An elderly companionship service sends trained people to spend time with older adults at home. Families pay for presence, patience and safety, so the owner must choose carefully, prepare companions and keep a clear record of visits.
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Share your requirementsAn elderly companionship service supplies people who sit with older adults at home, walk with them, read, run small errands, remind them about medicines and tell the family how the day went. Clients may live alone, with a spouse or with family who work away. Companions are not nurses and should not do clinical tasks. Hours range from a few per day to full days and nights. The work needs patience, steadiness and sound judgement, since older people may be unwell, confused or lonely. Families often live in another city and rely on the agency for updates. Companions work alone, may face death or illness of a client, and can become emotionally attached or worn down. See also HR for facility management.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in elderly companionship services. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
They depend on a daily message and cannot see what really happens. A missed update feels like neglect.
A companion is asked to give injections, change dressings or handle medicines she was not trained for.
A note that says 'all fine' tells the family little, and cannot help if something goes wrong later.
Staff are not told what to do when a client does not recognise them or leaves the house.
Long solo hours and a client's decline take a toll, and the carer quietly leaves.
Different relatives give different instructions, and the companion is caught between them.
Few people want them, and those who do are tired by day and may nod off.
When a client goes into hospital, hours stop and the companion loses income without notice.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Learning and Development; Employee Engagement and Experience. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a elderly companionship services business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A clear list in plain language, shared with families and companions, with medicines and clinical tasks marked as out of scope unless a trained person does them.
A clear list in plain language, shared with families and companions, with medicines and clinical tasks marked as out of scope unless a trained person does them. See HR documentation.
Time in and out, meals, mood, walks, medicine reminders and concerns, sent to the family each day through the same channel.
Time in and out, meals, mood, walks, medicine reminders and concerns, sent to the family each day through the same channel.
Falls, confusion, wandering, refusal of food and death or serious illness, with a script and a number to call.
Falls, confusion, wandering, refusal of food and death or serious illness, with a script and a number to call. The learning and development process can run it.
A check-in each week, a rest rule after a hard case and a quiet place to talk.
A check-in each week, a rest rule after a hard case and a quiet place to talk. See workplace health and safety and wellbeing.
One relative who gives instructions and receives updates, agreed at the start.
One relative who gives instructions and receives updates, agreed at the start.
Rosters, relief cover and a fair rule on pay when a client is in hospital.
Rosters, relief cover and a fair rule on pay when a client is in hospital. The attendance process defines it.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Practical training for the hard moments, so companions are not alone in them.
Support and rest for people who do emotionally heavy work.
Rosters, relief cover and fair pay rules during a client's illness.
A first week that makes the scope of work and the reporting clear.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
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A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
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A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
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Eighty per cent responded, the report was thorough, and six months later trust was lower than before. What went wrong between the survey and the silence.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Safe lifting, fall response, communication with people who are confused, basic hygiene, medicine reminders and when to call the family or a doctor. Keep a record of each training.
A companion can remind. Giving medicines or clinical care should be left to a trained person. Confirm the rules with a qualified professional.
Agree this at the start. A short note after each visit is common. Keep the same format so families learn to read it at a glance.
Cap hours, give weekly rest, check in and allow a break after a difficult case. Staff who feel looked after stay longer.
Ask the family to name one contact at the start. If instructions conflict, tell that person and record what was decided.
We would ask what your companions may and may not do, how visits are recorded and how the hard cases are handled. A good opening project is a scope list, a visit note and a hard-moments briefing. Scope is written down for you to accept or change.
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