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Synergy Home Care continues to set the pace in the home care industry, marking its fifth consecutive year as the fastest-growing franchise in the sector.
CEO Charlie Young attributes this remarkable success to a strong commitment to franchisee support, strategic execution and a deep understanding of the evolving market demands. With a focus on creating a “world of care” for clients and their families, Synergy is not just expanding its network but also fostering a thriving community among its franchisees.
Home Health Care News recently spoke with Young to learn more about Synergy’s strategy and its plans for its franchisees.
Below is the conversation edited for length and clarity.
HHCN: Synergy has seen consecutive growth for several years. To what do you attribute that success?
Young: We have been on quite a run. When the data from all the other franchise systems is published, this will be the fifth straight year that we’re the fastest-growing franchise system in home care, and that’s a measurement of expanding our network through new territories. Still, if you look at just about any measure, we’re growing our network footprint, our system-wide sales revenue is outpacing the competitors in the space of the same store, sales growth of our franchisees over that period is outpacing our competitors, and the satisfaction of our franchisees is leading in the class as well.
I start by sharing that broad picture because the answer is that we’re doing a lot of things well. We are committed to building and driving value for our franchisees. Synergy Home Care has a saying: ‘We help franchisees do well while doing good.’ And that’s what we do. We are singularly focused on that.
This is a business experiencing a perfect storm of market conditions. You’ve got the demographic, the social trends and the changes in home care. All those things are coming together to fuel great demand in the marketplace. It’s also a relatively young industry, so young businesses are learning and finding their way at the ground level, market by market.
We’re focused on helping our franchisees execute. It can be simple things like answering your telephone, following up on inquiries or doing what you say you will do. Still, we’re focused on execution, so that helps. We’re very clear in the mission from the consumer that we want to make the process of getting care as easy as possible.
From a client’s perspective, our mission is to create a world of care at home for all that the company speaks of, and we think of that as encompassing multiple people and multiple groups. You’ve got your clients, the client’s family, the caregiver, the local referral partner and the national referral partner, the people who have clients they’re serving that they’re trying to get care for … We want to create a world of care for our franchisees. The headline is that we’re clear on what we’re trying to accomplish, and we’re focused on execution and simplifying things for everybody involved.
How much oversight do you have in driving that for the franchisees?
You have to lead through influence. You have sets of standards, operating processes and procedures. In our case, we’re in a partnership with over 240 individual business people running their businesses.
We try to lead the way first. That’s why franchisee satisfaction is so important. In franchising, you are successful by building credibility with your franchisees. That credibility creates equity you can draw on to have them follow you and uniformly do things. It all starts with us creating a great relationship with our franchisees. It’s not just about patting on the back and being nice to them. It’s about delivering value to them.
The second step is having a method and a process for going to market. How do we help them do well while doing good? There are four key elements to it. One is the platform, which is the tools, the systems, and the training.
We’re committed to continually upgrading and ensuring that our franchisees have the best tools in the system, in the country and the best training. Marketing is the second leg of the stool, where marketing has several essential jobs. Indeed, we want to build the brand Synergy Home Care so that it’s known throughout the country, but at the same time, those 240-plus franchisees operate in 550 distinct territories around the country, and we want to help them activate those territories.
We do that in several ways, such as through local marketing programs, digital media, etc. We also help them with the sales tools so they can go out and create relationships in their community and embed themselves in it.
That’s the third leg of the stool — leveraging the scale of our business. One of the values of joining a franchise is that we have a grander scale than you would have by yourself. We leverage that scale. We create partner relationships that drive referral business. We also create product relationships that differentiate the marketplace.
The fourth leg of that stool is collaboration. How well the franchisees connect is one way to tell if a franchise system is strong. We go out of our way to ensure that our franchisees are a connected group of people because there’s no better way to learn how the business works and succeed in it than from someone already doing it. That four-legged stool creates a system where franchisees are all on the same page.
Can you expound on that piece of connecting the franchisees a bit more? Is it a community of practice?
We have an annual meeting. As the CEO, I hold regular town hall meetings and send messages from the top down. However, the real work happens locally in the field.
We have what we call performance coaches. There are six of them across the country. The company is divided into regions, and the coaches work with their franchisees in those areas. We maintain regular connections with franchisees through performance and peer groups.
Each week and month, performance groups take place across the country; they may be regional in nature. Now, five years post-COVID, these events will occur in person, allowing participants to come together and discuss regional issues while focusing on best practices.
Currently, we are conducting a session on developing local referral relationship sales techniques. Another example involves scheduling and enhancing scheduling efficiency. How can we improve that process? Recruitment is yet another aspect we emphasize. There is a regular calendar of these collaborative events. We also encourage organic connections, asking how we can assist in connecting franchisees on their own.
