Right at Home Exceeds Caregiver Recruiting Goals So Far in 2024
Omaha, NE - Right at Home, a leading in-home care franchise, began the year with plans for its local offices to hire 26,000 caregivers in 2024 to address the growing demand for quality in-home care. With over 15,000 caregivers already hired throughout the system to work at franchise locations nationwide, Right at Home is pacing ahead of its midyear goal.
The brand’s commitment to fostering an attractive company culture is one of the key contributors to this success. Its recent certification as a Great Place To Work® by Great Place To Work Institute and its senior care partner Activated Insights only lends more credence to this fact.
“The Right at Home business owners throughout the United States care about their employees, clients, and the services they’re providing,” said Nikki Holles, Right at Home’s Vice President of People Strategy. “These owners live in their communities, hire people in their communities, and serve people in their communities. They do this because it is meaningful work, and they pass that care down to the employees and caregivers who work for them.”
Right at Home has built an intentional recruitment and hiring process at the corporate level, helping franchisees meet potential caregivers where they are and approach the hiring process more holistically.
“We, as a brand, have been very intentional about recognizing what’s in it for the applicant,” Holles said. “The employee experience starts with the application experience. We care about the applicant’s experience, between filling out the job application, completing their new-hire onboarding, and beginning to work. We’re very intentional about making it as easy as possible for the caregiver.”
Jay Kenney and Rosaleen Doherty, owners of Right at Home in Boston, Salem, and Haverhill, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine, have seen direct results from such practices. As their business has grown, the pair has built a team of 500 caregivers and office staff—some with a tenure of nearly 20 years. By seeing their caregivers as multifaceted people rather than just employees there to complete a job, they have created a welcoming, supportive environment that caregivers love to be a part of.
“The real pivot has been toward employees,” Doherty said. “We were focused on them before, but when the COVID-19 pandemic happened, our people showing up for work was the most important thing, and the only way they’re going to really show up for their clients is to love to work for our organization and love caring for another person. We have to do our side of the bargain with that.”
A streamlined application process and artificial intelligence ensure applicants can easily apply, schedule an interview, and manage other communications necessary during the recruitment process. Once they’re on board, Doherty and Kenney celebrate caregivers’ identities, priorities, and successes. Because Boston is so multicultural, the two work to hire and promote people from varied backgrounds, recognizing the value that diverse languages, cultural identities, and other demographics can bring to a business. This celebration shines through to the entire team on an ongoing basis.
“We started doing an online Town Hall as a touch-base in response to the pandemic,” Kenney said. “It’s a combination of an in-service, which entails a training aspect and a celebration of universal things like birthdays, new hires, and promotions. And we do a lot of financial rewards. We’re very invested in that aspect of the reward system for caregivers, and we use a platform that allows us to send rewards in real time as we see caregivers doing great things in their day-to-day work.”
Right at Home’s mission is to improve the lives of everyone it serves by matching the right caregivers and services with each client and family, working to find the right approach to ensure peace of mind.
“This approach is part of what makes the experience so good for everybody, and it’s actually one of the metrics we’re measuring on an ongoing basis,” Holles said. “We’re looking at the client’s satisfaction with the match of the caregiver and the care they’re receiving, and we’re looking at it from the caregiver’s perspective—are they satisfied with the match and fulfilled by the time they spend with clients?”
“In-home care is an industry in which it’s still person to person,” Doherty said. “The world is changing so quickly, but at the end of the day, it’s as simple as helping a 90-year-old man get from his chair to his bed at night. It’s as simple as getting someone a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when they haven’t eaten all day. We’re on a mission to change the world one human interaction at a time, and we are dedicated to finding and supporting caregivers who share that goal.”
This article is available on Franchising.com:
Right at Home further discusses its goal of hiring 26,000 caregivers this year in this McKnight’s Home Care article:
