Kenyon Connects

Nothing is more unsettling to a home care organization than the loss, or impending loss, of an essential leader. Home care agencies that fail to plan for this event experience major disruptions in their business; initiatives lose momentum or are completely lost, uncertainty increases staff resignations, and business drops off causing a decline to the bottom line. To avoid this problem, a home health, or hospice organization must have both an emergency succession plan, as well as an established succession plan.

What is a Succession Plan? A sound home care succession plan is an ongoing process that contains the following:

1. Identification of critical positions needed for your home care agency.

2. Determination of the requisite skills needed for those positions.

3. Identification and assessment of potential successors or sources capable of providing individuals with the requisite skills.

4. Management and leadership involvement at all levels throughout your home care agency in developing the plan.

5. Ongoing commitment to developing internal talent and monitoring their progress.

A successful home care agency leadership succession plan identifies the environment, prepares for contingencies, and minimizes disruptions. Therefore, effective succession planning must be an ongoing process of regularly identifying, assessing, and developing talent to ensure leadership continuity for all key positions in a home care agency. The process must be in keeping with your home care or hospice agency’s ongoing strategic goals and objectives. This may mean that the kind of leadership style, skills, and behaviors needing to be developed and promoted might be different in the future from those in the existing culture. Therefore, the plan must be visited yearly and updated to match what your home health or hospice agency needs going forward.

“It must be understood that “succession planning is not a “replacement” strategy. A properly prepared succession plan is a proactive, systematic effort designed to ensure the continued effective performance of an organization, division, department, or work group.”

Christopher Simoneau, The Business Review

With an up-to date succession plan, a situation creating one or more vacant leadership positions is less of an emergency for your home care agency. If, however, individuals within your home care agency are not capable of taking the helm and leading your organization, an alternative will need to be implemented as soon as possible to prevent damaging disruptions to your business. This replacement frequently is an interim home care manager with the requisite skills to fill the position.

With both an emergency and a succession plan in place, the selection of an appropriate interim home care manager is considerably easier. The requisite skill sets have been identified and updated, and the essential work elements are in place with all staff on board with their identified responsibilities during the interim home care manager’s time with your agency.

As with all things in our lives, planning makes a big difference. We never want to think of disasters occurring, but we all know that they do. People experience fires at their homes and business, hurricanes occur, earthquakes happen, and people become ill or die. How we plan to meet these times dictates the outcome. As interim home care managers, we too often see the failure to plan.

Kenyon HomeCare consulting can assist agencies with succession plans that help them through leadership transitions and lay the groundwork for when an interim manager is needed to fill the gap until a permanent leader can take the helm. It you need assistance with either developing succession plans or interim management, call Kenyon HomeCare Consulting at 206-721-5091 or e-mail gkenyon@kenyonhcc.com. We are here to help.

You have just experienced the loss of the top leader of your home care agency. There in no one in the organization with the skill set or leadership to temporarily take on the role. What to do? Some agencies turn to consulting firms that offer interim home care managers. However, not all interim home care managers are equal. To assure you are getting the right fit for your organization, there are several factors to consider in your selection of the interim manager.

First, what is the reputation of the consulting firm or interim home care consultant? If you’re working with a consulting firm, you will want to know how they vet their interim managers. What are their requirements for the position? And, how does the home health consulting firm assure the associates have the requisite home health and hospice background, experience, and competency? A quality consulting agency should be able to address all of these concerns with an accurate description of the process and how they determine which interim associates best fit your needs. If you are thinking of using an individual who does interim home care management, you will want to do the vet them like you would a permanent replacement.

Secondly, how much actual experience does the potential candidate have in a leadership position for either home health or hospice? How current is that experience? If your agency is both home health and hospice, do they have experience in both? Do you have multiple offices? If so, has the potential interim home care manager managed multiple offices? What do their references look like and, will the home care consulting firm share that information with you? A good home care consulting firm will have already checked their references and be able to provide those to you if you wish. Most firms we are familiar with do a good job of vetting their consulting associates and this may not be a necessary step for you to take.

