E-commerce, fast food and tech are just a few of the industries Home Instead have eyed as a part of the company’s leadership recruitment efforts.

Over the years, Home Instead has looked beyond home care to other industries in order to recruit key leaders. This has allowed the company to leverage fresh leadership perspectives that have helped drive the business forward, according to Heidi Robinson, chief people officer at Honor, which acquired Home Instead in 2021.  

Robinson has had a hand in bringing some of these leaders to Home Instead. Like some of the the executives she’s helped recruit, Robinson’s resume is filled with experience outside of home care. Most recently, she served as director of exec talent management and org planning and effectiveness at Amazon.

She has also held roles at companies like Sears, Nordstrom and Nerdy (NYSE: NRDY).

“The common threads for me across everything I’ve done … are really around building features, products, businesses, teams, and identifying the skills, abilities and people that we need to make an idea become a reality,” she told Home Health Care News. “It’s also about establishing the culture that’s going to glue those people together to do something great.”

Home Instead has over 1,100 locations across the world, and one of the largest home care footprint in the U.S.

One of the reasons Home Instead has embraced leaders with various employment backgrounds is that these leaders often bring unique skills to the industry.

“Home care is still a category that’s very fragmented, but it’s a human-driven service, and it is ripe for disruption, in terms of driving efficiency with technology through scale, operations, quality and consistency,” Robinson said. “Part of what we have looked for are leaders who’ve done that kind of work, maybe outside the category.”

For example, Rebecca Burrows joined Home Instead last month as senior vice president of operations. Burrows once served as a general manager of international markets at DoorDash (Nasdaq: DASH).

“She’s got a deep background, from her time at DoorDash, in scale operations and hiring at scale, increasing the quality with the application of technology,” Robinson said. “I think we’re already starting to see what [Rebecca] can bring.”

Robinson also pointed to Dan Lee, the company’s executive vice president of data science, who previously worked at Sears and Nerdy. Lee brought years of experience in decision science and operations research to Home Instead.

One of things that has drawn all of these executives to home care is the desire to join a mission driven industry.

“Having a passion for the mission is really critical,” Robinson said. “We have a set of leadership principles for the company. The very first leadership principle is mission first, and that says leaders demonstrate a genuine passion for a mission. They prioritize decisions and activities that move the mission forward. That’s the first thing that we look for, and people who really want to sign on to that idea of changing the way society cares for older adults.”

Taking on leaders that don’t have strict home care backgrounds has also meant that Home Instead has benefited from new perspectives. These perspectives have sometimes been showcased at discussion seminars thrown by the company.

Home Instead’s network operations team regularly hosts virtual town hall meetings with the company’s franchise network of owners.

“Seminars are an opportunity to provide timely updates on topics that relate to the operation of their businesses, and show some of the new tools and the programs that we’re delivering to help make their operations more efficient and successful,” Robinson said.

Home Instead has hosted town halls ranging from technology to marketing.

Home Instead isn’t the only home care franchise company that understands the importance of diversity of experience. On the franchise owner level, companies like Synergy Homecare, Senior Helping Seniors, Always Best Care and others have also championed leaders that have unique backgrounds.

Looking ahead, the tech sector will be a main source of Home Instead’s recruitment focus.

“The ability to scale quality comes through technology,” Robinson said. “I believe that we need to hire people who are experts in technology, and know how to use it well to improve that experience. If the best place for us to get that is from these other sectors, then that’s what we should do for our clients. We should find the people who can help us solve these problems well.”