Home Health Aide Job Description Template [2021]

With hiring and turnover continually challenging home health agencies, now is the time to make sure your home health aide job description is attracting the right candidates. Clearly, the desire for healthcare in the home will continue, and optimizing your recruiting efforts can help your agency meet the demand.

Looking to the future, the Biden Administration in March acknowledged the need to improve wages and benefits for home care workers as part of its $2 trillion plan to bolster U.S. jobs and infrastructure. Under that proposal, $400 billion would go toward expanding access to home- and community-based care.

This massive effort to bolster services for vulnerable people isn’t just a response to the number of baby boomers increasingly requiring home health assistance.

Trends during the COVID-19 pandemic have added new evidence that, where possible, many people prefer home care over long-term care facilities. And as more families and individuals seek out home health services, demand will continue to accelerate.

According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, home health aide positions are slated to grow 34% until 2029, significantly faster than all other occupations.

With so many home health and home care agencies competing for qualified candidates, the first step to getting ahead is having a home health aide job description that lets applicants know why yours is the organization to choose.

Market Your Organization’s Perks

A solid job description for a home health aide should do far more than simply outline basic role responsibilities and requirements. It should provide the applicant with a strong understanding of why they should seek employment at your organization and not your competition’s.

Of course you know the many things your organization does to support your employees, but don’t assume anyone else does – regardless of your reputation. Is your home health aide job description doing everything it can to promote your organization as one that truly values its employees?

Some senior recruiters suggest that organizations focus on appealing elements like work-life balance and company culture. Many home health care workers are students, parents, or both, and they need assurance that they can manage personal and professional responsibilities. Promoting work-life balance can address those concerns.

Applicants need certainty that your organization’s culture is one they’ll be eager to embrace. Home health aides do important work, and they know it. They want and need to feel a genuine sense of belonging at your organization and to know they’re appreciated.

Your job description should seek to market the ways your organization differentiates itself from the competition by being direct about valuing the individuals you employ.

Avoid rote or clichéd explanations of what employees mean to your organization and instead invest time in crafting sincere acknowledgments of the immensely important work applicants will do once they come on board. This kind of no-nonsense, honest approach will surely get their attention, and they’ll likely spread the word.

Deliver on Your Promises

Making your organization a genuinely great place to work is the easiest way to attract quality applicants. This may at first seem somewhat obvious. But if you can’t deliver on the promises and claims your home health aide job description makes, word will travel fast within the home-based care community.

Take an assessment of what your organization actively does for its caregivers, and address deficiencies. For example, how often does someone reach out to employees just to see how they’re doing? How often do you inquire about any challenges they’re facing and what can be done to help? What kind of employee recognition programs are in place, and are they adequate?

Examine other foundational elements that attract and retain workers. How well do you pay your employees compared to your competition? Are you providing sufficient training and making expectations clear enough? Does everyone within your organization have equal access to management in order to voice complaints or concerns?

Strengthening these building blocks and keeping an employee-first mindset are the best ways to ensure you’re stemming turnover and boosting retention.

Understand What Applicants Want

It stands to reason that your organization is likely competing with other companies in varying sectors for quality applicants. Delivery, retail, and food service companies are doing their level best to get the same great hires.

Clearly, having competitive wages is a surefire way to attract and retain great candidates. But this is often prohibitive for many organizations. If offering higher pay isn’t an option, take stock of other ways you can set yourself apart from the competition.

In fact, understanding what your competition is offering and how successful they are in their efforts is a great place to start before sitting down to craft a quality home health aide job description.

Review the ads other companies are posting on job sites and social media. Are they offering perks you could deliver or improve upon? What kinds of ideas can you glean from your competitors’ recruiting efforts? Getting a good grasp on what your competitors are offering is also a good way of gauging what applicants are looking for.

Conducting exit interviews with employees who are leaving is another great, if not ideal, way to understand what future applicants are seeking. By understanding what those who are leaving your organization need, you’ll be better positioned to provide for those coming in the door.

Ask for open and honest feedback about what your organization could have done better, as well as what you did right. Once you’ve gotten a good sense of why your nurse aides are leaving, take steps to make necessary changes internally. Then be sure to advertise these attributes the next time you update your job description.

The following section has an example job description that you can adapt for your specific organization’s needs.