COACH

Coach empowers senior care leaders to better understand, recognize, and retain their employees by giving a real-time view into satisfaction and likeliness to churn. We also give timely, actionable recommendations on ways to improve the employee experience at the right time and in the right amount. Practically, we integrate employee engagement into the scheduling experience so that when staffing, managers can take their caregivers' status into account and reach out or offer incentives to improve the situation.

Shift-based work is fundamentally a challenging problem to solve. Caregivers are compensated with low wages and little recognition in exchange for grueling demands over inconsistent hours. In 2018, caregiver turnover peaked at 84% with an average replacement cost of ~$3,000 per person, which leaders in the long-term care industry cite as the #1 issue affecting an organization’s ability to help care for seniors. Senior caregivers are disproportionately made up of minorities and women, exascerbating existing inequalities in the workforce.

COACH connects the dots between shifts and outcomes and uses that information to inform better working experiences for caregivers. Actions without insights run the risk of being misguided, while insights without action leave a business in the same place it started. COACH combines insights around a shift's attributes with employee engagement scores to recommend personalized and actionable interventions in order to improve employee retention.

Users: Senior caregivers

- People who worked part or full-time as caregivers for senior patients. They are typically minorities women with children who work multiple jobs (PHI National). I have a little bit of funding from UPenn to compensate caregivers for their time and interview them. To engage them, I've been showing design mock-ups of my solution to them and getting their feedback on what's helpful vs. not helpful. The solution will allow them to communicate with their managers more and show their clients who they are as human beings.

Customers: Independent, multi-site, home care owners

- These are people who 1) have businesses that are large enough to need more than pen/paper to schedule and track caregiver engagement but 2) small enough to understand the impact turnover has on their bottom line and have the decision-making power to pilot/buy new solutions

COACH allows home care owners to better understand their workers' needs and adjust their operations to create better working environments. For some workers, this is a mentorship program that allows for support and advising. For others, it's in-service trainings to help with practical education. All caregivers deserve better recognition and COACH helps home care owners better decide the ones that best match their caregivers' needs.

I currently have two pilots ongoing with home care agencies in the US. One is based in NY with another office in Chicago. The other is a national home care provider with offices across eight states and expanding. The market opportunity for home care agencies across the US is $50B and growing double digits year-over-year. Thus, by solving the worker turnover problem through improving the job experience, we have the opportunity to directly affect two distinct vulnerable populations: our seniors and our caregivers

Full-time staff: 2

Part-time staff: 1

Contractors: 2

In order to build a solution for caregivers, I need to work closely with caregivers. Once I have funding, I plan to bring on board caregivers to be advisors and offer feedback to ongoing product development. I also plan to work with former nurses and caregivers who are career switchers. For example - the designs that I currently have are done by an aspiring designer who used to work as a nurse. By working with people who have first-hand experience with the problem, I'm able to be close to the problem and maintain a diverse organization.