Queen City Homecare makes workers feel needed

Only four years after opening its doors, Queen City Homecare marks a second straight appearance in the Top Workplaces survey. Company founder Aaron Stapleton says the secret to the growth is regularly saying thank you to his employees.

“A lot of the individuals in our industry, they feel like they’re replaceable,” says Stapleton. “It’s, ‘If you’re not going to do what I ask you to do, we’ll just let you go.’ For me, I’m more interested in: We hired you for a reason. So how do we hold onto you? How do we make sure that you don’t leave us and that you continue to give that great care? There are little things you can do that I think we all take for granted, but it means a lot more than people realize.”

Every year for the next two decades, about 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65, which means the already intense demand for home health care will explode and diversify. Some older people need simple housekeeping help or a hand with grocery shopping, while others are dealing with Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis or other disabling disorders. Stapleton started Sharonville-based Queen City Homecare because “I saw that there wasn’t the level of care that was needed.”

When he opened the company, Stapleton had already put in 10 years of experience in health care, chiefly as a human resources and payroll manager. In building Queen City Homecare, “we made sure that our employees understood how valuable they are. That is very important when it comes to the care that they give. If you don’t let them know how valuable they are and the importance of their role, they don’t think when they walk in the door that they’re doing any good.”

Queen City Homecare now has about 60 clients and could easily take on more, but “we want to make sure that we do so in a good manner,” Stapleton says. “We don’t want to grow too fast so that our care suffers. We’re more kind of focused on being the best rather than the biggest.”

The company employs 84 people, including a registered nurse who evaluates every new client. Other professionals follow up every 30 days with checkups. Two years ago, Stapleton says, the company brought aboard a social worker experienced in working with the elderly clients and their families.

“Sometimes, those family dynamics, you get a situation where people have a difference of opinion about what’s best for their parents,” he says. “With the social worker, they can come in and have someone, from a professional standpoint, talk about what’s best for your mom or dad. Sometimes, that helps ease the tension within the family. And there’s a lot of tension. It’s hard to take care of your adult parents, to be caregiver and a child at the same time.”

The social worker also is in charge of education, and the company conducts monthly in-service sessions for its cadre of certified nursing assistants and state-tested nursing assistants.

Employment at Queen City Homecare means quarterly evaluations because “giving that applause every three months really does keep their spirits up.” Monthly, the company distributes gas cards “to give back to those who are giving the great care that we’re selling to our clients,” Stapleton says.

Turnover is a chronic problem in the home health care industry, and the rate can often run to 50 percent for many companies. Stapleton said that at Queen City Homecare, the turnover rate after one month of employment is at about 25 percent. “That’s what’s really impressive to me. If you give Queen City an opportunity to show you this is the place to work, you’re really going to find a reason to stay here.”

Stapleton has experienced the power of saying thank you to employees. “Last Thanksgiving, I sent out an email to all our employees and just said thank you for all that you do, we are where we are because of you. You would not believe the number of employees that wrote back and said 'that means a lot, you have no idea how many places I have worked that haven’t even told us thank you.' ”

Queen City Homecare

Business: Private duty home care company

Community service: Volunteering with the local Alzheimer’s Disease association and the Multiple Sclerosis society on their annual runs; company employees also do one Saturday every two months at an Over-the-Rhine soup kitchen.

Fun stuff: Annual employee cookout, Reds games

Benefits: Health, dental and vision insurance; 401(k) plans, supplemental insurance, paid vacation, monthly gas cards, quarterly performance bonuses