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Is there a single right way to run a home care agency? We sure don’t think so. That’s why we’re interviewing home care leaders across the industry and asking them tough questions about the strategies, operations, and decisions behind their success. Join host Miriam Allred, veteran home care podcaster known for Home Care U and Vision: The Home Care Leaders’ Podcast, as she puts high-growth home care agencies under the microscope to see what works, what doesn’t, and why. Get ready to listen, learn, and build the winning formula for your own success. In the Home Care Strategy Lab, you are the scientist.
Miriam Allred (00:54)
Welcome to the lab live at HCAOA. I'm sitting across from Chaim from NCE Home Care in Connecticut. I think I have seen you at every single HCAOA conference that I've ever been to, but we have yet to speak like this. So the pleasure is mine.
Chaim Gewirtzman (01:09)
Thank you so much, the pleasure is mine. Thank you for inviting me up here. But we did accomplish already a selfie that we've never done before. So we got that out of the
Miriam Allred (01:16)
Chaim, you are up in Connecticut, have been in home care for about eight years, but have a background in nursing. Give us a little TLDR on your background and getting into home care.
Chaim Gewirtzman (01:29)
I started off as a CNA for very short time, worked on the ambulance simultaneously, then went to nursing school and started off as a nurse both in long-term care, hospice, and home care. Worked for some great people, great organizations, and wanted to make a bigger, better difference. And I had a lot of energy. So I said, let's open up a home care.
And first I worked for some people doing that and it was phenomenal. They taught me a lot and I have tremendous appreciation to them for putting me where I am today. Then left and wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do. I was going to go back to nursing. My dad and my brother, who are my partners, called me up and said, let's open up a home care. And I was like, that's a crazy idea. Don't. You just think you feel bad for me. That's what we should do now.
They really pushed me. They believed in me and ⁓ it was phenomenal. It was the best thing we ever did. We explored buying out some agencies and my dad till this day was passionate about not and he's like, let's start from the ground up. And ⁓ we did and very lucky eight years later, two locations in Connecticut, one in Waterbury, one in Hartford. And I love what I do. Great staff and I'm just so passionate about it.
Miriam Allred (02:54)
Let's talk about your background in nursing and you being able to relate to these caregivers. said CNA, then nursing. Do you feel like that has helped you relate and empathize with workforce? Talk a little bit about that. that innate from the beginning?
Chaim Gewirtzman (03:06)
100 percent. Very often people, you know, look at people and they think, you got in this position because of your family or your family had this business and you were just put in this position. It's very hard to relate to your staff on all levels if you did go in that way. And there's nothing wrong with that. know, some people take over family businesses and it's great and they're continuing the family legacy. I didn't. I started working second shift, third shift. I worked, you know...
every single weekend for 10 years. And it was rough, ⁓ but I loved it and it was rewarding. And I wanted to take it to the next step. You know, I saw some things where I was working, whether it was second or third shift that I guess management wasn't there as much, or it's different than a day shift. And I wanted to make a change. And I thought I was able to, I had some ideas. So I said, ⁓ let's go to the management side of it and ⁓
definitely missed my hands on and interacting with clients even till today when I go out and about doing spot checks or whatever it may be, or I run into clients with my caregivers at the store or they just stop in the office. It's just that instant connection that you're like, this is why I do what I do and I love what I do.
Miriam Allred (04:27)
So let's talk about recruiting specifically. And I know your philosophy is that it's very localized. What works for you may not work for everybody else, but I want to hear about what works for you specifically. What specifically are you doing to recruit new employees?
Chaim Gewirtzman (04:41)
So, we have a big ⁓ little sign in my office in the corner that says, think out of the box. And that's really my philosophy is one, thinking out of the box and two, thinking like a caregiver. A lot of these caregivers are juggling two, three jobs. ⁓ Many of them are single parents. Many of them are sole providers at home and they're stressed and they want to work. They love what they work. And sometimes it's just difficult for them to get there.
and they want to feel appreciated. learn to think like them is how do you make it the easiest possible for them to come apply and work for you, but still making it that they have to do an effort so that you show they're committed to come in and work. ⁓ We do monthly raffles and I try to get really creative. Not your typical $50 gift card. I very often will ⁓
my this is my fun stuff and in the office they'll laugh I'll go on the websites that have like stuff on sale and I'll buy the most random items like in the summer we gave out a patio set was the the raffle for July. That's awesome. And what we do is is if you come you know there's a few different stages but one of the stages is when you just come in apply complete your application and get hired you get into a raffle.
