Making sense of the business of senior care

Yesterday the owner of a large, multi-location care company said to me, “One thing you don’t realize is that when we train people, they think they should get paid more. It actually hurts us to train our employees.”

He went on to share their corporate-wide turnover rate, which is high enough that I’d personally refuse to share – or lie – if someone asked me for that information.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this comment, and the spirit behind it. It is deeply troubling to me to think that this attitude exists in senior care today. I understand that some corporate level individuals are first and foremost business people, but this is a business issue, too.

The cost of employee turnover is well documented – and it’s substantial.

The value of an engaged workforce is also well documented – and it’s even more substantial. According to Gallup, a company with a highly engaged workforce (people who “work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company.”) results in highly engaged clients (the ones who couldn’t image life without your product or service). Overall, the net gain to the company is a bottom line, real dollar benefit of well over 300% more revenue than the company without engaged employees.

Which part of this isn’t making sense, even to the corporate person solely focused on money?

What concerns me more is what is happening to the many thousands of employees who work for companies like this. They probably start out passionate about their jobs. My guess is that they quickly realize that the company doesn’t value them enough to provide them with adequate training – and they leave.

Who is hurt the most? The vulnerable client who is dependant on that individual for their care.

Imagine your mother being cared for by a different person every few days, and you’ll be imagining what people are living across this country.

No one is there long enough to get to know the history – the story – of your mother.

No one is there long enough to know her well enough to detect when something’s just not right, and act quickly to avoid a major problem.

Having both my mother and my mother-in-law receiving care lately, I know first hand how helpless and dependent even the family feels on the individuals providing care. Some days, you simply pray and hope for the best, knowing that there’s nothing more you can do.

And then you’re thankful every single day when you finally get a caregiver – or two or three – who genuinely care about your loved one. Who take the time to listen, to learn their story, and who grieve with you when they pass.

We have an awesome level of trust and responsibility as senior care providers. I have to think that someday, in some way, we’ll each be called to account for how well we met that trust and responsibility; how well we improved the lives of the most vulnerable people we served; how well, in the end, we understood the very mission of our company.

In the end, maybe it isn’t just about the money.