Everything, everywhere all at once. No, we’re not talking about the 2023 Oscar-winning Best Picture. We’re talking about what every home care business owner attempts to accomplish daily - do everything and be everywhere all at once. But despite the best intentions, that just isn’t possible.
Because of this desire to do it all, reducing the burden of daily operations for home care owners can seem insurmountable. The only way to accomplish it is to be safe knowing that your staff will take excellent care of the business while you are not around.
This means that as a home care owner, you must learn how to lead and trust your team, and how to delegate. Increasing your influence at your home care agency will help you reduce your obligations and stress level by empowering your team to help the business run smoothly without your constant presence.
So, let’s discuss a few ways to reduce the burden of daily operations for home care owners.
It All Starts with Hiring
This may sound like a no-brainer, but the key to reducing your day-to-day responsibilities starts with hiring the right people (and the right number of people) for the right positions. We know that’s easier said than done, but relying on gut instinct (in addition to evaluating potential employees' skills and prior experience, of course) will help you make the right decisions when hiring new staff.
However, the hiring process doesn’t quite stop once a staff member is hired. It’s a good idea to assess every employee’s performance regularly, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, their needs, goals, and progress toward fulfilling them, and how they meet your homecare agency’s core values and objectives.
Once you perform that evaluation, you may determine your current employee is in the wrong position. Perhaps some are ready to step into a leadership role without even being aware. Your job, then is to capitalize on their potential and help them to become the leaders they are meant to be.
Listen and Learn
This may also seem obvious, but there is always something to learn from your team members, and the best way to do that is to listen to them carefully.
One of your main jobs as a business owner is to create an atmosphere of open communication through which you can support, inspire, and empower your employees. When you listen to your team members, you can learn what is already going well and what are the areas that still need improvement.
Listening to your staff will let them know that you care about their concerns and are willing to take steps to make things better. However, keep in mind that it can be overwhelming to try and make all the changes at once, which means you will have to learn to prioritize, even if it can be challenging at times.
Prioritize Training
The best way to ensure your caregivers can take excellent care of your business is to give them excellent training.
The lack of proper training is often cited as one of the main concerns by caregivers, so ensuring they are trained well to handle difficult situations in your absence will immediately make your home care agency stand out from the competition that doesn’t provide sufficient training for their employees.
What’s more, covering the costs of the training for your caregivers is not only a great investment, it can also help you ensure they stick around with you long-term rather than turnover after a brief period of time.
And if there is a way to allow your caregivers to take online training, it will free you up to focus your attention on other urgent matters. That’s why Cornerstone offers 100% online training and a wide array of courses that can work for any caregiver, including those who are already on the job and may require specialization.
Teach by Doing
Even though proper training is necessary to build excellence in your caregivers, sometimes you need to go a step further - teach someone on your team how to do what you are doing by setting an example yourself.
Don’t just show them what to do, walk them through it - clearly explain the intent of your actions and the desired outcome. Watch them perform the same actions, then analyze the outcome together.
What worked and what didn’t? What could be done better the next time? Then have them try it again and let them evaluate their actions and outcome themselves. There is no better way to learn than by doing.
Step Aside
Once you have done the teaching and outcome analysis, the next thing is to step aside and let your caregivers do it themselves. Yes, this may be the scariest part, but you have to give them a chance to handle things on their own if you want to reduce your own burden.
This is where you can learn to trust that a proper combination of putting the right people in the right positions, listening to and learning from your employees, providing the best possible training, and teaching them by doing will ultimately bear fruit.
Inevitably, mistakes will sometimes be made. Rather than trying to fix it all yourself, take it as an opportunity to sit down with your team and discuss how the situation could have been prevented, as well as better ways to handle or correct it, depending on the desired outcome.
At the end of the day, it’s important to keep in mind that you’re not omnipotent and you won’t always have the right answers. Remember to take the time to take care of yourself and your needs before addressing the needs of other employees and the agency as a whole.
Whether that means taking a few minutes of technology-free quiet time every morning, doing breathing exercises, stepping away from your desk to have lunch, or whatever other activity you can to center yourself, those things will also help you deal with everyday stresses of running a home care agency and create a better environment for yourself and everyone around you.
No, you can’t do everything and be everywhere all at once, but taking these few steps will increase your influence as a home care owner and help you reduce the burden of your daily ops, so you don’t feel like you have to do it all yourself.
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