 |
| This is a very important and serious question.
While some entrepreneurs' choices are limited by
external factors, there are many issues to consider
and to some extent this first decision can set the
tone for how successful your business will be. Even
if your circumstances limit your choices, it is
a good idea to read the information below just to
see what some of the pitfalls may be with operating
out of your home or a separate office. |
| |
| Money |
| The costs involved in establishing your business
from your home will be much lower than organizing
a separate commercial office space. Out of your
home you can use or borrow from the rest of your
house things like the phone line, computers, furniture,
etc. |
| |
| If you rent office space you will have additional
expenses such as rent, new equipment such as new
computers and furniture, insurance, alarm system
installations if the premises do not already offer
this, installation of phone lines and and internet
connection, etc. |
| |
| For some it will be just too expensive to rent
a separate office space. For many entrepreneurs
one of the main appeals of starting one's own Home
Health Care business is the fact that the startup
expenses are low. |
| |
| Convenience |
| Running the business from your home is certainly
very convenient. For one, you will ensure that you
have a very short commute! If you are going to be
operating the business part-time initially it makes
it easy to perform your daily errands that you may
need to do as part of your personal life. |
| |
| Family Obligations |
| It's no secret that many stay-at-home mothers
and fathers start a Home Health Care business because
it's an ideal way for them to watch the kids at
home and make some extra money on the side. Having
children around, however, can prove to be too disctracting
for some. In fact, just being home at all many find
too distracting to focus on their business. |
| |
| Employees |
| Your business growth may be hampered at some point
as eventually you will need to hire more employees
as your business takes off. While many Home Health
Care businesses remain being home-run operations
for years, even after hiring several office staff,
this does of course pose difficulties. |
| |
| Firstly, many people would have a problem sharing
their home with an employee. There is something
to be said for keeping your personal life separate
from your work life and it does impact on your image
as a boss if your employees see you in your home
setting dealing with your personal issues in the
workplace. |
| |
| Secondly, if you are hiring more than one office
administrator it may be uncomfortable to have a
stranger, or almost-stranger, around your home,
particularly as there may be periods of time where
you will not be home to monitor their actions. |
| |
| It's also important to consider that many Home
Health Care businesses operate by the cleaners arriving
in the morning to pick up their schedules for the
day. This may mean that you could easily have 10-20
employees going through your home. Many of whom
you probably will not know very well. |
| |
| Providing A Suitable Work Environment |
| Whether you operate your business from home or
from an outside office it is vital that you do your
best to create a suitable work environment. Of course
you may have kids and pets around, which can be
distracting enough, but even if you operate your
business from home you can create a separate work
environment by partitioning a part of a room and
by setting it up adequately with a desk, phone and
computer (all of which will be vital tools in running
your new business). |
| |
| We have not encountered any home situations where
it is impossible to create a suitable work
environment at home, but it may take some work on
your part and you should be prepared for this if
you are going to go this route. |
| |
| Efficiency and Self-Discipline |
| Some people find it impossible for whatever reasons
to work from home. It does require an enormous amount
of self-discipline, but you should not be disheartened
if you do not take to it immediately. It can take
some time to get into the swing of things. |
| |
| Procedures are important in your new business,
but even more so if you are operating from home
as they provide you with a certain amount of structure. |
| |
| While you may face different problems and issues
from running your business from an outside office,
many people do find it easier to get themselves
into a work frame-of-mind. Simply the commute from
home to the office helps to create the distinction
between work and home, but this becomes blurred
when you do work from home. |
| |
| Are you in love with the idea of working
from home? |
| Working from home is a dream for many. You may
have visions of yourself taking a leisurely jog
around the block in the morning, reading the newspaper
with your coffee at the kitchen table, taking lunch
with your spouse in the middle of the day, but you
should not delude yourself. |
| |
| You should absolutely definitely not run your
business from home just because you think it will
be "easier" because in many respects it
is not. |
| |
| Just try to imagine it. Starting your business,
that is those first few weeks, is the hardest. What
will you do when you're sitting at your desk at
home, waiting for the phone to ring? Will you turn
on the TV and catch the midday movie to fill in
the time? This is exactly the trap many fall into.