The other part is once you reach a certain amount of hours, depending on that month, what we do is you'll get into a different raffle. And then we do it the other way too for current employees that refer employees when they reach that benchmark of hours, then they get an automatic reward. So it's not a raffle. It's like an actual visa gift card reward.
Miriam Allred (06:26)
Okay. And Connecticut's competitive. There are ⁓ so many agencies right in your backyard. Do you feel like you're competing against other home care companies for this workforce or are you up against Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart?
Chaim Gewirtzman (06:38)
all, Connecticut is very competitive and a shout out to all my competitors because I absolutely love them. Many of them at the conference here, interact with and talk to all the time, share ideas. And that's where you touched on a little bit is what works for me may not work for them, depending on what area they are in the state. Definitely competing with other home care agencies, as well as Amazon, Walmart, and some of the large chain places like you mentioned.
just because it's easier to work there. More hours, more availability, more locations and things like that. We do make it a little difficult for them, ⁓ but we want them to be invested. The goal is to make it a fun place to work, but you know, it's still work. It's still serious. So, you know, one of the things we do that a lot of places, it's not a state requirement in Connecticut, is we do drug testing. In the beginning, we used to get some people that would test positive.
Now the point, the word is out there and they won't apply if they know they're going to be positive. Where other people either don't want to or can't afford the expense of that or have a limited workforce base already so they don't want to limit it more.
Miriam Allred (07:52)
So I want to ask, you talk about thinking out of the box. How important is your online presence, your online reputation when it comes to recruiting and what are you doing to stand out in such a crowded marketplace? There's hundreds of home care companies in your backyard. What in your online presence are you doing to stand out from the of
Chaim Gewirtzman (08:10)
So as
you're asking me that, you're watching my smile grow. I absolutely love the online platforms we have. We're in all of them. And each one is for a different market. We do Instagram, we're doing Facebook, we're doing LinkedIn, we're doing TikTok. All those different platforms targeting different audience. We do educational pieces. We're doing interaction, just posting current caregivers, try to get them to do a short clip. ⁓ Office staff.
And we cater a lot to the Hispanic community. So all my office staff is bilingual and we'll do interactive videos or information in Spanish as well.
Miriam Allred (08:50)
If you had to kind of quantify where all of your candidates are coming from, like how many are, I know this is hard, but how many are coming from online versus maybe an employee referral program, maybe from other sources. Like if you had to kind of break down your.
Chaim Gewirtzman (09:03)
So
it's interesting because I speak about my referral programs and I'm a huge fan of it. I think in every few months it changes. Currently right now, I would say majority of them are coming from my online presence and current employee referrals. Even though we have the incentives and they're great and you need to change them and up them and it's always keeping, you know, it's a game that keeps changing. But online presence is huge. And some of the agencies...
had a close friend of mine in Connecticut after COVID. were out for dinner and they asked me, like, what's your secret? What's your secret to success? They've been around a long time. They're, they helped me out a lot in the beginning. They were still are a mentor of mine. And I said to them, like, I love you, but you don't have an online presence. And they looked at me like I was crazy. And I said, I'll be honest, I was coming to meet you in your office. It's been a long time since I was here. I could barely find you on Google. And
That just, Facebook and Instagram, they looked at me like I was crazy. And they're like, Come on, you don't get business like that. And it does. It does. And like it or not, it works for people. It brings them in. A lot of the times, every employee that comes in during an interview, we ask them, where'd you hear of us? And a lot of them just look at us start laughing and they're like, it looks like a fun place to work.
Miriam Allred (10:26)
There you go. That's the highest praise.
Chaim Gewirtzman (10:28)
Done, know, and you could argue you could suggest you could and I'm like and that's where my passion is It may not work for everybody. It works for us
Miriam Allred (10:37)
Can I ask about the investment? hear a lot of owners think, you know, they don't know how much time and effort to pour into social media because they think, okay, I'm going to get ROI on this. But you said Instagram and even TikTok. It takes a lot of effort to like keep up on those platforms and produce a lot of content. I guess can you kind of quantify like the investment to help people understand like what, yeah, what level of commitment you need to put into social media to be successful?
Chaim Gewirtzman (11:03)
We actually, I don't do any paid clicks. So I always say you have to reevaluate and focus. So if you're spending any of the recruitment platforms, and I'm not knocking any of them, all phenomenal. There's so many choices. There's some great ones here. You could be pouring money into those platforms and you're bringing in people. You may even be hiring people. Are those people staying long term? And it's something you need to evaluate every few months.
