Think for a moment: You have an apprentice fresh out of mortuary school who has two job offers:

Option 1 - Funeral Home A runs the office with a typewriter or outdated computer and handwritten forms. It prefers using a fax machine over email and serves families the same way it has for the past 30 years.

Option 2 - Funeral Home B runs the office with the latest technology, such as laptops or iPads, to manage day-to-day operations. It has a TV screen in the conference room or visitation room and provides 24-hour cloud-based access to files so that the funeral director doesn’t have to leave his kid’s little league game to answer a family’s question about a service.

Which job offer do you think the candidate would choose? While this scenario is hypothetical, it reflects a decision funeral directors face all the time.

Over the last 10 years, finding high-quality new hires for funeral homes was difficult. A big part of this challenge came from the fact that many funeral homes didn’t have the updated processes and technologies that are now considered essential for attracting new employees.

In 2016, Kelly Gilgenbach, our VP of Sales, wrote an article titled “A Good Funeral Director is Hard to Find.” Is that still the case?

In this article, we’ll recap Kelly’s thoughts and share how the challenges of recruiting and retaining high-quality hires for your funeral home have changed or stayed the same over the years. Plus, get ideas to improve your recruitment efforts!

Are good funeral directors still hard to find?

A decade ago, the funeral profession experienced a rapid rate of succession, which put pressure on funeral homes to quickly find high-quality hires to fill open positions. On top of that, families' funeral preferences were also shifting.

At the time, Kelly Gilgenbach talked to hundreds of funeral directors weekly. He shared this story from a conversation he had with a funeral professional who was struggling to find good help:

“One time, I visited with a funeral director whose father owned the funeral home where he worked. He told me how hard it was to find staff, even though they had a mortuary school within 2 hours of the funeral home. I asked him, ‘So, what are you doing to attract new, young talent?’

“The question stumped him because they really were not set up to attract young funeral directors fresh out of mortuary school. Their processes were antiquated (his own words) – they were using the same technology they used 30 to 40 years ago, relying on typewriters to fill out paperwork. As a millennial, I can attest to the fact that using a typewriter every day would be way out of my comfort zone and totally off my grid!”

Let’s fast forward to today. In 2023, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted 61,000 jobs in funeral service over the next decade, which, on average, is only about 6,000 jobs each year for new grads or funeral professionals looking for their next opportunity. New jobs are predicted to open, but how will you attract new, young talent to work at your funeral home?

One way to start is by improving your funeral home to meet expectations with technology and workplace expectations. But first, you have to determine what those expectations are, which brings us to our next point!

The key to recruiting, hiring, and retaining great staff

A decade ago, families were demanding more from funeral homes to create unique services. Today, consumers continue to evolve and crave more control, transparency, and convenience.

To serve families at the highest level, you need the best staff possible.

And to recruit the best staff possible, you need the best tools available so they can work efficiently and effectively.

In Kelly’s original article, he met with a funeral professional who found a competitive edge to recruiting talent in 2016: technology. Kelly wrote:

“I worked with a client whose funeral home was about an hour and a half away from my funeral director friend. This client had upgraded his systems so that he was using modern technology to connect with both families and his staff…and guess what? He had no trouble recruiting great funeral directors because his staff was attracted to the way he did business. The system saved his staff time and helped them stay connected 24/7.”

But what about today? Is it still true that having modern technology will attract the best quality hires? In 2022, a survey of over 100+ mortuary students revealed that:

• 65% of students felt it was very important for their future workplace to be technologically advanced.

• 88.7% of potential hires want to know their future funeral home is well-managed, with clearly defined team processes.

• 96.9% of respondents rated effective team communication as most important in the workplace.

So, yes, job candidates still feel technology is important in the funeral home. But what really gets the attention of new hires is the way you use technology.

The software you have in place should help you create smooth and efficient processes, avoid miscommunications on your team, and help your staff connect with families digitally.

Here’s how you can evaluate your funeral home to determine whether your technology and processes need updating before you post your next job opening.

How to know if you need new technology at your funeral home

Having the right technology in your funeral home will not only attract the best quality staff, but it will also keep your team working with more productivity and less stress and frustration.

To evaluate your current technology and see where you might need to make changes, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you have computers available to your staff that are less than five years old?

• Are you actively posting on Facebook or other social media platforms at least twice a week?

• Are you actively looking for ways to make your arrangement processes more efficient?

• Do you have the ability to allow your staff to access case information from any device, at any time, from any location?

• Is your funeral home website up-to-date and mobile-friendly?

• Are you using an automated reporting tool to track your monthly and annual data as opposed to Microsoft Excel or a spreadsheet to manually track data?

• Is your staff entering data into your system one time and then generating all forms as needed from a database as opposed to handwriting or entering the same data on forms multiple times?

• Are your forms updated and on standard-sized paper, as opposed to forms that are copies of copies using non-standard paper sizes?

If you answered “no” to one or more of these questions, it may be time to examine how to make your business more attractive to potential staff members. If you answered no to all of these questions, it’s time for a change!

To get started, take a look at these articles:

• 6 technologies every funeral home needs

• Recruit with your best tech forward: 5 technologies you need

Who are today's consumers?

With new technology come new and better ways to accomplish tasks, remain organized, and stay mobile and agile as a business. Technology allows your funeral home to create better processes and procedures that are far more efficient for your entire staff, which could be just the ticket to attract the best, most talented staff in your area.

Passare’s all-in-one case management software simplifies work for your team and allows you to connect with families anytime, anywhere. Learn more about the software in a live demo with our team.