The Forgotten Aspect of Home Care Operations: Education and Training of Your Home Care Internal Staff
There’s a lot of discussion about the education and learning needs of the home care caregiver staff; sometimes because it is required by law, and other times it’s because home care owners and administrators believe strongly in caregiver continuing education. However, how often do you hear about continuing education and training for the internal home care office staff? There are at least two major reasons to invest in the continuing education of your internal staff – a better educated staff means better service to customers and your continuing education investment goes a long way toward retention of this valuable resource.
One of the major challenges home care owners and administrators experience in providing this education and training is the lack of available courses or trainings that relate to the job the individual performs within the organization. That was one of my biggest challenges as a home care executive. It does require managers to employ creativity. Sending the receptionist to courses on “How to deal with difficult people”, as well as, courses on selling and phone presence was a real positive. The receptionist is the first contact with your agency and, therefore, creates the first impression. The old saying “you never get a second chance to make a first good impression” applies . A caller to your home care agency will make a decision about your agency in the first five seconds on the phone with your receptionist. If the exchange is less than positive, it takes an additional five to ten minutes with another person to revise a bad impression. Training your first line of contact is both desirable and critical to success of your agency.
The next position that is most frequently ignored is the billing and payroll clerical staff. If you do not have tenured payroll and billing staff in your office to train new employees, the employee will have to learn by trial and error. You want to avoid this if at all possible. What do you do if you are a new agency, or have no tenured staff, and your payroll and billing staff is new to their role? One of the more creative solutions I have seen is to negotiate some time with a respected home care agency for your new employee to shadow the payroll and billing staff of their agency. Frequently the financial software company you use will have other users who are tenured business owners and can provide you with a contact for setting up the learning experience. There should also be training for the billing and payroll software that you acquire. The software companies usually provide direct training on-site for the software which is something you want to take advantage of even if it costs more to do so.
The next biggest challenge for continuing education for the internal home care staff is to find on-going courses or classes that will keep your employee engaged and learning. One of the things we did when I was a home care executive was to make selected in-services mandatory for all employees annually. The in-services included the internal home care staff. This achieved two things: it provided inclusiveness for all the staff, and it signified to the internal staff that we valued them and their contribution to the agency success. Some of the mandatory in-services included customer service updates, safety in the workplace, and the staff “Brain Storming for the Future”. “Brain Storming for the Future” was an opportunity for all the staff to dream about the future of the organization, where they would like to see it go, and how that future would look and feel. All staff participated and contributed from their perspective position in the organization. It is a great way to build your teams and your home care organization.
The bottom line for your home care organization is that you recognize and invest in the internal staff of the home care agency. Undoubtedly, other home care agencies have other additional creative training and education opportunities for the internal staff. We would love to hear about them from you.
Each member of your home care is a valuable asset. To keep them interested and growing, learning opportunities must be provided for all. If you need assistance in designing an in-service training for your internal staff, or assistance with the overall management of the home care agency, call Ginny Kenyon at 206-721-5091 or e-mail gkenyon@kenyonhcc.com. We are here to help.