When you're doing social media and you're targeting certain age brackets, certain zip codes, certain people that have titles in their Facebook profiles, PCA caregivers, CNAs, those people that you're bringing in are people that are already in this. You're not convincing them to do this job. So you'll people often ask that like, what's your what's your marketing budget? And I'm like,
I don't have one, right? For us to put up a billboard on the 84 in Connecticut, for me, doesn't make sense. Our profit margin is really, really small. You would have to do so many more hours just from that billboard. So what's my recruitment budget? I don't have a budget, but I know that if I don't have caregivers, I can't operate. So am I spending that money on Facebook? Am I spending that on Facebook ads?
And we reevaluated every three, four months. And it's a mix. Very often people who are not in this industry ask me, what's harder recruitment for carriers or recruitment for clients? And I'm like, it's a seesaw. You're up and down, up and down. And the same thing with our social media is we'll reevaluate this month. Are we focusing on recruitment or are we focusing on clients? And more often it's recruitment. You know, it's the clients feed word of mouth and things like that. But
The caregivers are a constant need and it's not because we're losing them, it's because we're growing and it's keeping them. And even the people, very often you'll meet agencies and they'll, they're like, recruitment's great, we're bringing in people. What are you doing now? It's a second step to keep them and keep them happy and keep it different.
Miriam Allred (13:19)
Okay, a couple more questions about the social media. Who manages these channels? Are you taking this on? Is it someone in the office or is it shared responsibility?
Chaim Gewirtzman (13:28)
It's one person and it's Candice. Shout out to Candice because she does a phenomenal job. ⁓
Miriam Allred (13:34)
What's
her, is this her, a part of her role or is this her full-time role? Okay, yeah, that's good context as well. It's like, do you tack this on to someone in the office?
Chaim Gewirtzman (13:38)
her full-time role.
And that's one of the things I see a lot of agency owners say. They say, you're spending X amount of money on social media. I'm going to do it myself. I'm on the younger side of this industry. I love social media. I post a lot on LinkedIn. But if you don't know it and don't know the hashtags and don't know the strategy, it's not going to work. You could spend more time than I do or we do and it's just not going to work.
Miriam Allred (14:03)
Yes.
Chaim Gewirtzman (14:11)
I laugh back because, you know, eight years ago, I used to want to want to see every single post that went up. I'm like, let's meet once a week. Let's meet once a month. Everything that goes up proofread it opinions thinking I know. ⁓ Now I'm like, just keep posting doing what you're doing because you're doing phenomenal. Unless there's an issue I don't want to hear. And it's awesome. And we love it. And you know, even here I get stopped into like last night in the hotel. Funny story, there was somebody
used to live in Connecticut, they stopped me and they said, you don't know me, we're connected on LinkedIn. And I drew a blank and I didn't recognize them. It took me a second. And they're like, and they just started rattling off everything I've done in the last six months. To the point for the first 90 seconds, I just froze and I could always talk. I was like, wow, is it yeah, I follow you on LinkedIn. I can't believe you don't follow me. And, you know, it's moments like that. You're like, okay, everything we're doing is working.
Miriam Allred (15:07)
working.
And I'm glad to just hear you articulate these things because again, so many owners are afraid to put so many eggs in the social media basket and it's a big investment. a podcaster, content creator, it's all about consistency and engagement. And there's no overnight success with social media. It is a long game and you have to buy in and you have to commit. And I think a lot of owners are like kind of one foot in, one foot out, and they're not seeing the results. And so they pull out.
Chaim Gewirtzman (15:33)
especially the ones who have been in the industry for a while. Take somebody who's in the industry for 30 years, never spent a penny on social media marketing. Maybe in the beginning stages, they did SEO or pay per click. So now when you tell them they're going to spend a couple of hundred, a thousand dollars a month on social media, they're like, absolutely not. I'd rather sell my business. I'm not going to do it. You know, this is a new generation. And I look at them and I'm like, OK, like you got to try it. they'll try it.
But not for long enough. Like you say, it's a long term investment. It's commitment. You know, people often ask me like, so what's your LinkedIn strategy? I'm like, whatever you're going to pick, do it consistently. So if you're going to post two times a week, then every single week, no matter what is going on, you need to post something two times a week. And then it will develop attraction and feed itself.
Miriam Allred (16:26)
You said the other half of your applicants are coming from your employee referral program. Everybody structures those a little bit different and pays out a little bit different. Can you just kind of walk through the specifics of your employee referral program?
Chaim Gewirtzman (16:37)
First,
we do a lot of face-to-face interaction. know some agencies, and depending where you're located and more rural, you can't. We do a lot of face-to-face interaction and...