If you had your separate office you could not just
turn on the TV. You would be forced to turn your
attentions elsewhere. Such as what about spending
the wait-time brainstorming? The thing is that any
time you are not actively working (that is answering
phone calls or communicating with employees, etc.)
can always be spent just thinking of new marketing
techniques. There are always new things you can
be doing in the way of marketing. |
| |
| So after all this what should I do finally? |
| In the end noone knows your own situation better
than you, so it is very difficult to advise others. |
| |
| However, if you have the funding to rent a separate
office and no other limitations, this is preferable. |
| |
| But if you decide that you will try to run your
business from home and you have thought about it
carefully and weighed up the pros and cons mentioned
above you should not feel bad. You are no less likely
to succeed than if you rented a separate office. |
| |
| Enthusiasm and dedication can make up for a lot.
Having a separate office will not save your business
if you are not committed to seeing it succeed and
are not prepared to work hard at it. |
| |
| Of course many successful Home Health Care business
owners begin by operating out of home and graduate
to a separate office later when they could really
use the extra space. |
| |
 |
| Desk |
| You will absolutely need a desk with enough space
for a computer, telephone and drawer space including
filing space. |
| |
| Telephone |
| You will absolutely need a telephone. Perhaps
this is the most important part of the business
as this is where your clients will contact you.
|
| |
| Ideally you will be able to answer your phone
any time of the day. Especially during the initial
setup of your business you may be out of the office
quite a lot, even doing some of the caring work
yourself. If this is the case then you really should
have your home phone diverted to your cell phone,
or use your cell phone number as your business number
in the first place. |
| |
| If you are going to be using your house phone
you will definitely need to change your machine
message to reflect your business. It is absolutely
vital that you have a professional-sounding answering
machine message. Your kids may be very cute
on your answering machine but they will definitely
not inspire confidence in your prospective clients
that you are a professional. |
| |
| A good example of an appropriate answering machine
message is: |
| "You've reached Happy Home Health Care. |
| Thanks for calling. |
| Sorry we are not available to take your call at
the present time, but it is important to us so please
leave your name and number and we will return your
call promptly." |
| |
| Computer |
| You will definitely need a computer with internet
to be used for composing various documents, searching
and posting ads on the web, checking email and for
your special Home Health Care business software. |
| |
| Software |
| Having a good software is very important for assisting
you with the running of your new business. A good
software will not only assist you with running your
business but it can be very instructive as well. |
| |
| Thoughtful Systems' Scheduling Manager |
| The Scheduling Manager, produced by Thoughtful
Systems, Inc., is a great software for Home Health
Care businesses. It will assist you with storing
all information about your customers, setting up
with your recurring schedules, billing and payroll,
but will also help you with your marketing with
its sophisticated email module. It also includes
several letters such as gift certificates, thank
you letters, etc. which can be very useful. |
| |
| They will also work with you on financing by setting
up a payment plan for you so that you can afford
the software so there really is no excuse for you
to begin without adequate software. |
| |
| Click
here for more information about the Thoughtful Systems'
home health care software. |
| |
 |
| Your Company Name |
| Your company name is important. You need to consider
what type of image your company will have. You should
also consider whether there are any competitors
using the name already. This may cause problems
later and may take away some of the uniqueness of
your company. |
| |
| It's also a good idea to make sure that the name
can be easily understood when spoken over the phone.
It sounds silly, but some names may look good on
paper but not sound quite so good when spoken out
loud. |
| |
| Your Company Logo |
| If possible you should have your logo created
for you early on. This way, you can begin to establish
your company presence as you can use your logo on
your flyers and other marketing pieces. |
| |
| A well-designed logo, however, can be expensive
and if money is an issue you may wish to opt for
a plain text logo intially. You can still choose
your company colors and incorporate these into your
temporary logo. |
| |
| Your Company Web Site |
| It really is important for your company to have
a web site. These days it is a must for any kind
of business, but especially yours where prospective
clients are likely to visit it to find out more
information about your company. |
| |
| In addition to this, many customers these days
will search for a Home Health Care business online,
so it is vital that you have some kind of web presence. |
| |
| Having your own company email address as opposed
to an AOL or Hotmail email address will also add
to increase your company's professionalism. |
| |
It can be expensive to have a web site created,
but there are several companies around that offer
inexpensive web site templates. |
| |
| Thoughtful Systems offers one such template and
they will work with you to allow you to customize
it somewhat and will assist you with setting up
your company email addresses and submitting your
site to Google. |
| |
| Click
here to find out more about Thoughtful Systems'
web design services. |
| |
 |
| Hiring |
| Of course, the people you hire to do the Home
Health Care work are going to be a critical aspect
of the success of your Home Health Care business.