Thirdly, you will want to interview the candidate(s) for a fit with your needs and your agency staff. A home care consulting firm will usually have a couple of potential candidates for you to interview. Interview the interim candidates as you would the permanent replacement. Sometimes the interim home health or hospice manager will, in fact, turn out to be your replacement, so it is important that you approach the interviews in the same manner as you will for the permanent replacement. You may want the middle managers and selected field staff of your home care agency to also be involved in the interviews to assure this is someone they can respect and follow.

Finally, even the best interim home care manager will have difficulties initially if you do not have a clear plan for them to follow. Place any major initiatives on the list of objectives for them to achieve. If you are engaging a consulting firm, allow them to do a full organizational assessment that will provide identified issues and areas that the interim home care manager must address and resolve, as well as, the identified initiatives that the agency is working on. We all know that the objective of the home care agency is to find a replacement as quickly as possible. We also find that most home care agencies can take anywhere from 6 to 10 months to find that permanent replacement. In the end, no matter how desperate you are to fill the position, be sure to select the interim home care manager carefully.

View the time you have the interim manager as an opportunity to clean up the agency and set a course for the future with an expert at the helm. Rather than viewing the interim as “just a fill in”, an expert from the outside can take a new look at your agency, upgrade your agency and systems, and prepare you for your next adventure.

Over the years, we have provided numerous interim home care managers for home care executive level positions. On a few occasions we have been told that the cost of using a senior home care executive is more than they can afford. This has always intrigued me, because when a cost of service comparison is conducted, we frequently find that by the time all the benefits and overhead burden are calculated, the interim home care executive costs about the same and in a couple of situations less than what their actual cost of a permanent replacement.

What we have found is that some home care organizations only look at the monthly salary of the previous executive and measure against that number alone. If the employee burden of an organization is 20% or more, the cost of using an interim home care manager is about the same, or depending on the salary of the previous executive, a little less. There always needs to be a comparison of apples to apples when calculating the cost of an interim home care manager for a senior level position.

Cost, however, is only one area that a home care organization needs to think about in using an interim home care manager. The benefits prove to be so beneficial that, in retrospect, a vacated executive position gives an organization the opportunity to really look at themselves, their weakness and strengths, and develop a meaningful and effective strategic plan to carry the agency forward.

When you fill an interim home care manager position, it requires that an organizational assessment be accomplished in order to make sure that the interim management services are meeting the needs of the home care agency. An initial organization assessment also ensures that the interim home care executive has focused on the issues and goals that need attention.

It’s not uncommon for an organizational assessment to uncover issues and problems that were not apparent to the higher level managers of the home care agency. Sometimes we find that the staff filling certain positions are either not competent for the position or their personality and style are disruptive to the team. This makes it difficult to build a cohesive and effective management or staff team. In other situations, we have found that the home care organization has a very dedicated and competent staff, but the systems of the organization have not kept pace with changes in the environment and the implementation of required processes or software.

In these cases, time-consuming “work arounds” have been developed by the staff to accomplish what they know needs to be done. These situations are costly to a home care agency and frequently remain unidentified because the work is getting done.

An objective outside consulting firm, with interim mangers conducting the organizational assessment, provides you the invaluable benefit of identifying these types of issues, along with recommended solutions . You will then have some direction on how these can be resolved to the benefit of the agency.

Finally, the benefit of using an interim home care manager is that your agency does not lose momentum on previous projects and initiatives. It allows your agency to continue to function effectively and maintain your progress toward organizational goals and objectives. It also gives stability to the organization in a time of stress and flux. Using a seasoned interim home care executive assists the staff to move forward with confidence and know that they will be okay.

The biggest mistake that an organization makes is to allow a key position such as the Director, Administrator, or CEO to go unfilled for 4 to 6 months. Referrals drop, collections fall off and this distresses the business. Without a leader at the helm, critical things fall by the wayside. There is no one at the top with the view of the “world” of the agency. An agency without a leader is an agency afloat on the sea with no one at the rudder.

