Hiring employees who are a better fit for your company is important for any organization, but it’s probably even more important for home healthcare agencies.
The nature of home healthcare work means you are placing a lot of trust in many of your employees as they go and visit patients in their homes. It’s not like supervisors can go with their staff to each and every visit to oversee what they are doing. Turnover can be high if care isn’t taken to hire the right people.
So how can you avoid the headaches that so often come with the hiring process in the home healthcare industry?
Here are our top tips for finding and hiring the right home healthcare team members.
Soft Skills Superstar
Healthcare is a profession that requires ample hard skills but even more excellent soft skills. What are soft skills? Soft skills are those skills acquired through experience and interactions. They include things such as the ability to communicate well, build relationships, manage time wisely, and problem-solve. It also encompasses things such as empathy and core values.
These skills are harder to quantify in comparison to hard skills. But healthcare workers that can’t connect with their patients on a deeper level, communicate well with their patients, and show empathy for their patients won’t be able to provide that higher standard of care that results in better patient outcomes. In essence, you are looking for candidates who have a patient-centered approach.
Acing the Interview Process
It’s important to not rush the interview process (or the entire hiring process for that matter). Rushing to a decision and not thoroughly interviewing candidates can lead to bad decisions about who to hire.
Make sure you identify any gaps in work history that could be a possible red flag. But don’t just assume that the individual wasn’t working. Give them a chance to explain a gap in employment. You may find that the candidate took time off to care for an ill family member or to go back to school.
You also want to ask the right questions. Don’t just ask about hard skills, but also ask questions that are geared toward soft skills and learn more about what motivates them in their work. Here are some example questions to ask:
- If you have a patient that is stubborn and refusing care, what do you do?
- If there is tension among members of your care team, how do you handle it?
- Tell us about a time that you learned a valuable lesson on the job.
- What part of healthcare workers are you most passionate about?
Take time to develop questions ahead of time. Get input from various people in the office to help you create a set of well-informed questions for all of your candidates.
Focus on Culture
Finally, focus on finding cultural matches. When employees’ values and personalities more closely align with that of the organization, it can reduce turnover, increase employee engagement and increase your chance of hiring the best person for the job and for your company. Furthermore, it can also decrease conflicts in the workplace, decrease stress and anxiety, as well as increase productivity and overall job satisfaction.
You are probably wondering how you can learn about a candidate’s personality to see if they are a good cultural match. Part of it is in asking the right interview questions, but it’s also utilizing personality assessments. Sure, there are lots of personality tests out there–but they don’t do what Workzinga does!
Workzinga brings together job seekers and employers in a new way. Our innovative culture fit assessment tool is changing the game, by providing employers with soft skills and personality insights. And when you have better insights on cultural matches, you can make better hiring decisions!
