Reclaim Your Time: Delegation Strategies That Boost Team Efficiency & Client Satisfaction

Reclaim Your Time: Delegation Strategies That Boost Team Efficiency & Client Satisfaction

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Erin Cahill: Welcome to CareSmartz360 On Air, a Home Care Podcast. I’m Erin Cahill, Account Executive at Caresmartz. In home care and frankly in every service-based business owners and leaders wear a thousand hats. They’re solving last minute scheduling issues. Fielding caregiver calls reviewing payroll, managing clients and still trying to grow the business.

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Erin Cahill: But at some point doing everything becomes the biggest barrier to growth. That’s where today’s conversation begins. If you’ve ever felt like your to-do list is running your life, or like you’ve become the bottleneck in your own business. This episode is for you. Our guest today is someone who doesn’t just talk delegation. She’s built an entire movement around it.

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Erin Cahill: Regina asunction is the CEO and founder of Ascension Business Solutions, LLC. A keynote speaker, and the author of the Art of Delegation, with over 17 years in healthcare Operations and Marketing. Regina helps, home care agencies and service-based businesses reclaim their time, boost efficiency and scale without burnout

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Erin Cahill: from streamlining, virtual assistant teams to building systems that actually work. Regina empowers business owners to step out of the weeds and into the role of visionary leader. So if you’re ready to delegate with purpose and lead with clarity. Regina is about to show you how Regina, welcome to the podcast.

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Regina Asuncion: Thank you so much, Erin. We’re so excited and honored to be here.

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Erin Cahill: Thank you. So we’ll jump right into it. 1st question for you here. What are the biggest signs that a home care owner or leader is doing too much, and needs to delegate.

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Regina Asuncion: So there’s a few key indicators that we need to be careful of.

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Regina Asuncion: One of them is burnout. It’s 1 of the biggest threats of home care and realistically, in healthcare, specifically for owners and your key members.

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Regina Asuncion: There’s a lot of studies about how burnout really affects your brain when your brain is overloaded. You kind of get into this analysis. Paralysis can’t make the best decisions

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Regina Asuncion: state, because you’re just reacting to every single thing that’s happening in your company.

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Regina Asuncion: But as owners, you need to be able to strategize right? You need. You have to be able to function

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Regina Asuncion: in a way that your company is looking up to you for decisions. You can’t make every single decision. But you should be focusing on making the most difficult

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Regina Asuncion: high level high activity strategic decisions. And so we need to always look out for burnout.

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Regina Asuncion: Another sign is that your company has stalled. You’re not scaling.

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Regina Asuncion: And again, it’s because you cannot progress in a state of chaos.

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Regina Asuncion: And so those are some indicators that

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Regina Asuncion: usually you should you, you can see it and you can feel it. And it’s

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Regina Asuncion: it’s a it’s a good time to start thinking about delegating.

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Erin Cahill: Absolutely. And why do you think so many business owners hesitate to delegate, even when they know they need help?

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Regina Asuncion: I think it comes down to a few different things as well. One.

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Regina Asuncion: I feel like a lot of us have been burned before.

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Regina Asuncion: Right. You’ve tried to delegate.

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Regina Asuncion: and you trusted someone with your baby, because that’s what it is. Your company is your baby. Your company is what you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into your company is what you sacrificed moments with your family for. And

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Regina Asuncion: all of a sudden you are saying, Okay.

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Regina Asuncion: whether it’s a recruiter, Scheduler, or someone in house. You say, Okay, I’m going to give you my baby. And what happens? They drop your baby.

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Regina Asuncion: and that’s very traumatizing to some owners.

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Regina Asuncion: But the thing is, though, you can’t allow those moments to stop you from trying to do it

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Regina Asuncion: again, or finding out what happened and how to do it better next time.

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Regina Asuncion: Another thing is control, right?

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Regina Asuncion: A lot of owners. They have these limiting beliefs that no one’s gonna love my company the way I do. No one’s gonna do it like I do. No one’s gonna care like I do. It’s gonna be faster and cheaper if I do it myself.

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Regina Asuncion: but I think delegation is a mindset that owners have to adopt

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Regina Asuncion: in order to be successful in the long run, because those self limiting beliefs are, they might get you a short term win now you might save

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Regina Asuncion: in the short term.

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Regina Asuncion: But home care.

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Regina Asuncion: It’s a marathon, right? We don’t want to see owners

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Regina Asuncion: fizzle out in the 1st 2 years give up in the 1st 2 years because of their own limiting beliefs. So

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Regina Asuncion: I think it’s important that owners are aware of these beliefs and these feelings, and.