If you are in a position with an executive level position open and need help during this time of change, call or e-mail Ginny Kenyon at 206-721-5091 or gkenyon@kenyonhcc.com. We are here to help.

When there is a vacancy at the top, it can wreak havoc on a home health agency. Strategic initiatives that are underway may lose their emphasis with no one to drive the changes, and executive level relationships in the community can be lost. Most agencies can survive for 2- 3 months but, beyond that, lack of attention to important elements can cause an agency to turn in a direction that is not good for the agency, the staff or the clients.

It takes time and serious due diligence to find the right person to lead the agency. As I was once told by a very wise executive, “No hire is better than a bad hire.” Take your time to make sure the leader you hire is the right fit for the job, the agency and your staff. Unless a transition plan is in place in your agency, and the next leader has been groomed and is ready to permanently take the helm, your home health agency will need to bring in a temporary leader or a home health interim executive.

So why bring someone in on a temporary basis? There are several reasons a temporary leader is preferable before a permanent leader is found and hired.

First, an outside executive has fresh eyes. A seasoned interim manager brings a wealth of previous experience with multiple agencies in different situations, allowing them to apply corrections that may not be apparent to others. In addition to making sure your agency runs smoothly, an interim leader can identify problems that are unseen or unnoticed by current staff who are so busy with the day-to-day operations they do not question whether they are effective or appropriate. Because every effective interim management contract includes an organizational assessment, the interim home health executive leader will have identified areas for improvement. However, because an assessment is a broad overview, smaller issues that have grave impact on your agency’s performance may not be caught in the first sweep of the organizational assessment. A skilled home health interim executive will quickly be able to size up the underlying issues and currents that so often run through a home health agency, especially one in transition.

Additionally, the home health interim executive will be able to do an objective assessment of the individuals in the organization and make corrections where needed. Frequently, underperforming or incorrectly placed staff are not corrected or moved because of the relationship between the manager and the staff. A home health interim executive does not have that bias and is in a position to make objective decisions about the performance and placement of your staff. If another position can be found for which the individual is qualified, the transfer can be made with fewer emotional issues. If there is not an opportunity to relocate the employee, a good home health interim executive will work with the HR department or staff to ensure that the termination is as painless as possible to both the staff person and the organization.

Finally, a qualified home health executive brings experience and knowledge that is current and applicable to the position. We have found that currently employed home health executives frequently do not go to conferences and trainings because of the heavy demands in the workplace. This puts the agency at a disadvantage. The leader is not up to date with the latest changes and how others in the industry are solving them. Additionally, the executive is not able to execute one of their primary functions: knowing future changes and trends and preparing your agency for those changes. An interim home health executive brings all of that, and more, to your agency.

If your agency is in transition and in need of a temporary executive to lead it while you seek a permanent replacement, call Kenyon HomeCare Consulting to discuss your needs and allow us to assist you through this time of transition. For more information on how we help you make the most of your temporary transition, visit http://kenyonhcc.com/services/interim-management.

Staffing is a fluid process and no matter the size or scope of an organization, staff comes – and staff goes. Sometimes we’re glad to see the back of an employee but other times, for no fault of our own, we lose a valued manager whose exit deeply impacts the entire culture of our organization.  In the short run, most organizations can absorb the loss.   However, as time goes by, the absence of a strong leader can erode confidence, eat away credibility, and impact your financial bottom line.

As a quick fix, agencies often decide to promote from within to temporarily fill a position.  Rarely a good choice, this person often comes with baggage or preconceived notions from the rest of the staff that weigh down his or her effectiveness.  More often than not, a well intended internal hire leads to internal strife and a valued employee who eagerly stepped in to help out, is suddenly diminished and powerless to make needed changes.

A more productive solution is to hire a consulting firm to bring in an experienced Interim Manager while you conduct an executive search for a permanent hire.  Sometimes referred to as a Transition Manager, an organization’s willingness to integrate a temporary solution into their long-range game plan can make or break periods of growth and change. Read More