Page 23 - BusinessWest June 10, 2024

“For a mom in the workforce, the most important thing
is her family and making sure she can get them to doctors’ appointments, she can get to school functions, she can make sure that if they’re sick, they’re taken care of without repurcussions from the employer. And those are things
that we find are intangible and so important to our workforce, so we
do our best to make sure that their family needs are met.”
strapped, they go where they can best provide for their family,” she said. “So I’m going to hire faster than they go; I’m hiring about five a week. How many go a week? Maybe two. That’s how we’re adjusting to this new reality.”
When it comes to retention, Anstett says she has what she calls a magic formula — a focus on the work-culture factor.
“It’s about how they’re treated, how we respect them, how all those different qualities that they find in an employer make them want to say,” she said, adding that working in such an environment often weighs more heavily with employees than an additional dollar an hour.
“About 95% of our employees are women, and I would say 80% of those women are moms with dependent children,” she went on. “For a mom in the workforce, the most important thing is her family and making sure she can get them to doctors’ appointments, she can get to school functions, she can make sure that if they’re sick, they’re taken care of without repurcus- sions from the employer. And those are things that we find are intangible and so important to our workforce, so we do our best to make sure that their family needs are met.”
Staying Power
Addressing the broad subject of retention, those we spoke with said there is strong need for being creative and showing employees at all levels that they are valued and part of something larger than their own job.
And it all starts with listening, Davis said. “A lot of it is really paying attention to our workforce — what they’re telling us, but also what we’re learning from paying attention to them, not only in their words, but what we see them struggle with and what we see them strive in doing.”
Another key to retention is effective recruitment, she said, attracting people who understand — and value — the environ- ment they’ll be working in and the team they will be joining, and want to be part of all that.
“The key to successful recruiting is agility,” Davis said. “It’s changing our strategies as we see what’s happening outside our
Michele Anstett says competition for workers in the home- care arena is fierce, and there is little loyalty to employers.
walls, what’s happening in our area from the standpoint of where we have people that we can attract, and how we attract them.
“What we’ve been doing recently is getting back into what I call the ‘milk and cookies’ of in-person recruitment,” she went on. “We’ll have a team of talent-acquisition partners, along with leaders, and have a day when people can come in for a given position. They can fill out the application, they can interview with the talent-acquisition partner, interview with the manager, and have a decision about their hiring right on the spot. And then they can meet with the onboarding coordinator. So before they even leave the building, they have an answer, and they’ve started
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MONTHLY FEATURE
JUNE 10, 2024 23
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