Home care agencies are already business-to-business companies (B2B) if they work with institutions to receive referrals. They are also business to consumer (B2C) since they market directly to consumers who need care for themselves or their loved ones. B2E websites and B2E marketing is a critical focus for growth.
B2E refers to the Business to Employee function of every home care and home health agency. In a tight labor market, this is sometimes more important than reaching consumers. When your B2E is working is creates a reliable flow of quality employees - an essential skill. Navigating the relationships and various marketing channels makes B2E, B2C and B2B a challenge.
B2E means that the job of winning employees has to become a marketing focus that is just as important as winning new customers. The same level of energy you expend to win customers - brochures, websites, emails, digital and print ads, outreach, social media - must be considered for the job of making sure you have caregivers to meet customer demand. And, when it is done using a well-designed plan, it can spur real growth.
Paid job lead services are the most costly and according to the 2021 Benchmark Study, the top two paid job boards have the highest turnover. Companies that don't have recruiting methods that utilize their own B2E digital marketing are left with just a couple of expensive options - paid ads, job search services, or the hope that employee referrals will do it all.
The good news for home care and home health companies is that strategies like Inbound Marketing can be readily applied to employee recruiting. Inbound marketing brings together search engine optimization (SEO), social networking, email nurturing, content management, customer response management tools (CRM), and other proven marketing approaches into an integrated package.
This system works on the opposite principle of paid ads, it offers value to employees who are in various stages of readiness. That is of the reasons that it works for recruiting in the passive market too.
By contrast, paid job search not only delivers a lower quality of prospect with higher turnover, but it puts the business in a perpetual "rent leads to grow" situation. Since you don't have sole ownership of the employee leads, use only temporary rented employee lead services, and have to share those leads with potentially hundreds of other companies, you don't build any long-term capacity to recruit at scale. Your own digital properties remain invisible to prospects, and you continue reliance on outside resources. Your investments in these advertisements just don't create marketing assets that you own, because you have to keep paying the fees in perpetuity.
Inbound marketing, when used for recruiting, connects care agencies with prospects who build a real understanding of the differences your agency offers. They become connected to your culture in the process of exploring work opportunities. As a result, you build a strong employer brand, not just a customer brand.
Understanding your B2E role as a company means that you begin viewing employees as customers who need the same kind of branding, messaging, and prompts to get connected and stay connected to your organization. And just like other customers, marketing doesn't stop once they sign on - continued communication and a brand connection is needed to build stronger retention. Like other customers, the long-term goal for employees is that they buy into the culture and values of your agency. They move from being people who show up for a JOB, to champions who are excited to share about their work and the company wherever they go.
One simple example is what happens when an employee shares excitement about their job in a social network - just one component of an inbound strategy. Research makes it clear that consumers trust the opinions of employees more than any other group in your business (except outside academic researchers). When your employees share satisfaction with their role in your agency, it makes a big impact.
If your employees, each of whom has a conservative average of 150 people in their social networks, (the actual number may be over 800), share positive experiences about their work, how many people could just one post reach? Since social networking is built on a viral principle, it means that friends can share what their friends share. If even 3% of your employees 'social friends pass on something positive about your business, the reach of that single post could be massive. In just three steps one post can reach more than 3,000 people. A home care agency with 50 employees could have a consistent social reach of 40,000 people, with the right approach.
Here is the challenge: viral and organic sharing by employees is a little like lightning in a bottle. It's great if you can find it.
Scaling your B2E marketing, and creating a repeatable experience for prospects that not only highlights great employee stories, but wins them to your culture, requires an intentional candidate journey that is built into a website that works.
Most companies have just one page for career information dominated by a list of open jobs. That is not a candidate journey- it's a shopping opportunity. Shopping is great, if you want your company to just be a commodity like soap or toilet paper.
Inbound Marketing integrates social media with all of the other elements that are needed to convert powerful social reach into new employees and agency growth. But it means making an important shift from just relying upon external employment lead services toward an inbound strategy that puts together the B2E website, email, social and other assets to create something that can build momentum in recruiting.