Miriam Allred (16:50)
Lunches like what what yeah, what's bringing them?
Chaim Gewirtzman (16:52)
Do
visa reward cards, ⁓ Dunkin Donuts reward cards, raffles. ⁓ You know, just to veer off a little bit. Like I said, we cater a lot to Spanish to the Spanish community. I have a lot of caregivers that only speak Spanish because they're caring for the Spanish clients. And they want them to cook Spanish food and understand their needs. I have a caregiver who only speaks Spanish and is upset about something.
One would think, why am I meeting with them? I don't speak Spanish. I wish I did. But why am I meeting with them? And it's to show them that I actually care about this issue. So we'll go into the conference room, I'll be there. I'll have one of my staff from the office there translating, stop, go translate, give me, you know, me respond and they'll translate. And that's better than any other marketing you're going to do. And it goes back to thinking like a caregiver.
If I was, you when I worked for some larger companies, you could never get to the boss. You can never get to the management. No matter what you could have done the best thing or the worst thing, you're not meeting that. Giving them that time, whether it's five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and obviously everything has to be, you know, portioned out and, and, we all have busy days and hectic days. But even when they just pop into the office and they're like, Hey boss, you have five minutes. We try to make it accommodate it. And very often you want to hear from them.
They may say, hey, boss, know, we're, you know, so-and-so agency is doing this. How come we can't do this? And it could be something that I never would have heard of if not for this caregiver coming in. I don't go looking at other people's social media. You know, if it comes up in my feed, I love some of the creativity, but I'm not knowing what the other people are doing. And it may be a simple fix. So just giving them that few minutes.
of face to face time is better than your blast text message or your email blast that's going to say, bring us a caregiver, we want more employees, we want, you know, somebody just like you to work for us. And it goes back to what I'm saying is thinking like a caregiver and just treating them with the same way you want to be treated.
Miriam Allred (19:01)
And giving them that personal one-on-one time in the office. And I like what you're saying of, think a lot of companies just text out, know, like they're always asking for referrals and that, may start to rub them the wrong way. Like they're just like milking me for other people and they're not valuing me.
Chaim Gewirtzman (19:17)
So one of the things I was talking to two agency owners here yesterday at the conference and Money's great. Everybody needs money. We all need money to live to survive and everything like that we took a poll most caregivers rather feel like a human and interact with you and feel validated when they have Opinions concerns then the extra two dollars you're gonna give them an hour or the extra fifty dollar
gift card or whatever you may give them something like that. They want to hear that you're actually listening to them and not just you took a survey, we, you know, got your feedback, it went into a pile, nobody ever looked at it. And it's shocking because most people tell me it's absolutely not true. And I'm like, I will tell you 100%. It's true, because I can tell you people that rather, you know, I have somebody coming to us this week, the clients switched us, the caregivers coming to us and they were working for another agency that's paying a dollar something more an hour.
And they're just like, we're not happy there. They don't treat us well. And we heard really good things about your agency. And that's just proven. So I'm a big, we do surveys and we do feedback. And I want to interact and hear from people because some of them don't, many of them don't hold back. They tell it to you how it is. And sometimes you're like, ooh, I wasn't ready for that. I was just being nice. But you want to hear it. You want to understand where they're coming from and what they're thinking of.
Miriam Allred (20:42)
Exactly. And that's what I heard yesterday when I was interviewing the caregivers. They say we're called to the work. A handwritten note goes further than an extra dollar an hour, you know? And that's just so eye-opening to hear, but that's directly from their mouth.
Chaim Gewirtzman (20:56)
very often you'll hear, I only hear from management when they have a complaint or they only I only hear from the office when I didn't clock in. So you're saying that thank you note, thank you notes are great personal Thank you notes are phenomenal. I tried to make it my business every single time we get a compliment, whether it's somebody mentioned a caregiver in a review, or call the office, which very often people will call with a complaint, but very often do they call with a compliment. It's just the nature.
So when people call, we try to take I take the time personally to call the caregiver and say, I just want to let you know, your client called to think or your client's family called to thank us. As a token of appreciation, we have something for you in the office. I may not be here when you come here, but I just wanted to thank you and we give it with a thank you note. And that's better than any other sign on bonus you're going to give them.
Miriam Allred (21:46)
Amazing. This has been so good. A pleasure to meet you. Thank you for just diving right in and talking about your recruiting efforts. This has been so fun and so impactful. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we'll wrap here, but probably more from you and from me in the future because you've shared a lot of great things today. Thank you so much.
Chaim Gewirtzman (22:00)
looking forward to it.
⁓ you