Caring for our Care Pros: A Huge Change at Honor
Who cares about care workers? We do.
Since Honor launched in spring of 2015, we’ve learned a lot. We continue to learn every day, adapting quickly, constantly making changes to deliver better service to our customers and their families. Some changes are small, others are big.
Today, I am announcing a change that is huge.
Honor Care Professionals will become employees, eligible for benefits — and stock options.
Why? For many reasons, all very important, which have lead us to this realization: It’s not enough for Honor to create technology that helps make people’s lives better, we also have to create jobs that make people’s lives better.
Let’s unpack this a bit.
The home care industry employs about 2 million workers who typically have been underpaid and not well respected. Of these home care workers, 90% are women, 56% are women of color, 36% have dependent children. Over 50% receive government assistance because they simply cannot earn enough to provide for their families. The home-care industry has not been working for the very individuals who do the work.
We want to change that.
Our Care Pros have always been the rock stars at Honor. They go into clients’ homes and provide compassionate, skilled, even loving care — and they do it with joy and a sense of purpose. They are the heart and soul of our company and they inspire us every day. We have always recognized our Care Pros as professionals and understood the importance of their work.
Now, we’re taking it to the next logical step.
By making our Care Pros employees, we can offer them greater security, workers comp, and paid sick leave. We can give them additional job training to better care for clients with Alzheimer’s, dementia, diabetes, cancer, and other age-related conditions. We can also offer career advancement opportunities and equity — something rarely done in the service industry — so they can ultimately share in Honor’s success.
But this change isn’t just about our Care Pros.
It’s also about the families we serve.
When our Care Pros are more secure in their jobs, better trained, and more supported by Honor, they will be able to provide better care to Honor clients by fostering deeper relationships with them. Quality care is defined by quality relationships between the care professional and the care recipient. Today, we’re in a far better position to make that happen for all of our clients.
When we started Honor, we had a singular goal — to help our parents continue to live in their homes as they aged. This is what I want for my own mother, and what she has always wanted for herself. Not surprisingly, it’s what about 90% of older adults want as well. Now we have that goal and a few more.
We want to be leaders as well as innovators, a human company as well as a tech company.
We’re hopeful this change will not only empower our Care Pros but also inspire other Silicon Valley startups to follow suit and move the sharing economy toward a more caring economy that truly benefits its workers.
