Tips on How to Run a Homecare Franchise

Operating a home care business can be an incredibly fulfilling line of work. You get to help those who are in need while generating a steady stream of income for yourself.

But the work isn’t easy. Without careful planning, you can find yourself overwhelmed by all of your new responsibilities. Fortunately, a little bit of planning can go a long way to running a successful home care business.

Here are a few tips on how to run a homecare franchise.

Create a Comprehensive Business Plan

A business plan outlines everything your business does. A person unfamiliar with your business should be able to read it and have an understanding of how your business earns money and what goals you hope to accomplish by operating it.

A good plan detailing how to run a home care business should include the following:

• Your annual goals, such as revenue, profit, and operating margins.
• Market research. This should include trends in the home care industry as well as an overview of your direct competitors as well as companies you’re competing against for talent.
• Your marketing plan, which should cover the channels you plan to use to reach new customers. Some channels you can use are social media as well as paid and organic search.
• Financial projections for your business. A business analyst can help you in this area.

Business plans establish guard rails for your business by dictating how you plan to run a franchise. It also serves as a reference if you ever question whether you are making satisfactory progress toward your home care business goals.

Be Diligent in Your Hiring Practices

Employees make or break a home care business. When you carefully vet every job candidate to ensure their values align with those you have established for the company, you can feel confident it will be successful in the long term.

Successful hiring starts by first casting a wide net and then narrowing down the candidate pool based on value alignment. As you decide on how to advertise job openings for a franchise location you run, consider how members of your community get their information. If a local newspaper remains a key source of information for members of your community, think about paying to have openings advertised in it.

Other sources of candidates include:

• Local Job Fairs
• Community College Events
• Library Bulletin Boards
• Local groups on Facebook

Once you’ve identified ways of reaching prospective employees, you can turn your focus toward making sure you hire the right candidates. Create unique lists of questions for each of your roles that require candidates to demonstrate their readiness for the job using past examples. In particular, your questions should seek to identify those who are passionate about helping others and, for managers, those who already know how to run a home care business.

Actively Seek Out Clients

Now that you have decided how to incorporate various marketing channels into your plans to run a homecare franchise, it’s time to put them to use.

Digital marketing channels, such as social media and paid and organic search, should play a major role in any marketing effort. But you should also consider marketing your business in person, as well. Family members want to place their loved ones in the care of someone they trust. Typically, this trust can only be developed through face-to-face interaction.

Consider investing in a booth to set up at community events and meetings. Introduce your business to passersby. You’ll find that building relationships not only drives new customer acquisition, but also generates referrals from existing customers.

Create a Feedback-Driven Workplace

Few of us feel comfortable giving feedback. And it’s hard to blame us. If you’re still figuring out how to run a franchise, you may fear feedback can be taken the wrong way by an employee.

To create a work culture in which managers feel comfortable providing those whom they manage with feedback, set the expectation from day one you want to hear feedback on your own performance from others within the organization. Your willingness to accept feedback from others will set the tone for the organization. From there, model how to deliver constructive feedback. One easy way of doing this is sandwiching critical feedback between two pieces of positive feedback. As you deliver feedback to the managers whom you supervise, they will soon develop an understanding of how to run a home care business.

Get started today

Before making the decision of whether to run a home care service, ask yourself why the work matters to you. If you are someone who truly wants to serve your community, operating a home care company is a fulfilling way to earn money while helping those in need. Contact us today to learn more about how to run a homecare franchise with 1Heart!