By Monica Pasupathy

Empower your home care workers with effective stress reduction strategies. Explore our comprehensive agency guide for a healthier, happier caregiving team.

This blog will suggest strategies that agencies can use to promote a more supportive work environment and reduce stress on their employees.

Introduction

Home care workers play a vital role in the healthcare industry. They provide care for a growing demographic of individuals who prefer to receive professional assistance in the comfort of their own homes. Even while employment of home health and personal care aides is projected to grow by 22% from 2022 to 2023, demand for home care services is set to outpace any employment gains. By 2050, the US population will consist of nearly 84 million individuals aged 65 and older, almost double what it was in 2012. Meanwhile, the home care industry will continue to struggle with a labor shortage and high turnover rates amongst home care workers.

Part of the reason home care agencies have trouble finding and retaining qualified home care workers is due to the nature of the job. Home care workers face frequent regulatory changes, regular recertifications, and an ever-increasing workload. The work that home care workers provide is valuable and highly rewarding—but it comes with a unique set of challenges that contribute to acute stress. For home care workers to maintain both excellent care and job satisfaction, home care agencies must address the well-being of their employees.

Strategies to Reduce Stress for Home Care Workers

Training and Certifications

The education of home care workers is constant. Home care workers are required to keep up with CEUs (Continuing Education Units) and skills that assist them in providing top quality care. Acquiring new skills and brushing up on training can help home care workers feel confident in the care they provide. A confident home care worker is more likely to provide top-quality care and experience higher job satisfaction, which in turn reduces stress on the job. Home care agencies can help their workers keep up to date on best practices by providing regular opportunities for home care workers to collect CEUs.

Agencies can also reduce the burden on home care workers to keep up with their certifications by leveraging Home Care Software that tracks certification renewal dates and automatically reminds both home care workers and managers of upcoming dates to keep everyone compliant.

Mental Health Support

Home care workers often find themselves facing emotionally charged situations while on the clock. Concurrently, they often find themselves lacking a work-culture that acknowledges the difficulties they face on the job and supports them in those instances. Home care agencies can assist workers by providing access to counselling services or employee assistance programs. Concurrently, home care agencies should create a culture that destigmatizes seeking assistance and asking for breaks. Fostering a sense of community between home care workers can also go a long way.

Home care workers who have regular meetings with their fellow employees feel more supported at work. Having access to mental health support can help home care workers cope with the emotional toll their job takes, which is paramount for their overall wellbeing.

Recognition and Feedback

Home care workers with no organizational outlet to voice their concerns tend to report more intention to leave their job, which can create a vicious cycle of turnover, increased workload on remaining employees, and job-related stress. Establishing regular check-ins between home care workers and their supervisors can allow home care workers to express concerns, seek guidance, and give and receive constructive feedback. Heeding home care worker’s feedback is the foundation of healthy organizational communication – but recognizing their hard work is the concrete that binds everything together.

Acknowledging home care workers’ dedication will help boost their morale and reinforce their sense of purpose, helping them cope with the stress they face on the clock.

Flexible Scheduling

Between high turnover rates and an arduous workload, home care workers are the prime demographic to experience burnout. Home care agencies can help reduce their workload by implementing realistic scheduling. This consists of considering travel time between home care patients, allowing home care workers breaks to recharge, and proactively anticipating burnout before it happens. Investing in Home Care Software that uses intelligent scheduling to manage overtime and travel reduces the workload on both caregivers and back-office staff. Ensuring that breaks and days off are implemented in home care workers’ schedules will allow caregivers to spend time on their self-care.

Ultimately, using the right tools to allow home care workers to strike a healthy balance between their work and their personal lives is key to reducing stress.

Learn more about Scheduling Efficiency – Key to Profitability for Home Health Care Agencies

Work-Life Balance

One of the most salient strategies to reduce stress for home care workers is to encourage them to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Homecare workers are, without a doubt, some of the most dedicated individuals to their jobs and their patients. Those who are so dedicated to their job, however, are most likely to disregard healthy boundaries in the pursuit of providing top-quality care. Maintaining a healthy work-life balance requires a few things: setting clear boundaries, time management, self-care, communication, and maintaining a positive attitude.

Home care agencies that can facilitate communication around these subjects will find that their employees are happier, healthier, and experience high job satisfaction.

Read more about how home care workers can maintain a healthy work-life balance here.

Leverage The Right Technology

Investing in user friendly home care software that streamlines everyday tasks can reduce the stress that home care workers experience. Home Care Software that has intelligent scheduling will help optimize caregiver time, allowing agencies to achieve more using less resources. Clinical documentation that is easy to use will help caregivers spend less time documenting during the visit, and more time providing quality care. HIPAA-compliant communication will save home care workers’ time and reduce the risk of errors being made. If the Home Care Software is user friendly, then the home care worker also spends less time on learning how the software works.

Home Care Software relieves home care workers of repetitive, burdensome work cycles, allowing them to focus on providing top-quality care.

Conclusion

Taking a multifaceted approach to addressing the stress home care workers experience in their professional lives allows home care agencies to retain quality home care workers longer. By prioritizing training, mental health support, feedback, recognition, flexible scheduling, and user-friendly Home Care Software, home care agencies can create an environment that allows home care workers to strike a healthy work-life balance. Ultimately, investing in the health and happiness of home care workers not only reduces their overall stress, but allows them to provide compassionate, quality care to the millions that need it now, and the millions more who will need it in the future.

About CareVoyant:

CareVoyant is a leading provider of cloud-based integrated enterprise-scale home health care software that can support all home-based services under ONE Software, ONE Patient, and ONE Employee, making it a Single System of Record. We support all home based services, including Home Care, Private Duty Nursing, Private Duty Non-Medical, Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), Home Health, Pediatric Home Care, and Outpatient Therapy at Home.

CareVoyant functions – Intake, Authorization Management, Scheduling, Clinical with Mobile options, eMAR/eTAR, Electronic Visit Verification (EVV), Billing/AR, Secure Messaging, Notification, Reporting, and Dashboards – streamline workflow, meet regulatory requirements, improve quality of care, optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency and agency bottom line.

For more information, please visit CareVoyant.com or call us at 1-888-463-6797.