Jessica, a big part of this program was also standardizing...

Paul Blom (53:40)
Right.

Miriam Allred (54:00)
retention best practices. And you went to all these offices and just like the recruitment was, the retention strategies, tactics were all over the board. But one of the things that you put together that you shared with me is like retention best practices. And so I just want you to kind of overview why every agency should be creating a retention program and what are some of the key elements to a successful, dedicated retention program.

Jessica Schultz (54:27)
again, it goes back to franchise offices that are just working in their day to day, know, just as Paul described, know, contacting caregivers, having them pick up a shift. They're not really thinking about what do I need to do today to brighten someone's day or make a caregiver feel like they're a part of something bigger, right? And so coming up with a process where you actually, what Paul's doing today is he's, sending reminders probably through WellSky, through those tags and making sure that

Sue or Pam is being contacted because we haven't remembered to contact her last month, whatever the case is. So I think just having that process in place for how often you're going to touch base or, when you're going to reach out, how you're going to reward is going to be really key because I think it's forgotten. It's just one of those things that gets forgotten. People, I don't know, for some reason, it's easy to put on the back burner in what they're doing. And so

I think there's a lot of things to learn when you do have a process that you put in place that you could also solicit feedback. know, like Paul's automatically getting that because he's building that relationship by showing people who he is. But you could also get that through other various ways of, exit interviews or stay interviews to really understand what are the trends? What are we seeing both positive and negative? if we are seeing a negative in a certain place, it's really important that

If you don't have a process, you don't know what to change. So having that process and knowing where those negative maybe trends are lying, that you can make a change there and fix those things. And also just being an advocate for the caregiver and being open to that feedback, I think is another thing that we see with these top 10 offices that really stood out is they're open to that feedback and they want it. They crave it actually. yeah, I think that's really.

Just building the process, having a formal process is really gonna be key in order to really move the needle on some of these things.

Miriam Allred (56:23)
And Paul's examples were very hands-on, handwritten, very, very personal. I think some owners listening to this that have hundreds of caregivers, maybe even thousands of caregivers, it's really hard to replicate that at scale. And the last two or three years, we've seen more technology in the retention, rewards, recognition space. I'm curious who...

Paul Blom (56:28)
you

Jessica Schultz (56:28)
Yes.

Yes.

Miriam Allred (56:46)
who your preferred vendors are and if that has been a big push for you all to encourage using technology for some of that. I know you're nodding. So yeah, what are your thoughts there?

Jessica Schultz (56:54)
Yeah.

Yeah. So we do partner with Caribou. So Caribou has been a great partner of ours. We did a pilot with them last year and now we have almost 70 offices using Caribou. So unlike Paul's office, Paul's kind of using WellSky as his technology to reach out offices that, want to reward through gamification, for example.

they can do that through Caribou and give points. And what we've kind of seen with some of the studies that Caribou has been doing is sometimes they really just like the points. The points are even more valuable than, handing someone over a gift card, for example, where they're not getting, you know, anything yet, but they're earning something, right? So that whole gamification is really fascinating and it's been working for our teams. And I know we do have several of our larger offices. We have a Boston owner that

was on Caribou very, very early on and has just ranted and raved about it because it does, it helps the office team with those points and that they don't have to do as much work as picking up the phone. So you're awarding someone points and it's that instant text message, right? Like I'm important, I'm getting something here that's really moving the needle again, so.

Miriam Allred (58:11)
Yeah. And back to there's no one right way. I personally think like a hybrid approach, let the technology do what it does best sending out some of those like, you know, those like low yield touch points. It can do all of that, but then put your time and attention in where Paul is putting it in of making the phone calls, writing the handwritten texts, like let technology do what it does best and do that at scale so that your team can focus on those really

Paul Blom (58:31)
Right.

Miriam Allred (58:38)
personal phone calls and handwritten notes. think there's just kind of the best of both worlds, but every office looks a little bit different and approaches it differently. I'm curious maybe from both of you, the flip side of this question of have you deployed any retention tactics or strategies that fell flat? I think a lot of owners can learn maybe from some of your mistakes. Paul, was there anything that you invested time or energy into and realized they just didn't care or it just didn't land how you expected it to?

Paul Blom (59:06)
You know, there was a program years ago, and I realized that it was a right at home program. It was a...

very pre precursor to Caribou, right? And it was a points program. literally they had a book that they could choose from a bunch of really junky things, you know, to be honest. And I found that, you so we would award points for different things. And I found that there was no appreciation for it. And I thought to myself, you know, I wouldn't appreciate it, right? Like I don't need to turn in 25,

Miriam Allred (59:28)
Thank

Paul Blom (59:44)
points to get a little transistor radio or whatever, know, whatever was available at that time. And the reality is, because, so I was co-chair of the Strategic Leadership Council for Right at Home when we were doing the pilots with Caribou and Ava.

And I still am a huge advocate for owners using a program like Caribou, and obviously Caribou ended up being the partner that we chose at a national level. I still really encourage, because like you said, Miriam, some owners just can't, right? They can't scale what I do to what they have. I have 100 employees, but we've done this from the beginning, right? This has been our model from the beginning. If that's not been your model,

It's going to be hard to shift that. It's going to be hard to get, know, I mean I've got Lisa's been with us for 24 years, Debbie's been with us for 24 years, Kim has been with us for almost 10 years, Mark, you know, mean we have our office staff and so we have that mentality all together as a team. But I think that for a lot of offices, Caribou is a really great way to up the game.

and do some of that touch point stuff. And I know Jay in Boston has just had tremendous success with it and being a great way to recruit, but he's got, I mean I don't even know how many caregivers they've got, but it's huge.

