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Housing Tips

Hiring Staff for Your Home Care Franchise

by Richard Bitner
written by Richard Bitner

As a home care franchise owner, there will come a time when you need help handling your workload. While many home care franchise owners spend their first months as their company’s primary or sole caregiver, an expanding client base means that you’ll soon need to expand your workforce. Hiring Staff for Your Home Care Franchise
Hiring Staff for Your Home Care FranchiseThere are lots of qualities you can use to screen and evaluate caregiver candidates for your home care franchise. At Visiting Angels, our corporate team regularly guides new home care franchise owners through the staffing process – giving them tips on how to find strong candidates, what screening procedures to use, and what criteria to rely on for your ultimate decision.
Here are some of the things you should consider when hiring new staff for your home care franchise:

The Right Credentials

Start off by searching for caregivers who carry the proper certification to work as care providers in your region. Certification requirements change state by state, and you should be familiar with what kinds of certification your new staff members will need.

The Right Experience

A candidate with plenty of existing senior care experience is (almost) always preferable to one without. But finding a caregiver with the right kind of experience profile makes a big difference. Check the amount of time this caregiver has spent with individual companies and clients, ask about what kinds of care environments he/she has worked in, and learn what kinds of a care he/she has helped assist with. Look for candidates with a breadth of experience and a strong track record.

The Right References

So much of running a home care franchise lies in keeping clients happy. A strong candidate for your home care franchise should be able quickly supply you with glowing references from previous clients or their family members. Be sure to take the time to follow up on references, as these will tell you a lot about the way each candidate approaches care.

The Right Attitude

A warm, supportive approach is essential for any caregiver. Before hiring a new caregiver for your home care franchise, you should be confident that you’ve chosen a candidate who will bring warmth and care into the lives of your clients. References help here, and an interview will tell you a lot about any candidate’s personality, how they approach home care, and their ability to respond to adversity.

Resources You Can Use

If you’re hiring staff for a home care franchise, your franchisor should offer support with the hiring process. For example, at Visiting Angels, the corporate team regularly guides franchise owners through hiring their first employee caregivers. If you have that kind of support available to you, be sure to take advantage of it, as it can be the difference between a great hire and a so-so staff member. Hiring Staff for Your Home Care Franchise

Hiring Staff for Your Home Care Franchise

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Best Franchises are in Senior Care
Housing Tips

What to Expect Owning a Senior Care Franchise

by Richard Bitner
written by Richard Bitner

So you’ve decided to purchase a senior care franchise. You’ve done research on home care’s upcoming growth boom, have chosen the franchise you want to be a part of, and you’ve committed yourself to staring a new business. What to Expect Owning a Senior Care Franchise
Now what?
What to Expect Owning a Senior Care FranchiseYour first year as a senior care franchise owner promises to be a busy, exciting, and rewarding ride. At Visiting Angels, we’ve guided all of our franchise owners through the same adventure you’re about to take part in. And as the #1 ranked home care franchise in Franchise Business Review’s 2015 franchisee satisfaction survey, we know a thing or two about what it takes to get through those first 12 months.
Here’s what you can expect in year one of owning a senior care franchise.

Franchisee Training

The first thing you should expect is a flood of new information. Any franchise worth its salt budgets plenty of time for training new franchisees. At Visiting Angels, we have an extensive and comprehensive training program for new franchise owners. We cover everything you need to know about home care, and build your skills and knowledge as a new business owner.
This is a time to soak in as much new info as possible, as there is valuable information for franchise owners of all backgrounds. At Visiting Angels, many of our first-time franchisees come to us knowing nothing about home care and with limited business skills, while others have previously worked as care providers or have owned their own businesses.

Getting Set Up

There are plenty of i’s to dot, t’s to cross, and dotted lines to sign before opening your senior care franchise. You’ll need to get licensed and registered, obtain insurance, find office space, install phone lines, and set up the infrastructure of your new business. What to Expect Owning a Senior Care Franchise
Support is valuable during this time, which is why Visiting Angels offers extensive corporate support to new franchise owners. Our corporate staff are experts in the state-to-state requirements for senior care agencies and counsel new franchise owners on how to get their business up and running.