You’re going to want to set up a list of desired
characteristics for your prospective employees.
You’re going to want to define a set of core
competencies for your employees. These employees
will have access to your clients’ houses,
so you want to make sure they’re honest and
reliable. It’s a good idea to do a background
check on each applicant, to check if they have any
criminal convictions, etc. |
| |
| In some areas of the country it is harder to find
good employees than others. In these such areas
there is a tendency to "settle" for less-than-ideal
employees. This may seem a good idea at the time
as advertising and interviewing candidates can be
very time consuming, but will hurt you much more
in the long run. If the employee leaves or you fire
them you will have to start back at square 1! Often,
it is worth the hunt to find a good employee that
hopefully will be with you for years to come. |
| |
| Besides this, you’re going to want to decide
whether your employees should have the competence
to read and speak English. If you’re going
to be giving them printed job tickets (generated
from your specialized home health care software),
they're going to have to be able to read and understand
English. However, if employees are going to be working
in teams, it’s sufficient of only the team
leader has this competence. Also, some specialized
software applications for Home Health Care businesses
will print job tickets in Spanish, or some other
language. Ask your software vendor whether their
software does this. |
| |
| Training |
| There are a variety of methods for training your
staff. One popular method is to have new employees
watch a few videos, which show in detail what they
are expected to do in the customers’ houses,
what chemicals they should or shouldn’t use
for each part of the house, what to do and what
to avoid doing, etc. |
| |
| It's also a good idea to send your employees out
in groups, such as in pairs or in threes. Not only
does this make training easier, as your new employees
can accompany more experienced employees and learn
from observation, but also sending them out in groups
means they can watch over each other. It has been
shown that this leads to lower instances of accusations
of theft and other errors on the employees' part. |
| |
| A good software, such as Thoughtful Systems' Scheduling
Manager, will allow you to group your employees
together into teams to schedule. |
| |
| Retaining |
| It’s costly and time-consuming to train
new employees, so you’re going to want to
do what you can to retain the good employees. |
| |
| I have heard several home health care business
operators complain about the unreliability of employees,
and claim that this is the prime source of the failure
or stagnation of their Home Health Care business. |
| |
| Several of our more successful Home Health Care
business owners have established a bonus system
for employees who perform well, who show up when
scheduled, who get few complaints, etc. By encouraging
good and efficient work and by showing appreciation
through payment of bonuses, these employers have
greater success in retaining good employees, thus
ensuring good, efficient service to customers and
fewer complaints. |
| |
| Note: Check that the software you purchase has
a facility for recording Quality Control information
about employees. With this feature, you can make
a record each time an employee receives a complaint
or compliment and make decisions about which employees
to reward, and which need more training (based on
the Quality Control reports generated by your professional
Home Health Care software). |
| |
| For your software, try
the Scheduling Manager, which has been specially
designed for Home Health Care businesses. This
will be of enormous help to you when you start our
Home Health Care business. |
| |
| Paying Your Employees |
| There are several ways you can pay your employees: |
| Hourly |
| Commission |
| Fixed amount per job. |
| |
|
| |
| How should you pay your employees? Well some owners
devise a complex method of a combination of the
above, but it is actually quite important, in our
experience, that the pay method should be relatively
simple. This makes it easy for your payroll person
to do payroll (which can take hours) and also easy
for your employees to understand. |
| |
| Commission is a nice way to pay your employees
as it feels to them that they have a stake in how
successful your business is. If you earn more, they
get more. The downside of this is that you will
need to tell your employees what you are charging.
