AccentCare has a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiative.
Behind it is a belief that home-based care providers should be as transparent as possible with current and future caregivers about the makeup of the company’s workforce.
“When you share your workforce data transparently, you’re owning where you’re at in the space — not only as far as workforce compensation, but also as a company that really embraces people’s uniqueness,” Rafael Fantauzzi, AccentCare’s chief DEI officer, told Home Health Care News. “It was important that as part of our initiative, we continued to build trust with our workforce. Developing frameworks for diversity, equity and inclusion are things that we want to embed throughout the entire organization so that it becomes sustainable.”
The Dallas-based AccentCare is one of the largest providers of home-based care in the country, operating in 32 states. Like all providers, AccentCare is finding new ways to combat staffing shortages and believes that workforce transparency is a step in the right direction.
Earlier this month, AccentCare released a comprehensive breakdown of its nearly 30,000 employees based on their gender, ethnicity, generation and other identifiers as a way to build trust within the organization. It’s also a way to recruit future caregivers, the company believes.
“Anybody who is considering a job with our organization can now see what our company looks like,” Fantauzzi said. “People want to know what kind of place they would be working in, how they feel they would fit. This can help guide them.”
AccentCare believes an important aspect of recruiting and retaining is understanding that employees don’t stop being themselves when they walk into work.
“We want to make sure that they’re coming to a place where they feel comfortable being exactly who they are,” he said. “A place where they feel nurtured, supported and a place where they feel like there’s opportunities for growth. It is very crucial for us to share that with potential future employees.”
The initiative also gives an opportunity for a company like AccentCare — who reported a workforce made up of 88% women, 37% from Generation X, and over 61% Black or Hispanic — to look inward and find ways to be a more inclusive company wherever possible.
Fantauzzi believes it could set a trend in the industry at large.
“It’s a way for the industry as a whole to take notice,” he said. “This data is oftentimes not shared among corporations. We have an issue in our space where we don’t have enough talent. We’re all fighting for the same talent. Having enough talent is crucial to the operations of our businesses and the more we share about where we’re at, the more opportunities we have to help build that pipeline for the future.”
Sharing more internal data, AccentCare hopes, will nudge its peers in the same direction.
“It also shows that we have to work together to help build a pipeline of health care professionals so that we all can offer quality service to our patients and their families,” Fantauzzi said.
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