Creating a Meaningful and Attractive Work Experience for Our HHA Team Members
Welcome to “Objectives in Action,” our continuing series that features teams from across the organization that are working to make our Top Company Objectives a reality.
Top Company Objective: Make our field-based roles the obvious choice for top talent.
Team: Personal Care
The Situation: Just as with clinicians, demand for talented home health aides is great. To recruit and retain top HHA talent, the Personal Care team realized it needed to take additional steps to provide a meaningful and attractive work experience for our HHA team members.
Top Company Objective in Action: To enhance home health aides’ work environment, the Personal Care team created a VNS Health Rewards program, which rewards HHAs who meet specific performance benchmarks with financial bonuses that are then added directly to their weekly paychecks. By fostering a culture of recognition with VNS Health Personal Care, this program has become a cornerstone of workforce retention.
The Personal Care team also collaborated with the 1199 SEIU union to negotiate a competitive wages and benefits package that ensures VNS Health’s HHAs are compensated at above-average levels.
On the hiring front, VNS Health’s peer referral program has evolved into one of our most effective tools for recruiting new Personal Care HHA team members—serving as a pipeline for talented individuals who are already known to one or more VNS Health team members. In fact, the number one way we now hire new HHAs is through our current caregivers referring their friends.
Weekly HHA Support Calls also contribute to a positive work experience for VNS Health’s HHAs. These calls, which the Personal Care team and the HR team initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic, have continued post-pandemic, with a special guest joining each call. The calls are designed to support HHAs and help them overcome any challenges they may encounter while they’re providing care.
And finally, the Personal Care team partnered with VNS Health’s Communications team to create a dedicated HHA Resource Center website as well as a weekly email newsletter titled Your News This Week, which keeps HHA team members updated on important things happening that week and helps them feel engaged.
Results: The Personal Care team has been maintaining an impressive 85% retention rate among its newly hired HHAs, which is 20% above the national average.
Why All This Matters: By creating a meaningful and attractive work environment, VNS Health is ensuring that its HHAs are motivated to join and remain part of the Personal Care team, which is crucial in order to serve the organization’s expanding personal care client census and sustain long-term growth.
Driving Toward Our 3-year Strategic Goals: Achieving this will contribute directly to VNS Health’s strategic goals of touching 100,000 lives each day and having a 95% retention rate across the organization.
What Personal Care Team Members Are Saying: “Our goal is to be the top provider of Personal Care services, and we can only achieve that by growing our client base and ensuring that we have the best team in the field,” says Jim Rolla, SVP, Personal Care. “I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made in creating a rewarding work environment for our HHAs. This initiative is essential to our success.”