But I definitely would encourage people who are struggling with caregiver retention and caregiver satisfaction that that might be a way to really raise the bar on that.

Miriam Allred (1:01:24)
And I think it comes back to what Jessica said is just feedback loops and collecting that feedback. Every caregiver wants probably something different. Every office, your demographic of caregivers looks so differently. And so you might have people that gravitate towards that instant gamification type model or some people that really value like handwritten notes or just the pay raises. I think it just comes back to the feedback loop. Like you can spend

Paul Blom (1:01:44)
Right.

Miriam Allred (1:01:49)
a lot of time and waste a lot of money on things that don't work. But the best thing is just to go to your employees, ask them what they want and value most, and then give it to them. It's as simple as that. And so just putting those feedback loops in place to make sure you're gathering that feedback is what's most important. This has been awesome. You guys have taken us kind of all over the board. We've covered a lot of different topics. I just think Right at Home is such a model working with your top owners and

Paul Blom (1:01:56)
Right.

Miriam Allred (1:02:15)
documenting these things and thinking really deeply about these processes. we just scratched the surface kind of on like the recruitment side. There's so many touch points in recruitment and retention, but every single touch point matters. And you really have to pick that apart and analyze that in your own business to know where your weaknesses are, where your strengths are, and how you can improve these processes. I just want to end with one kind of maybe general question about the employment landscape. ⁓

Paul Blom (1:02:41)
you

Miriam Allred (1:02:42)
Jessica, you've been doing this for a handful of years. We all have just lived through the pandemic. We're in this kind of political and economic landscape. The employment shortage is a real thing, and it's not going away anytime soon. And so I just wanted to ask both of you, after going through this top 10 project, how much of it can we control with

these types of strategies and tactics versus how much is maybe out of our control and how much does that stress you both out? Home care is your livelihood, is your life. How much does the employment landscape maybe keep you up at night? Jessica, let's start with you and then Paul, your take on that.

Jessica Schultz (1:03:23)
I do think that there is something to watch for, right, with how this is gonna land here in the coming years, because we do have people that are getting older, right? And we're gonna need to think about what do we do differently? How do we put ourselves out in front of the competitor? And so having that first caregiver mindset, caregiver first, thinking about them and...

really just focusing on their experience and how you're standing out. You know, this caregiving profession is emotionally taxing, which we know can lead to stress and burnout. Caregivers really strive for that support system. And for those offices who continue to be there for them, like Paul's office, whether it's, if they need help, additional resources, whatever the case is, those offices will continue to stand out and having a focus in that space. So I think for Right at Home,

It'll be a challenge, but it's also exciting because it's a problem to solve that we can really think about what to do differently and put ourselves out there. We're gonna be looking to focus on a leadership development program for our office staff here soon. And so really just understand what that means to have a growth mindset in helping caregivers achieve success. And so we're really excited to elevate that and elevate this profession.

just continue to raise the bar in the industry.

Miriam Allred (1:04:38)
Great, great thoughts. Paul, what would you add?

Paul Blom (1:04:42)
You know, think, I mean, we've seen the recruiting landscape loosen up a little bit, if you will. You know, it's gotten better. Finding more and more applicants. I think, a couple of things, you know, the challenge around hiring.

really just reinforces the need for retention, right? For caregiver satisfaction and retention. Because if you're not turning over, you don't need to hire as much, right? I mean, that's the key. But focusing on different, we've always tried to focus on an older...

caregiver model to begin with. So we're an AARP pledge company that we pledge that we appreciate and value older workers who oftentimes make better caregivers, not better, who are caregivers with more in common with their clients because they're closer in generational age. And so I think that that's definitely got to be a focus for us. And then obviously there's going to be the continued incorporation

of technology to enhance the ability to provide human care, right? So the ability to track biometrics and stuff in between caregiver visits and family visits, medication technology and all of that kind of stuff to enhance that. But I do see, I think that given our current political landscape, right, I think we're going to find people staying in the employment.

market longer, but not necessarily in their current employment. So that retirement age, the leaving of the corporate job and the finding of something meaningful to do, and that's kind of our angle. That's kind of what we try to focus on is folks who are leaving the corporate world or leaving whatever they've done for a very long time, but looking for something meaningful to do.

and that's what we're trying to capture. ⁓

Miriam Allred (1:06:29)
Really great thoughts from both of you. You

both sit at different like seats and have different angles on this industry. So I just wanted to end with kind of your general thoughts on that and really great thoughts from both of you. This has been so interesting and fun with both of you. Thank you for coming prepared for this conversation. And thank you for all that both of you do. You're busy as ever leading your organizations. And so just appreciate you taking the time and joining me in the lab and.

⁓ look forward to continuing the conversations right at home. Again, it's just kind of on this forefront of, these initiatives and of these projects. And there's owners out there like you, Paul, that have been doing this for a long time and have a lot to give back and a lot to, educate other owners on. So appreciate all of the insights. So thank you both for joining me in the lab. And, I hope people that listen to this will connect with you and reach out if they have follow up questions, but we'll go ahead and wrap here.

Paul Blom (1:07:18)
Awesome. Thanks, Mirian.

Jessica Schultz (1:07:18)
Awesome. Thank you so

much for having us.