Recruitment and Selection of Your Home Care Office Staff

Your administrative and support staff will become a tightly knit team that will act as the heart of your business.  Finding the right mix of talents and personalities is critical to long-term success. 

Here’s a list of team members you will need eventually.  After many of the titles you’ll find links to products to help your team develop the skills they need.  

A CEO – Your CEO is the executive in charge.  The primary role of the CEO is strategic decision making.  Business is not a democratic society.  Your CEO should be a true leader.

The CEO is frequently the owner by default.  We encourage owners who recognize that they don’t possess the leadership skills and decision making capabilities to either develop these over time, or hire a president.  If you are an owner who enjoys sales and marketing, or is fascinated by data and statistical analysis, you may want to consider giving yourself a different title and hiring a decision maker and leader for your company.  This doesn’t mean you don’t have influence, it simply means that you have a person with a specific skill set to lead your executive strategy team.

A COO – Your Chief Operating Officer pays attention to the business of business.  This needs to be a details oriented person with strengths in analysis.  Your operations manager needs to make sure that above all, the daily operations of the business are efficient and profitable.  The COO can either report to the CEO, or with some organizations the two have equal stature and act as partners and adversaries.

Human Resources Director – This person is responsible for recruitment and retention of field staff.  Your field staff is your inventory, and your Human Resources Director is responsible for acquiring quality people and keeping them as long as possible.  Human Resources is often confused with benefits administration, but the director of human resources should focus on recruitment and retention.  They may have responsibilities toward benefits administration and other areas of H.R., but hire someone that is a team leader and a strategic thinker to grow your company.  The HR Director frequently reports to the CEO. 

A CMO – Your Chief Marketing Officer is critical to the growth of your company.  The marketing officer is not a sales person; the marketing officer is a decision maker and strategic thinker.  The primary responsibility of your marketing officer is creating a marketing plan and budget, implementing the plan, and evaluating the success. 

A CIO – Home care is rapidly becoming an information based business.  As your home care company grows you will be collecting more and more data and needing to communicate that information to a growing number of people.  Your Chief Information Officer should be strong with developing systems and implementing them.  Your CIO reports to the COO or CEO.

Clinical Director – This individual is in charge of client care.  Not only should this person act as an advocate for your clients, but they should be focused on constant quality improvement.  This client liaison should be the bridge between your customers and your executive team.  The Clinical Director usually reports to the CEO.

Sales Persons – These individuals are talented at developing relationships and presenting your organization in a positive light to referral sources.  These should be the troops under the command of your CMO.  When you find a great sales person, clone them.  Ideally, you want individuals who have terrific personalities, high levels of integrity and are able to implement the Seven Step Relationship Selling Process.

Intake Coordinator – Your Intake Coordinator the individual who processes the admission of new clients.  Typically this is an individual who spends part of their time in the office, and part of their time in client homes.  Frequently this individual is the first person your clients meet, and could be a critical sales person if your agency relies heavily on private pay clients.  The Intake Coordinator should be friendly and compassionate by nature.  They need to have strong listening skills and attention to detail.  Excellent customer service starts with the very first visit.  Your Intake Coordinator should communicate with your Clinical Director.

Scheduler – Your scheduler needs to be an expert communicator and also detail oriented and efficient.  Your scheduler will create the master schedule between your clients and your caregivers.  As your company grows, this can become a mammoth.  Your scheduler needs to be able to juggle the needs of your clients with the capabilities of your caregivers, and attempt to keep them all happy.  When it isn’t possible to keep them all happy, your scheduler also needs to be assertive to make sure things run smoothly.  A top quality scheduler will pay their own salary by improving profit margins and overall operating efficiency.  Your scheduler should report to your COO, HR Director or Clinical Director.

Accounts Manager – Your Accounts Manager has two primary tasks.  First, they need to make sure your caregivers get paid, and second they need to make sure you get paid.  The accounts manager makes certain that your payors are billed appropriately and service has been delivered for all invoices sent.  You may use third party payroll companies or even third party billing companies, but your accounts manager needs to make sure everything is in balance.   Your Accounts Manager will also have to constantly monitor accounts receivable for improved cash flow.  This person reports to your COO.

On-Call Coordinator – Your business is a 24/7/365 business.  Your On-Call Coordinator is your chief firefighter.  When problems arise the On-Call Coordinator helps.  Most companies find a team approach works best to covering after hours issues.  The key is that your On-Call Coordinator must communicate effectively with your Scheduler and Clinical Director.  This person reports to the Clinical Director.

Clinical Managers – Large organizations will need a team of clinical managers that act as liaisons with current clients.  They make periodic visits to assess client care.  These people must act as a supervisory team for caregivers, client service representatives, and even as salespeople to a degree.  Clinical Managers report to the Clinical Director.

Receptionist – One of our colleagues, Rick Morey, has a saying we love.  “You can’t train charming.”   Rick says you can teach people almost any task, but you can’t teach people to be charming, at least not very easily.  You should have someone who is charming answering your telephone and greeting your guests.  For most businesses this individual has other responsibilities as well.  Look at your team and figure out who is most charming, and ask them to answer the telephone.  Your telephone is your store window. Most of your first impressions are made by telephone.

Combining Positions for Smaller Companies

As a private duty home care owner you’ll find early in your career that you wear many of the hats above and will have many titles.  The key is, as you grow, you divide responsibilities and identify talented people to take over these roles.  It’s common to hire one individual and give them multiple roles.  Here are some of the roles that work well together when your company is small.

• Your receptionist can be anyone.  Choose your most charming telephone personality, even if it’s the CEO.
• Your Clinical Director may act as On-Call Coordinator or Clinical Manager and may even do intake.
• Your Scheduler is an early hire, but frequently performs tasks of other functions.  Schedulers’ time is often fragmented, because they are busier first thing in the morning and on different days of the week.
• Many people hire a Marketing Director to act as a sales person.  These are different skill sets but one person can do both jobs for small organizations. 

Finally, the CEO can do everything… but only for a limited time.  When you launch your company, try to identify what area you are best at, and as you grow, hire people with complementary skills.