TOP WORKPLACES 2016

Growing health firm stays true to its employees

No. 1 midsize employer: Ohioans Home Healthcare

James Pierce, quality assurance manager, left; Christa Adams, human resources director; Jennifer Wood, customer experience coordinator; Josh Adams, CEO; Jen Williams, director of marketing; Shelly Williams, clinical quality assurance manager, and Kimberly Schmeltz, operations manager, operate Ohioans Home Healthcare. The Toledo-based company also has offices in Sandusky, Bryan, Lambertville, and Dayton.

The Blade/Katie Rausch
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James Pierce, quality assurance manager, left; Christa Adams, human resources director; Jennifer Wood, customer experience coordinator; Josh Adams, CEO; Jen Williams, director of marketing; Shelly Williams, clinical quality assurance manager, and Kimberly Schmeltz, operations manager, operate Ohioans Home Healthcare. The Toledo-based company also has offices in Sandusky, Bryan, Lambertville, and Dayton.

While Josh Adams enjoys seeing his company grow, he admits that such growth also generates a few concerns.

Would a bigger Ohioans Home Healthcare lead to impersonal care and services to the clients the company serves? Also, would a bigger company mean his employees no longer would receive the support, supervision, and tools they need to do the best job they can?

As it turns out, Mr. Adams, owner and chief executive officer of Ohioans Home Healthcare, needn’t have worried.

The company is a third larger this year than last year. And for the second consecutive year, it finished atop the Toledo area’s midsize companies category in The Blade's Top Workplaces competition. The category is for employers with 75 to 299 employees.

In 2015, when Ohioans was named a Top Workplace, the company had 130 employees, plus another 50 that it contracts with on a regular basis.

In 2016, it acquired a small company in Dayton, expanding its footprint, and added more employees to service its overall territory. Ohioans, a Toledo-based home care agency that provides skilled and unskilled services in 17 counties in Ohio and Michigan, now employs just more than 230 workers.

Yet the company’s core philosophies have not changed a whit, Mr. Adams said, adding that winning the Top Workplace award two years’ running validates that the executive team is doing things correctly.

“We really try to stick to our core values,” he said.

The company invests the same amount in its employees as it ever did, Mr. Adams said. And the lines of communication remain open, although communicating with more than 200 people takes greater time and effort.

“It just takes more effort and resources here to get all the people together, but you can get people together if you work at it,” he said.

Ohioans has offices in Toledo, Sandusky, Bryan, Lambertville, and now Dayton, and Mr. Adams said the company is continuously expanding by moving in different directions, doing different things.

Kim Schmeltz, Ohioans director of operations, said winning the Top Workplaces award last year was satisfying but also very surprising. “After hearing we won, I walked out of here last year smiling. To win an award you didn’t know you were working for was wonderful,” she said.

In comments about their employer, Ohioans workers couldn’t praise the company enough.

“As a newer home care nurse, the Ohioans office and supporting staff are excellent to work with. Everyone is extremely helpful and efficient. Ohioans provides me with a flexible schedule that allows me to spend the time with my family and children. I have been a nurse for over 15 years and this has by far been the best job ever,” one employee wrote.

Another wrote: “Everyone is always positive and eager to help. There is no pressure to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with, but many opportunities exist to help educate on clinical skills to make the staff feel confident in the care they provide.”

Ohioans was formed under another owner in 2007 and approved by Medicare in 2009. Mr. Adams bought the company in 2011.

Mr. Adams said health care looks very different than when he bought Ohioans.

“The health-care industry is an adventure. It’s definitely in a change mode with the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “On the employer side, it does have a challenge from a reimbursement standpoint, and we’re also challenged keeping up on changes and identifying program changes within the state. And state Medicaid is changing so much,” he added.

“But I think if we just stick to our core values, do the right thing for the right reasons, it will work out for us in the end,” he said.

Contact Jon Chavez at: jchavez@theblade.com or 419-724-6128.