How to Start a Senior Home Care Business – Employee Overview
Hi, and welcome to 2nd Family. My name is Josh Markland and today we’re going to continue our video series on how to start your own senior home care company. In today’s video I want to talk about the logistics of opening your office – how much office space do you need, how many employees do you need, and what are those employees going to do? Let’s get started.
In order to grow your business you will need some office space. Now I know that there’s gonna be people who tell you that it’s okay to start in your home and move into an office later when you’re more established, but I just don’t think that’s a good idea. You’re going to do a lot of interviewing in this business and your home just isn’t the right place for that. Now since you’re getting started, a starter office is more than enough. 700 to 1,000 square feet will be plenty of place for you to have a few employees and conduct all of your interviews. Speaking of interviews, you’re going to be doing a lot of them, so you better hire Human Resources person right out of the gate. This person will be in charge of generating applications, screening and interviewing applicants, hiring and orienting new employees, and handling disciplinary issues. It’s a really important role, so make sure you figure it out early.
Since you’re in the caregiving business, you probably should have some caregivers! That will be your human resource person’s number one job – find caregivers. In fact, it will probably be a recurring theme throughout the course of your business. You are always going to need more caregivers. Now licensing requirements do vary from state to state, so make sure you understand the requirements of your state so that you’re hiring the right people.
Third, you’ll need a Director of Nursing. Now your Director of Nursing will need to be a registered nurse. At the outset of care for every family, she’ll meet with them to put together the care plan and the nursing assessment. The nurse will also revisit the family every 90 days to do a reassessment to make sure that our care is still matching the client’s needs.
Next, you’ll need a scheduler. After all, you just hired all these employees, you want to put them to work right away. Now at the beginning this is probably something that the Human Resources person can do as well, but very quickly you’re going to want to hire a dedicated scheduler. Between client changes, additions, subtractions, caregiver call-outs, caregiver schedule changes, etc. it can be a mess. I promise you, you want to have a dedicated scheduler early to stay on top of all of the changes.
Finally, you’re going to need clients, which means you need a salesperson. Now, much of your business is probably going to come from third-party referral sources. So sales in this instance is actually a two-step process. The first step is to build referral relationships with those folks who can provide you with leads. The second step is to build a relationship with the family of those leads, earning their trust and ultimately their business. Sales is the lifeblood of every business, so be sure to invest in this early with a strong player.
At 2nd Family, our franchise training program goes through all of this in great detail. We’ll teach you how to find your employees, how to train your employees, how to support your employees, and most importantly, how to lead your employees. If you’d like more information on our franchise program, check us out at 2ndFamilyFranchise.com.