In a time of workforce shortages, hospices are seeking the “secret sauce” that will help keep employees on board and bring new people into their fold.

To find the right mix, hospice providers that have achieved national recognition for employer best practices point to a particular secret ingredient — a supportive culture with open lines of communication, a career path with room to grow and competitive compensation.

For the California-based YoloCares, culture is critical, according to the nonprofit’s CEO Craig Dresang.

“It really comes down to culture, because you can pay well and offer good benefits, but if your culture is not a high-performing inclusive, safe environment that fosters creativity, then you’re not going to be as good a company as you could be,” Dresang told Hospice News. “I have a theory that if you’re not deliberate, purposeful about culture every single day, what happens is that garden variety cultures pop up in all corners of the organization.”

YoloCares provides hospice, palliative and supportive care in six counties across northern California. In March, the hospice provider was approved by its state government to expand to 10 counties to meet rising demand. YoloCares affiliated with the regional hospice collaborative California Hospice Network (CHN) in 2021.

The company has twice been selected as a “Best Place to Work” by Modern Healthcare.

A crucial component of this kind of supportive culture is open lines of communication between employees and senior management, according to executives at VITAS Healthcare, subsidiary of Chemed Corp. (NYSE: CHE). VITAS is the largest hospice company in the nation by market share, according to 2022 data from LexisNexis.

VITAS in 2023 received the Best-in-Class Award in the category of employee experience in health care for North America from the HRO Today Association, a human resources group.

“We maintain a leadership presence with respect to their people. Their leaders are available, approachable and accessible at all times,” VITAS told Hospice News. “As we talk about how we continue to engage folks, we had a lot of people embracing that. We’ve taken their participation and commentary, and then we made sure that we acted on their feedback and communicated what we implemented.”

Given the size of the VITAS workforce, more than 11,000 employees, the company says it also seeks to measure employee sentiment and satisfaction en masse through annual surveys.

A positive culture is one in which employees feel supported, aligned with the organization’s mission and that they can have a promising career path, according to Jennifer Blades, chief human resources officer for Florida-based Haven Hospice. Formerly a nonprofit, the organization was recently acquired by BrightSpring Health Services (NASDAQ: BTSG) in a $60 million deal. The company serves 18 counties in the Sunshine State.

Earlier this year, Haven became certified by the Great Place to Work program, which seeks to recognize exemplary employees using employee feedback and surveys.

“We’ve invested a lot in leadership and management development, making sure that they feel prepared to provide that support and trusting structure and guidance and mentoring to all of their team members,” Blades told Hospice News. “We’ve tried to make sure that for the team itself that they have opportunities to grow and develop. So that could be training on the job, or it could be opportunities for advancement or participating on special projects.”