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Regina Asuncion: you know, really paying attention to these kpis and start delegating faster.

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Erin Cahill: Absolutely. And what tasks or responsibilities do you recommend outsourcing 1st to gain back time without sacrificing quality?

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Regina Asuncion: I love that question.

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Regina Asuncion: It’s and I think you’re hitting on a key

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Regina Asuncion: concept here of how to buy back your time

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Regina Asuncion: owners. We should be focused on again these high level activities strategic priorities that are going to move the needle.

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Regina Asuncion: So what I always recommend to owners is you need to audit your time. Figure out what’s taking up most of your time, and it’s pretty simple, but it does require a little bit of discipline.

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Regina Asuncion: Let’s say, next week you sit down at your table, and you write down every single thing that you’re doing.

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Regina Asuncion: hour by hour for the next 3 days.

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Regina Asuncion: It’s very easy after that to see what is sucking up your time.

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Regina Asuncion: then you need to know. Do I enjoy doing those things or not?

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Regina Asuncion: Am I even good at this or not?

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Regina Asuncion: Is this going to level up my company or not?

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Regina Asuncion: And once you answer those questions alongside with that time, audit it. You can see what things need to be delegated. Asap, for example.

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Regina Asuncion: owners are stuck behind their computers, answering emails, managing their calendars, responding to inquiries.

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Regina Asuncion: They’re trying to screen a flood of resumes, conduct every interview while also trying to do their own scheduling.

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Regina Asuncion: And honestly, what happens is you kind of don’t do it very well, because you’re trying to do everything at the same time.

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Regina Asuncion: So realistically, admin work is the 1st thing that you need to get off of your plate.

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Regina Asuncion: It’s below our pay grade, where we didn’t get into this business to be an assistant.

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Erin Cahill: Right.

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Regina Asuncion: And then a after admin, I would typically say, recruiting is the next thing you need to get off of your plate because it’s a numbers game. There’s so many touch points required

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Regina Asuncion: to successfully hire qualified caregivers.

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Regina Asuncion: Scheduling would probably be next, because it’s

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Regina Asuncion: very time consuming. Everything’s urgent. It’s like playing a game of tetris, and then I would say.

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Regina Asuncion: letting go of your on call nights, weekends, holidays.

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Regina Asuncion: because again, burnout, how are you going to come to work every Monday, feeling refreshed, ready to tackle another week of hard work.

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Regina Asuncion: If you work 7 days a week, pretty much 24 HA day.

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Regina Asuncion: You’re gonna burn out. And so that those were. That’s where I would typically recommend starting.

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Erin Cahill: Yeah, that’s very helpful. And how can agencies use delegation? Not just to reduce workload.

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Erin Cahill: but to improve client satisfaction.

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Regina Asuncion: I think I believe that owners again

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Regina Asuncion: have to focus on some of the hardest problems, and that is one of the hardest problems.

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Regina Asuncion: And it comes from the top. Culture comes from the top.

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Regina Asuncion: If your caregivers are not happy.

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Regina Asuncion: if your in-house team is stretched too thin.

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Regina Asuncion: then how who’s focusing on client satisfaction. Who’s actually going out into the field and making sure, how’s your caregiver doing? Did they show up? Are they on time? Did they sleep the entire time during their overnight shift.

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Regina Asuncion: but also your caregivers. I think so many owners forget that you need to treat your caregivers almost better than you would treat your clients, because at the end of the day, who are you, if you, if your caregivers are unhappy, unsatisfied, full of turnover.

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Regina Asuncion: so I think delegating the redundant tasks

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Regina Asuncion: allows us to increase our bandwidth

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Regina Asuncion: to address these specific issues and see where our companies can improve and progress.

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Erin Cahill: Sure. And what is your framework for successful delegation that doesn’t just offload tasks, but actually builds that team efficiency.

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Regina Asuncion: So our virtual assistants are very different than your typical Va. Firm.

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Regina Asuncion: We offer world class virtual assistants that help you streamline your operations, and let me explain how we do that.

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Regina Asuncion: 1st of all, we hire the best of the best. They have to have a bachelor’s degree to even work with us.

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Regina Asuncion: They we look at their Gpa. We look at their previous success. We want to find people that are

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Regina Asuncion: proven leaders, managers. They have

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Regina Asuncion: promotions awards. Even, you know, summa cum laude valedictorian. Those are the type of people that we’re looking for to start off with.

