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• Corecubed

  Corecubed helps home care agencies with everything from branding (including logo design) and corporate ID needs to website development, brochure development and any other need you may have. Our MOST program provides access to a library of themed sales, recruitment, design and advertising materials created by a team of home care and home health experts, to educate, communicate, and differentiate your agency.

  www.corecubed.com

• Creating a Culture of Excellence in Home Health

  Many home care agencies strive for and claim they have excellent services, but rarely do we ever hear a home care agency talk about a culture of excellence  - one that sets them apart from other home care agencies. This discussion is essential for home health leadership. To better understand how to create a culture of excellence, we must first understand the two elements: culture and excellence.

  What is organizational culture and why should it be of any concern for the busy home health executive? We go into many agencies that are self described as in a state of chaos or decline and are desperately in need of major change to correct the direction of the agency. We find the best laid plans fail because the culture of the organization does not support the changes being made. Understanding organizational culture helps us better understand this conflict.

  Gareth Morgan describes organizational culture as: “The set of beliefs, values, and norms, together with symbols like dramatized events and personalities that represents the unique character of an organization, and provides the context for action in it and by it.” Beliefs and values are words that will pop up in other definitions, as well. Norms are described as traditions, structure of authority, or routines.” (From AdChoices)

  Beliefs, values and norms are very powerful forces in a home health agency. How do beliefs, values, and norms originate? And, how do you change them if they are contrary to where the home care agency needs to go? Unlike creativity and entrepreneurial attributes, which are randomly spread throughout an agency, culture is created and sustained by the home health agency leader.

  Culture starts at the top. If you, the home health executive, want to create a culture of excellence, you must first look at yourself. As an executive, this was the hardest thing I ever had to do! Yet, as it turns out, it has been and continues to be the greatest gift I have given to myself and those with whom I work.  Ask yourself, “If I was one of my employees, would I like working with me? Why or why not? The answers may surprise you. They did for me.

  As a home health leader who creates a culture of excellence, you must inspire trust, safety, enthusiasm, appreciation, respect, inspiration and acceptance. How to gain this is the hardest and longest process of all. To begin this process, ask yourself the following:

  ~ Have I ever worked in an organization where I felt trust, safety, enthusiasm, appreciation, respect, inspiration and acceptance? Who was the leader? What were the traits they exemplified that lead to my feeling of joy in the organization? (I do not use the word joy lightly. People working in a culture of excellence have a feeling of joy in their jobs.) Make a list of all the attributes you appreciate in that leader.

  ~ What were their behaviors? How did these behaviors make you feel? List those as well. Be as detailed as you can be as this will help you model the behavior you want to emulate.

  Excellence is the result of culture and a concerted effort to reward and honor the efforts and outcomes of all the individuals in the home health agency. Excellence is meeting and exceeding the expectations of your customer. Do you know who your customers are? Do you know their expectations of you and your staff? To shape a culture of excellence, everyone in the home care agency must have a clear idea of who are their customers… This includes the individuals we care for, their families, and the friends and neighbors involved in their life… Also included in the definition of the customer are all the individuals that refer potential clients to your home care agency. And, we can’t forget all your employees are customers to you and to each other. Multiple research projects have been conducted on staff retention. The top ten reasons cited for why employees remain loyal to their companies are:

  1. Exciting work and challenge
  2. Career growth, learning and development
  3. Working with great people
  4. Fair pay
  5. Supportive management/good boss
  6. Being recognized, valued and respected
  7. Benefits
  8. Meaningful work and making a difference
  9. Pride in the organization, its mission and its products
  10. Great work environment and culture

  A culture that nurtures excellence stimulates what employee’s value about their organizations. An organization that fulfills all the ten listed values is an organization that has a culture of excellence. To build that culture of excellence, it starts with the top.