Ready. Set. Go.

Your first week of business will likely be a whirlwind. Ditto your first month. As a new franchise owner, the weeks just before and just after opening are often the busiest stretches of time you’ll spend on your business. Expect to carry most of the workload, as most new franchises are light on additional staffing. What to Expect Owning a Senior Care Franchise
This is another point in the year where strong support from your franchisor is valuable. With limited time and resources, new franchisees often rely on corporate for guidance on whenever new issues come up. Strong corporate support can give you the quick, high-quality answers and resources you need to stay on your feet through the first few weeks.

Growing Your Business

Your second month as a senior care franchise owner will likely be easier than your first, and your third month easier than your second. Soon, you’ll start to get into the swing of things, relying less and less on outside support. Once you’ve found your footing, you can start adding new staff, searching out fresh leads, and growing your business in other ways.

Settling In

Soon enough, you’ll find yourself on stable ground, turning your attention to the details that successful businesses thrive on. By year’s end, you’ll feel like a whole different person – and why wouldn’t you? In twelve, short months you’ll have gone from a prospective entrepreneur to the owner of a full-fledged business in an industry poised for exceptional growth.
Ready to become a senior care franchise owner? Why not take your journey with Visiting Angels? Request information today to find a senior care franchise opportunity near you.
What to Expect Owning a Senior Care Franchise

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Setting Rates When Starting a Home Care Business
Housing Tips

Setting Rates When Starting a Home Care Business

by Richard Bitner
written by Richard Bitner

One of the biggest questions you’ll face when starting a home care business is what rates you should charge for your services. Many first-time home care business owners struggle with this question, whether they are opening a franchise home care business or starting an independent agency. Setting Rates When Starting a Home Care Business
Ultimately, the answer depends on your market, your business model, and the kind of care you want to deliver. But in our nearly 20 years in the home care industry, we’ve noticed that many agency owners sell themselves short when it comes to pricing their care. Setting Rates When Starting a Home Care Business
In our experience, too many entrepreneurs who start home care businesses look to their price point as their key point of differentiation. While this can seem like a surefire way to gain clients, often this strategy leads to sub-optimal results.
Here’s why: Setting Rates When Starting a Home Care Business

Price Point is Often Secondary in Home Care

When family members start searching for home care for their loved ones, price point is often a second-level or third-level consideration. That makes home care distinct from a number of other services where a low price point can set your business apart from the competition in a positive way.
In home care, a low price point can be a negative point of differentiation. While most families can’t afford the most expensive level of care services, they also don’t want to compromise when it comes to the care, well-being, and security of their loved ones. Setting your market’s lowest price point can scare clients away from your business if they think that your low costs come at the price of compromised care.

Low Rates Lead to High Turnover

Hiring and retaining caregivers is the number one challenge for the modern home care business. With such rapidly expanding demand for home care services, there simply aren’t enough quality caregivers on the job market. This challenge will affect anyone starting a home care business, but it’s compounded for agencies with lower rates.
Low rates almost always lead to low wages for care staff. This makes it hard to retain your best caregivers and even harder to hire quality caregivers in a competitive hiring market. This can lead to bleeding revenue as you scramble to maintain a steady staff. It also almost always leads to lower quality care, as it becomes harder and harder to keep your best staff members around.

A Successful Home Care Business Starts with Care Itself

If you’re starting a home care business, put yourself in a prospective client’s shoes. Think, “If it were my dad, or my grandmother, what kind of agency would I want in charge of my loved one’s care? What would set that agency apart? What would be the first thing I’d look for in their service model?”
You might surprise yourself with how far down price point falls on the list you come up with. Instead, you may find yourself thinking of qualities like quality of care, scheduling flexibility, and experience of care staff.
At Visiting Angels, our success is driven by placing care at the forefront of our mission and our approach. We believe that when starting a home care business, the biggest point of differentiation you can stake your reputation on is the way you treat those in your care. That doesn’t mean charging the highest rates for home care in your area — but it rarely means charging the lowest.
If you’re interested in starting a home care business, we hope you’ll reach out to our team at Visiting Angels. Visit us online to request information on our available home care franchises.

Setting Rates When Starting a Home Care Business

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