With the demand for home care increasing, recruitment and retention are always at the top of mind. What are some of Synergy’s recruitment and retention efforts?
We weren’t substantially impacted negatively by the labor shortage.
When we saw post-COVID, the labor shortage was starting; there was so much demand in the marketplace that we had to help our franchisees meet that demand. We needed to recognize that home care companies, market by market, would thrive in a labor-shortage market and would be the best at recruiting caregivers.
We launched and then stood up a recruiting management system for our franchisees. It is an end-to-end tool that helps them advertise for caregivers, bring those candidates into their process, and then manage it as if they were managing a sales process.
For caregivers, getting a caregiver through the door is crucial to speeding up the process. Very quickly, we could ask on a franchisee-by-franchisee basis: how many applicants did you have? Of those applicants, how many did you make contact with? What was the time between when they reached out to you and when you responded? Among those you made contact with, how many did you interview? What was the time between those two stages? Of those you interviewed, how many were offered a job? Among those offered a job, how many started? We implemented this tracking almost three years ago, and we haven’t encountered much of a labor problem since that point.
As the franchisor, we can analyze this data on a macro level for the entire system, but we can also explore it further with individual franchisees who may indicate that they are having difficulties. We can assess whether the problem stems from a lack of caregivers or a shortage of clients. If it’s a caregiver issue, we can suggest, for instance, that they improve their sales process by refining it or identify if something they’re offering isn’t attractive. This approach demonstrates how we, as a franchise, aim to enhance the business practices of our franchisees.
Retention is all about valuing the caregiver and understanding that you must create a value proposition for them. And for us, that’s around things that we do, training-wise; it’s also things that we do systems-wide.
An example of system-wide data use is that caregivers want to work; they’ll come to you and say, “I have 30 hours.” If you’re consistently not meeting those 30 hours in your scheduling, that caregiver will look elsewhere to fill the remaining hours. One thing our systems allow us to do is manage capacity on both a company-by-company and individual caregiver basis. As a franchisee, I can now manage my scheduling to maximize my caregivers’ availability. That’s one way we’ve tackled that overall challenge—by creating career paths and training.
We view this business mainly from the perspectives of franchisees, clients and their families. Many competitors approach it from a health care standpoint, leading to varying interpretations of care, such as personal care versus companion care—terms that often confuse those outside the industry. Our Synergy Home Care franchisees and similar companies offer the same services regardless of the client’s needs or conditions. However, we’ve organized these services for easy selection, providing offerings like Parkinson’s care, dementia care, cancer care and more — around 12 products in total.
From a marketing perspective, this packaging encourages conversations between franchisees and local referrers. For example, if a facility has many Parkinson’s patients, we can support that with our Parkinson’s care product, which includes caregiver training through the Parkinson’s Association. This directly aids our retention efforts by fostering career development for caregivers. Each product provides certifications and training that improve their skills and opportunities. Consequently, two key questions arise: How can we create a value proposition that genuinely values caregivers? How can we utilize data and systems to address their needs and align them with our objectives?
What technologies do you believe are most important for your business? Are there any new technologies you hope to use in the future?
The operating systems that assist franchises enable operators to maximize business efficiency. This includes scheduling, recruiting and retaining caregivers, as well as communicating with clients and their families. Additionally, we can expect to see AI and other technologies enhancing these processes.
I’ve mentioned that we are focused on keeping things simple in our business. While I believe technology is the future of everything we do, we are also cautious not to chase technology for technology’s sake but rather to solve specific problems.
We are using technology to enhance the efficiency of scheduling, recruiting and related tasks. In the future, some of this technology will be implemented in homes to help monitor patients and provide care. Much of it is still being tested and developed. We are monitoring everything and are involved in some aspects, but we’re not ready for prime time yet.
What are some of the most challenging regulations you’re currently facing, and what are your hopes for the new administration regarding these regulations?
We understand that the business environment will occasionally ebb and flow and change. Our job is to focus on positive momentum while serving the needs of those we support, including our franchisees, caregivers, clients, and their families. The macro-environment will shift around us, and we must stay aligned with the theme of keeping things simple.
We need to continue moving forward. Because Synergy Home Care primarily operates on a private-pay model, much of what happens in the regulatory world, particularly at the state level, doesn’t impact us similarly.
The licensing process poses the most significant challenge our franchisees encounter on a state-by-state basis. We must balance ensuring safety and maintaining high-quality standards without making it overly complicated for people to conduct business. We perform as well in Maryland and Florida as in non-licensed states. We thrive in both heavily regulated and less regulated states.
What goals do you have for the company in the next five years?
Our company is in the early stages of significant market change and growth. If people notice what we have done in the last five years, they should see that as an indication that it will only get stronger in the next five years.
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