  While all of the customer elements are important, the one most often missed, and the most critical for building a culture of excellence, is everyone involved within your home care agency is a customer of each other. If you are ready to create a home care agency with a culture of excellence, Kenyon HomeCare Consulting has a long history of assisting agencies to achieve excellence. We can be reached by e-mailing gkenyon@kenyonhcc.com or calling 206-721-5091.

• Get in Lock-Down Mode to Keep Your Website Secure

  The Internet is an amazing tool for marketing, communicating and doing business, but the downside of the World Wide Web is that, unfortunately, nothing online can be absolutely guaranteed as 100 percent safe and secure. Viruses and malware can infiltrate computers, social media accounts, and websites. You can get infected without even knowing it, simply by visiting an already infected website, if your computer is not up to date on its software and security patches.

  Even the most sophisticated and seemingly secure sites are vulnerable to tech-savvy hackers. Luckily, however, website software is updated frequently with new features, enhancements, and fixes designed to patch holes or vulnerabilities in the software’s infrastructure to ultimately keep your site running smoothly and securely. So, if you have a website, it is essential to stay informed and up to date on the latest software for your site, or to partner with a legitimate firm that does just that. A monthly check of updates is essential, and immediate updates when a security patch is issued are imperative.

  Fighting a Cybercriminal Gang and Winning!

  WordPress is one of the most popular platforms to build websites, and last month, 30,000 WordPress blogs were hacked and infected by a “cybercriminal gang whose primary goal is to distribute rogue antivirus software,” according to this article from Networkworld.com. While these kinds of hacks are nothing new, what is most relevant is the following: “Many of the blogs compromised in these recent attacks were running outdated WordPress versions, had vulnerable plug-ins installed or had weak administrative passwords susceptible to brute force attacks,” said David Dede, a security researcher with website integrity monitoring firm Sucuri Security.

  When a business builds a website, it is oftentimes considered “done” and no updates or maintenance is secured. Unlike a brochure or a printed piece of marketing material, a website is a living and changing marketing/business tool. Many websites are compromised because site owners/administrators fail to keep their website software up to date; thus, vulnerabilities in the old software can be discovered and exploited. When a website is hacked, and there is a malicious result in visiting that site, Google may completely block the compromised website from being shown, adding it to a blacklist of infected pages. This blacklist is used by web browser companies to block known infected sites, so when users try to visit an infected site, a warning message is shown, informing them of the danger. This is helpful in that it helps prevent the virus from spreading, but it’s definitely not a good thing for your company’s website to be on that list. And it’s hard to remove that label even if the site has been cleaned.

  Playing It Safe

  The time and money involved in investigating and fixing these hacking messes far exceeds the time it takes to provide a simple maintenance strategy on an ongoing basis. In order to decrease your vulnerability online, follow these steps:

  • Keep the website software and back-end up to date: As mentioned earlier, website software is updated on a regular basis in order to keep sites safe. Either make a routine of updating your software on a regular basis or hire someone to do that. You can use this site: http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/ to search for known viruses on your website.

  • Strengthen all your passwords:A strong password limits the ability of hackers to gain access to your site. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team recommends the following when creating passwords:~ Don’t use passwords that are based on personal information that can be easily accessed or guessed.~ Don’t use words that can be found in any dictionary of any language.

    ~ Develop a mnemonic for remembering complex passwords.~ Use both lowercase and capital letters.

    ~ Use a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.~ Use different passwords on different systems. Additionally, it’s a good idea to make your passwords at least 8 characters long. Check that any password access to a site is terminated when employees or web masters leave.

  • Keep an eye on your site: If a website does get infected, the site owner should be the first to know about it. Monitor your site regularly for signs of a virus and always have a routine back-up of the site. How do you know if your site has a virus? Things will look and act differently. If it feels strange to you, or unusual, then check it out.

  If a site gets hacked, it’s important for your business and marketing efforts to get it back online as quickly as possible to avoid being quarantined by Google. A good web developer will offer a maintenance plan and a service because, once a site is hacked, your site’s log files need to be examined to determine the source of the hack or virus. Once the source has been found and the virus has been cleaned, the web developer will download any necessary patches to prevent any further infections from happening, and clean up any messes that the hackers left behind.

