From Employee to Franchisee - Changing the face of aged-care in Australia
From registered nurse to caring for the elderly in their home, Home Instead Senior Care franchise owner Vicky Meyers, opened her business in October 2013. Her first-hand experience of moving from ‘working’ to running a small business forms our inaugural series, ‘From Employee to Franchisee’
How are you paving the way for others to enter the franchise industry?
Not many people think of health care, in particular aged care in the home, as a franchise business. As a business owner of Home Instead, I’ve demonstrated that we can run a business, but, also provide that exceptional quality care for clients at the same time.
I’m showing that you can run a business, create a balance that runs around you and your family. By buying into a franchise like Home Instead, I was able to use my strengths as a registered nurse; but also, be supported in the things that I haven’t had so much experience in: like management and processes and HR. So, I was able to use my strengths and be supported in the field I haven’t had much experience with.
Not everyone has the ability to run a business and start a business from scratch. I think what we are doing by not only showing the success of Home Instead – not just business growth – but a balanced perspective; I’m paving a way for a business that not only cares about people from clients to employees, but, a good future direction for people who want to get into an owned business.
When you reflect on your journey so far, what highlight stands out?
Providing a quality service has just been an absolute highlight. I remember this client; all they wanted to do was stay in their own home and die in their own home. There was a lot of pushback from the hospital: that he needed to go into a nursing home. We provided 24-hr care for this client and he ended up passing away, in his own home and the caregiver was with him, holding his hand while he took his last breath and not only did we care for the client – but it was also about empowering and caring for the family and ensuring he was supported during his death.
And as a highlight, there is no better feeling when we’ve achieved what a client wants to achieve against what everybody is telling us we can’t achieve.
Another highlight is: we are able to recognise our caregiver, all our caregivers, and we nominated our caregiver for Australian National Caregiver of the Year. She was a finalist and it was important that we are recognising the people that go out and see these clients. Their feedback and their excitement to go and see more clients, to change the face of ageing is really exciting.
We are empowering our employees to do that.
Challenges?
Something that has been a challenge is changing the face of aging and what aging looks like. In particular, the not-for-profit agencies. They’ve been traditionally an organisation-focused model and not a client-focused model. So, they’ve seen us as a bit of a threat as we focus a lot on the client. It is hard to break down some of those barriers and create a good relationship – so that at the end of the day, the client gets the best service and it doesn’t matter who is providing the service. It is one of the hardest things we’ve also come across.
