Home Instead: A Hand to Hold

Home Instead Senior Care, named a Top Franchise and the top-rated Senior Care franchise for 2019, had humble beginnings 25 years ago in Omaha, Nebraska. Paul and Lori Hogan, founders of the company, established their business to take care of their ailing matriarch, Grandma Manhart. With this company, they hoped that Grandma Manhart would age well at home and to alleviate their own family’s caregiving struggles.

Paul, Lori, and a dozen other family members worked round the clock in shifts, to take care of the needs of Grandma Manhart. They organised caregiving shifts to keep her safe and healthy right in the comfort of her home. Still, with all their manpower and resources, the family consistently faced difficulties to meet the needs of the 90-year-old grandmother. It led them to wonder how other families with similar ailing family members but with fewer resources and manpower made it work. And from this question, Home Instead was born in 1994.

Grandma Manhart was Home Instead’s ‘first ever client. With care, she was also being engaged in activities that she loved. This improved her life, and she went on to live for 11 more years, the way to the age of 100. Those extra years filled her life with joy and happiness, something that her family now cherishes.

Manifestation of Ideas into Reality

In his early days, when Paul talked about his business and franchising, he was chagrined; people told him that franchising is only for retail and fast-food joints. Today, Home Instead is one of the best franchising sectors, and this alone is a true testament to Paul’s vision. What makes Home Instead unique is their ability in developing an intense focus on all the different relationships between client and caregiver, and of course, the franchise owner. Home Instead is also the largest and the most successful in this industry. Their global footprint is impressive.

They have a vast collective intelligence. With over 75,000 caregivers in homes today all around the world, 80 million hours of care, they have a massive database of knowledge and expertise, and experience. They leverage this to enhance and better their care experience in anyone home.

Expeditious Problem Solving

Jeff Huber, president, and CEO of Home Instead looks at it as their unique responsibility to take care of seniors. “The world is facing a never before seen challenge. For the first time in the planet’s history, the number of old people is more than that of the young.” He calls this inversion as the Pyramid of Aging Inversion. This is putting a strain on all kinds of systems, mainly the healthcare delivery system along with pensions, transportation, etc. With their senior care services, Home Instead really hopes to be the solution to this next major crisis.

The Home Instead platform can be used for designing solutions to combat this problem. This leads to innovations and news ideas being generated. The leadership at Home Instead is involved in actual real-world positions. Jeff Huber himself serves as a governor on The Future of Healthcare. Paul, the founder, is on the very highest level of thought leadership when it comes to dementia, serving on the World Dementia Council.

Cherries on the Cake

The success of Home Instead can be attributed to the leadership facilitating conversations and having programs in place that not only help the clients but also the franchise owners. Their program, PerforMax, aims to benchmark their system on a number of operational and financial parameters. Using these inputs, they organise training sessions. They also hold performance group meetings where groups of 10 franchise owners come together and discuss their operational and financial challenges. They also hold an annual growth summit which is a brainstorming session where top owners and international partners come together and talk.

Becoming a franchise owner requires commitment, and Home Instead is very particular about who they can give the franchise. Jeff Huber states that it’s pretty easy to sell franchises. Growing as a quality brand through franchising is a whole other thing. That requires really careful attention to who you bring on board. “We are looking for people who can adopt our culture well. We look for people who have the potential to develop connections, and have a heartfelt desire to want to work with seniors and leave a mark on them and society in general.”

Through their roles as the company’s first professional caregivers, Paul and Lori developed a profound recognition for seniors and the caregivers who continue to provide compassionate care to older adults through Home Instead today. This emotional connection to caregiving imbibes the company with a sense of purpose – a mission to get every senior to live their best life, thanks to receiving the support they need when they need it, just like Grandma Manhart did.