This may make them start questioning whether they
are getting a big enough commission. Why do they
only get 40% of the job when they are doing all
the work? Many companies do not want their employees
to know what they are charging for exactly this
reason. But it is unlikely that you can keep your
employees in the dark for long if they really really
want to know. |
| s |
 |
| It’s important to consider how you’re
going to market your new Home Health Care business.
You can have excellent employees who are well-trained
and have excellent administrative back-office systems
in place, but if no one knows about you you’re
not going to get any business. |
| |
| I’ve found in working with a variety of
Home Health Care businesses that frequently marketing
doesn’t get enough attention and business
suffers as a result. Therefore, make sure you have
allocated enough money in your initial budget (which
is part of your business plan) to launch your marketing
initiatives. |
| |
| You’ll probably want to consider all or
some of the following advertising media: |
| |
| Yellow Pages Listings |
| Although the Yellow Pages is not as important
a source as it once was, it still remains a basic
source of advertising – letting people know
that you’re there and open for business. |
| |
| Web Site |
| Nowadays more and more people search for services
and products on the internet. In my experience,
people under 30 rarely, if ever, use the Yellow
Pages and this also just happens to be the latest
generation of young professionals, just the type
of people that need a Home Health Care service!
They grew up with the internet and are familiar
and comfortable with it. So make sure you have a
web site where people can find you. |
| |
| There are many web designers out there who can
design a web site for you. Getting your personalized
web page for your Home Health Care business launched
involves several steps, from conception to implementation. |
| |
| Search Engine Optimization |
| It's not enough just to have a web site. After
all, what's the point of having a site if noone
can find it online? The first thing you’ll
need to do is submit your site to all the major
search engines – Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK,
etc. This can be time-consuming to do yourself.
You might want to arrange to have your web designer
do this for you. |
| |
| Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a new field
of endeavor related to the web that is becoming
a specialized industry in itself. Once your web
page has been created and is now sitting on the
web, along with a billion others, you may want to
consider finding ways to have your listing do better
in the search engines. An SEO specialist can help
you do this. |
| |
| Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaigns |
| Most people searching the web with a search engine,
Google for example, which will read through only
the first ten or twenty listings that appear in
response to the search term they entered. Fortunately,
you can pay Google a certain amount to arrange to
have your listing/s appear in the “Paid listings”
section of their site. How do you think Google makes
those enormous annual sales figures and why do their
stocks keep soaring upwards? PPC is a huge multi-million
dollar business! |
| |
| Costs for this will vary. First you need to sign
up with Google and then you’ll need to decide
how much you want to bid for individual search terms.
You can also set a daily limit, defining how much
you’re prepared to spend a day for clicks. |
| |
| It can be much easier and more economical in the
long run to pay an SEO expert to assist you with
raising your natural (free) listings in the search
engines. There are various techniques with regards
to improving the content of your site to improve
its natural listings. This is a largely an untapped
resource when it comes to Home Health Care businesses.
Home Health Care businesses have not, traditionally,
been the most up-to-date with the lates technologies
and have been slow to adapt to new marketing techniques.
This means that you can take advantage of this yourself. |
| |
| Flyers, Mailers and Door Hangers |
| Leaflets are an old standard for marketing any
service business. Many home health care businesses
around the country use leaflets from time to time
to advertise their services. One of our clients
spent between $30,000 and $50,000 on leaflets and
door hangers in the first few months after opening
his doors, to attract new customers. He was successful
in giving his home health care business a good,
quick kick start. However, this was before the days
of the internet, when internet advertising wasn’t
available. This doesn’t mean, however, that
leaflets and door hangers won’t continue to
be effective in this day and age! |
| |
| Car Advertizing |
| It is a great idea to have your company name and
contact information placed on your car and your
employees' cars. This is a great way to advertize
as you take your car out and about throughout the
day people will see you and come to recognize you
as the Home Health Care company. |
| |
| It's also a great way to get interest from neighbors,
which is great as it means you're in the area anyway. |
| |
| Referrals and Word-of-Mouth |
| You should do what you can to encourage referrals
and word-of-mouth. A great way to do this is to
award discounts and coupons to your clients who
refer a friend. You can send a mailing or an e-mailing
to your present customers telling them about your
incentive programs. |
| |
| Thoughtful Systems' Scheduling Manager can assist
you bulk emailings to your customers. They provide
you with several attractive templates to choose
from, or you can create your own. Click
here to read more about the Scheduling Manager. |
| |
 |
| Your Office Procedures |
| You will soon discover that the success of running
any office depends upon procedures and rules. Very
often when running a business there will be a tendency
to break or bend your own rules from time to time.
