Learn why the Work Opportunity Tax Credit should be a long-term resident at your facility
As America’s population ages, the market for nursing homes is poised for huge growth over the next decade. Of course, this growth will bring with it many new jobs. While that may be good news for job-seekers and business owners, it may also pose hiring and recruiting challenges.
If you’re an employer or hiring manager in the nursing homes market, this may be old news to you–and you may have already devised strategies for keeping up with the increasing pace of your hiring needs despite two complicating factors that don’t seem to be going away any time soon:
Here’s another tool to add to your recruitment strategy: the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC). WOTC is a federal employment tax program that can both broaden your talent pool and directly reward you for hiring certain job-seekers.
We’ve helped many nursing homes create lasting change to their bottom line through this program. Will you be next?
Expand your applicant pool
The WOTC rewards employers for hiring and retaining job-seekers from certain disadvantaged target groups, including:
- Veterans
- Ex-felons
- Residents of economically distressed areas
- Recipients of certain forms of government assistance
- Certain seasonal employees
- and more
Organizations who take full advantage of WOTC design their recruiting strategy to include applicants from these categories. This practice financially rewards both the employer and the employee, and may also help fill open roles by incentivizing them to search in often-overlooked places.
Although some decision-makers come to WOTC with the misconception that eligible employees are rare, the fact is that over 20% of US citizens qualify for the program. Many of our clients enjoy eligibility rates above 30% once their WOTC program is up and running!
Get paid back for hiring
After WOTC-eligible employees are certified by the appropriate state workforce agency, they generate tax credits for their employer after working certain amounts of hours. The amount of credit any given WOTC employee can generate varies according to a handful of factors, but an average WOTC employee lowers their employer’s tax liability by $2150.
Depending on the volume at which you hire, and the associated expenses of doing so, tax credits earned through WOTC can–and often do–offset or eclipse the overall cost of recruitment and hiring.
Beyond this, reduced tax liabilities result in direct growth for your bottom line, since WOTC adds no overhead to your operating costs.
Since nursing homes are hiring at higher volumes than ever–and project to hire even more–there’s never been a better time for your business to launch a WOTC program. After doing so, nursing home owners should expect WOTC profits to quickly outpace the growing costs of recruitment and hiring.
Stronger workforces
Although some employers may hold biases against hiring WOTC-eligible employees, this should not discourage them from taking advantage of the program’s benefits. Research has shown that WOTC workers:
- Perform better than or equal to their peers
- Stay in their job as long or longer than non-WOTC employees
- Are less likely to leave their job in the first year than their peers
- Earn as much over time as their peers
- Progress through career ranks at the same pace as non-WOTC employees
- Are just as likely as non-WOTC employees to move to another job following their WOTC-eligible job (rather than unemployment)
Additionally, WOTC workers tend to come from diverse backgrounds, and bring diverse experiences to workforces. As a result, adding WOTC employees to any workforce can benefit DEI initiatives, and improve workplace cultures in a myriad of ways–including driving innovation and growth, according to Harvard Business Review.
Improve your business’s quality of life with WOTC
We’ve helped hundreds of businesses claim over $650M in tax credits over the last decade.
Our tools and solutions help businesses of any size claim the money they deserve. If you’re ready to get rewarded for the hiring you’re already doing, and set yourself up for increasing future success, partnering with us is the right choice. We make claiming tax credits simple.