  While there are laws against hacking, including 18 U.S.C. 1029, which deals with making and using devices and programs to gain unauthorized access to secure computer systems, the hackers are managing to keep ahead of the law in this still “wild frontier” of the Internet. In the case of website security, it seems that for now the best defense is a good, solid offense.

  Merrily Orsini, MSSW

  Merrily Orsini, MSSW, has a unique background that combines skills in technology and people. As President/CEO of corecubed, an internet marketing company, she works with talented staff to service clients in 35 states and Canada. Her roots and her passion, however, are in home care. She is a pioneer in the geriatric care managed in-home care model that she created, grew and sold in 1996, garnering her, for that venture, the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for service businesses in Kentucky and Indiana.

  Visit her blog www.MerrilyOrsini.com to follow her weekly insights and read where she is speaking, and the articles she writes for national publications. Tweet her @MerrilyO and find her on FaceBook.com/merrily.orsini. See examples of her creative work at www.corecubed.com.

• Inbound Marketing for Home Care: A Marketing Wave You Should be Riding

  Inbound marketing continues to grow in importance for home care, and while it hasn’t made the more traditional outbound marketing techniques irrelevant, it is the way that more and more customers are finding the home care products and services they need. In fact, of all the daily online searches, nearly half (46%) are searches for information on products or services. This means clients are now looking for you, and not the other way around. Is your home care agency easy to find?

  In this new marketing landscape, home care agencies should be shifting considerable focus from pushing their services out to prospective clients to pulling customers into their sites with inbound marketing techniques. According to Google, 70% of the links that search users click are organic, or not paid. This means that shelling out money for pay-per-click ads probably won’t get your home care agency the return on investment you were hoping for. So it’s time to start focusing on relevant, search engine optimized content, social media, and blogging, all of which can help bring potential clients to your virtual doorstep.

  Use Your Website & Your Knowledge & Get Found

  A good way to show potential clients that your home care agency is a home care authority is to provide them with relevant, timely resources that help them solve a problem, make a decision, or simply inform them. Staying current with ever-changing industry information shows potential clients that you are an authority within your industry and understand clients’ needs.

  Including industry-related resources to your site is also great for search engine optimization, or SEO. While a home care agency’s website should be a hub of relevant information and communication, it should also be easy to find when potential clients are searching for the services you provide in your area. Search engine optimization is a key aspect of online marketing as inbound marketing continues to replace outbound marketing efforts (advertising, PR, email campaigns, etc) as the number one way in which consumers find the products and services they need. Industry-specific keywords help companies get found and get customers.

  In addition, incorporating a blog and staying current with social media can improve SEO and give a home care agency another forum in which to be found online. Blogging provides a virtual soapbox where agencies can voice their industry expertise and inform their customer-base with up-to-date information. Using keywords within your blog and posts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn will further your SEO efforts and help you be found on the great world wide web.

  A Match Made in Marketing Heaven

  With all the buzz and focus going to inbound marketing these days, it’s important not to neglect your tried and true outbound marketing. In fact, the two work together quite well. Ensure that your messaging across both inbound and outbound materials is uniform and targeted to the right audience, and include links to your website, blog, and social media sites on all print materials and email campaigns. Post news releases and print articles to your blog, and don’t forget to share them on Facebook! For a successful, well-balanced plan, use all your marketing strengths to create the total package.

  Merrily Orsini is the founder and manager of CoreCubed, a full service integrated marketing communications agency with a focus on using the internet as a component of a strategic branded approach. Specialty is senior and elder care businesses, the private pay industry in home care, home health, Hospice, hospitals, geriatric care management, assisted living and retirement communities. Experienced and successful in marketing to and reaching those seeking niche products and services targeted to a mature affluent audience. She if the creator of MOSTSM, the first industry turnkey monthly marketing communications program designed specifically to increase billable hours and referrals for private duty home care, home health and Hospice.