Burlington’s Right at Home fights to keep staff caring for elderly, sick patients

Dani DePetrillo has high hopes for Right at Home Canada, the one year-old Canadian branch of an international in-home healthcare service provider franchise.

The Burlington, Ont.-based operation delivers health services enabling seniors and the ill or infirm to stay out of hospitals and in their own homes. DePetrillo, Right at Home Canada’s vice-president of healthcare services, says the organization is aiming to grow into a nationwide network of about 8,000 employees in the next five years.

But there’s a human resources hurdle they have to overcome first. With 25 caregivers spread across Halton, Peel and Wentworth regions, the workers are simply too far apart to make it into the business’s central office. Staff check in using a telephone-based time clock, but the nature of the work means they’re always in the field, isolated from colleagues. As a result, DePetrillo is concerned about keeping the team motivated, engaged and fit.

“Our caregivers need to be healthy, both emotionally and physically, in order to even knock on the door of a client,” she says. “The type of work they do is very challenging.”

It’s also in-demand. DePetrillo declined to give a specific number of clients served by her company — she says patient numbers fluctuate constantly — but she believes there’s a huge and growing need for the personal care, nursing and companionship services Right at Home provides. This is backed up by demographics; according to Human Resource Development Canada, one in seven Canadians is older than 65, a number that will increase to one in four within 25 years.

In a conventional office environment, employees are in constant contact with supervisors and have access to their guidance and counsel. But Right at Home’s dispersed caregivers have a hard time connecting with teammates to get the support they need to cope, which is especially important in such a difficult industry.

Some clients actively resist care, and mentally ill patients or those suffering from dementia occasionally have physical or emotional outbursts. Plus, there’s the grief factor — many workers become closely attached to patients and their families, and in this line of work, clients eventually die.

“There’s typically a high [staff] turnover in this industry,” DePetrillo says, noting that several of Right at Home’s competitors are actually staffing agencies. “We’re really trying to avoid that scenario where we’re just finding a body to fill a shift.”

DePetrillo says she hasn’t yet had anyone quit due to stress, and wants to keep it that way.

“The reality is there’s no water cooler, there’s no lunchroom, there’s no ability to have that face-to-face team-building interaction that a lot of offices benefit from,” says DePetrillo, adding that “this is going to be more of challenge for us as we scale.”

Lynn Brown, managing director of Brown Consulting Group, says Right at Home should make every effort to host in-person meetings.

“Even if it’s not the whole team, even if they could do it in small or regional teams,” she says. “It gives people that connection to reach out to others if they’re having difficulty.”

The company launched in January 2012, and DePetrillo says she and the executive team spent the early days researching the Canadian market, interviewing prospective clients to determine their needs and wants, and developing programs based on the information they gleaned.

DePetrillo took pains to ensure she hired the right caregivers — employees who have the necessary qualifications and the proper personality for such delicate work. Jobs require dealing with a client’s personal care needs, from showering, dressing, and eating, to coping with incontinence; difficult tasks that can be compounded by patients who are non-verbal, aggressive, terminally ill or disabled.

“You have to be a very caring person with a lot of patience, you have to have your heart in the right place,” she explains.

DePetrillo is satisfied she’s assembled a top-notch team, and is actively working to overcome the geographic challenges. She holds virtual team meetings for staff to discuss concerns regarding cases. She also organizes the occasional employee event, sending a group of care workers out for dinner in an effort to build morale. But even this can be difficult to coordinate, given the physical distance between the staffers and their busy schedules, which revolve around a variety of clients who may require occasional, overnight or round-the-clock care.

“It’s not like the day ends at 5:30 and everyone gathers after work,” she says.

The situation is made somewhat more challenging, she acknowledges, by the fact that salaries for caregiver positions vary widely, with some employees not exactly making a handsome sum. Personal support workers, on average, only earn between $12 and $15 an hour, although registered nurses, who the company also employs, can make up to $42 an hour.

DePetrillo is eager to find solutions to these staffing issues so Right at Home Canada can move forward with its plans for national expansion

“We’re looking at the future,” she says, “and wondering, what are we going to do about this when we’re dealing with a much larger organization?”