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Regina Asuncion: and then we train them so vigorously

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Regina Asuncion: up to 80 to a hundred 20 h in the role that you want us to fill. So we only fill about 3 or 4 different positions, like recruiting, scheduling on call data, migration, intake coordination.

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Regina Asuncion: So we train them specifically for that. But this is key. Erin is our onboarding process. It’s very streamlined.

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Regina Asuncion: We? When you teach us

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Regina Asuncion: how to do, let’s say recruiting that knowledge transfer from one brain to another. We actually document that first, st

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Regina Asuncion: we are building standard operating procedures for all of our clients specific to that role. And we go back and forth and we say, Hey, Erin? It’s been about a week. Here’s how I understand the process so far.

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Regina Asuncion: and what that does is, it

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Regina Asuncion: puts it in black and white, but it also eliminates guessing work.

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Regina Asuncion: It gives them decision trees. If A happens, then B happens.

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Regina Asuncion: and what that does is it allows us to integrate into your company faster, but with more accuracy, and you get

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Regina Asuncion: up to date standard operating procedures, which is kind of

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Regina Asuncion: super important when you’re trying to scale your company building that foundation.

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Regina Asuncion: We also have end of day and end of week reports. They’re so detailed, and so you can constantly see what your virtual assistant is up to, how many interviews, how many reference checks, background checks. Did they do, oig? Did they check their Cna license? And so again, there’s this constant

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Regina Asuncion: check, checks and balances between our company, and your virtual assistant, and the clients.

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Erin Cahill: Right? Yeah, that’s very helpful. And my last question for you, Regina, for agencies that are nervous about using virtual assistants. What should they know about the potential impact on operations and growth.

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Regina Asuncion: And I would focus on.

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Regina Asuncion: Why are you feeling hesitant?

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Regina Asuncion: Is this because of a fear?

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Regina Asuncion: Is it the fear of the unknown? Is it your own limiting beliefs.

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Regina Asuncion: because we can’t change what we’re not aware of.

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Regina Asuncion: Then once you have those

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Regina Asuncion: in in your forefront, right and on your radar, you’ve identified those yourself. I would highly request doing a demo with us.

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Regina Asuncion: because in this demo we’re able to answer some of the questions that you might have right. A lot of them are, for example.

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Regina Asuncion: how’s their English?

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Regina Asuncion: We can only hire virtual assistants that have

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Regina Asuncion: perfect, really good, verbal, and and written English communication again. They’re they have their bachelor’s degree. Some of them have their master’s degree.

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Regina Asuncion: Ask us questions. Well, how will they learn my process? It’s super complicated.

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Regina Asuncion: Well, it is complicated until you put it on paper and break it down step by step. That’s how you see clarity through chaos.

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Regina Asuncion: Another question that we typically get is pricing right? That’s 1 of the biggest

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Regina Asuncion: impacts of using a virtual assistant is the affordability.

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Regina Asuncion: On average, we save our clients around 61% in total operating costs.

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Regina Asuncion: Because we’re a 1099 for your company, not your employees. You can sidestep super expensive salaries. Just think about states like

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Regina Asuncion: California, New York, Hawaii, their salaries, their cost of livings are so expensive you can sidestep that.

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Regina Asuncion: plus as a 1099, you can avoid paying taxes, payroll taxes, Medicare social security.

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Regina Asuncion: You don’t have to provide our vas with benefits like Pto health, dental vision 401 K.

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Regina Asuncion: And the cost of hiring, recruiting, training, and managing those employees falls on us, not our clients.

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Regina Asuncion: But then just imagine being able to s to reallocate

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Regina Asuncion: that 61% in savings to other projects and initiatives.

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Regina Asuncion: Right? Like so many people need better marketers, business development people. But they’re so expensive.

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Regina Asuncion: Some people need to build a program that differentiates them from their competitors.

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Regina Asuncion: That takes resources and time.

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Regina Asuncion: So it’s not just the savings.

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Regina Asuncion: but also using those savings to better your company in different ways. So I would say, think about the long term

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Regina Asuncion: impact of having streamlined operations

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Regina Asuncion: while also getting the best world class virtual assistants at your side, while also saving in operating costs.

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Erin Cahill: Amazing. Yeah, thank you so much, Regina, for bringing such a powerful reminder that letting go is often the 1st step towards scaling up

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Erin Cahill: your strategies offer a roadmap for business owners ready to reclaim their time and lead with purpose. So we really appreciate that

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Erin Cahill: apps.

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Erin Cahill: Thank you for joining us until next time. I’m Erin Cahill, signing off.