Very often when this happens it backfires and reminds
you why the rule you broke was so important in the
first place! |
| |
| Some of the procedures you will need to think
about and write down will be: |
| |
| 1) The rules for answering the phone and for speaking
to clients. |
| This may sound pretty obvious, but you'd be surprised
at how many people take for granted that others
know the correct telephone etiquette. There are
the basics such as: |
| • |
Always answer with the company name. For
example "ABC Cleaners how can I help
you?" |
| • |
Never put the customer on hold for a great
length of time. |
| • |
Always get their name and number before
you quote them any prices. This is not as
difficult as it may sound. Many people do
not mind these questions. You can offer to
add them to your mailing list to be notified
of specials. The reason for this of course
is that if you qutoe someone the price and
they hang up and you have no way to follow
up with them there is no way you can do any
research about your competition and on what
people think of your prices. |
| • |
If they ask your assistant a question they
are not sure how to answer, there is no need
for them to get flustered. They should simply
tell the caller they are not sure and ask
if they would mind holding for a few moments
while they find out the answer. |
|
| |
| You can download a sample New Client Form below: |
|
| |
| 2) The rules for handling complaints. |
| No matter how good your business is there will
always be complaints. You must make sure your office
assistants are well-prepared to handle complaints
when customers call. |
| |
| For less serious complaints (the cleaner forgot
to vacuum behind the couch, etc.): |
| The first thing to do is to apologize! Say you
are terribly sorry that the work was not done to
their satisfaction and, unless this customer has
a habit of complaining a lot, you should offer to
do the next visit at least at half price - perhaps
even free! In this situation it is incredibly important
that you follow up with the customer after the next
visit to make sure they are happy. This will impress
them and will show that you are committed to providing
good services. |
| |
| Again, a software package such as the Scheduling
Manager by Thoughtful Systems allows you to not
only record complaints received from customers,
which enable you to run reports to see your cleaners'
average ratings, but you can also schedule pop-up
reminders, which you can set to appear after the
customer's next visit to remind you to call them
to follow up. |
| |
| To
read more about Thoughtful's home health care software
click here. |
| |
| For more serious complaints (the cleaner stole
my earrings, etc.): |
| These complaints are a little more tricky. Probably
your assistant should pass the phone to you, the
owner, to handle at this point. If you are not available,
the assistant should take as many details as possible
about what was stolen, allegedly by who and when.
|
| |
| You as the owner will then need to confront the
cleaner. It can be very difficult to determine in
these situations who is telling the truth and who
is lying or mistaken. It has happened before that
customers have been mistaken and they actually left
their earrings somewhere else, for example. These
exact situations are why it is a good idea to send
your cleaners out in teams. It means they can watch
each other and, unless they happen to be very good
friends, it is unlikely they will turn a blind eye. |
| |
| If your employee has been working for you for
a long time and you trust them a great deal well
this definitely counts for a lot. In this situation
it is probably best to call the customer back and
ask them if they are sure, or if they could double-check
that the earrings are definitely gone and explain
to them how trustworthy your cleaner is. |
| |
| If your employee could have taken the item, and
if in fact you are quite certain they did, often
simply a threat of contacting the police can make
them confess. A reassurance to not call the police
if the item is returned will often resolve the situation.
Of course this employee is not going to be working
for you anymore, but the main thing is that you
have the item back to return to the customer. |
| |
| Rules For Hiring Employees |
| Hiring employees is very important. It can be
a big mistake to hire the wrong employees, so it
is a great idea to think about and to create your
own application. |
| |
| It is a good idea also to get references from
your employees. Whoever they are and whatever their
background, if they cannot supply you with at 3
least former employees or even family members or
friends who are willing to vouch for their character
this is a bad sign and you should definitely not
hire them. Once you have the references you should
contact them also. |
| |
| You can download an Employment Application below: |
|
|
|
