WASHINGTON, DC — The senior living industry knew it had workforce challenges at least 15 years before COVID-19 hit, but it didn’t do enough about them. Today, the sector has the opportunity to be proactive and build a workforce to meet the rapidly increasing demand for senior living and care services by investing in workers and improving employee engagement.
That’s according to senior living leaders speaking in a session Wednesday at the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care 2024 Fall Conference. The session was focused on the pivotal role that cultivating a satisfied, engaged workforce plays in organizational success as well as the ability to significantly enhance operational efficiency, resident satisfaction and the bottom line through culture.
Two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies invest resources in employee engagement, according to Todd Kiziminski, vice president of talent acquisition at Trilogy Health Services, who said they recognize the link between engagement strategies and the bottom line.
“We’re competing with Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s,” said Collette Gray, president and CEO of Integral Senior Living and Solstice Senior Living. “Why would someone want to work in senior living? People do want to be a part of something bigger; they want to own something. We give them that.”
A culture where people want to come to work everyday sets the tone for residents to experience the financial outcomes that follow, she said.
As a capital partner, American Healthcare REIT Chief Operating Officer Gabe Willhite said, he sees employee engagement as “the right thing to do.” And engagement, he added, addresses the biggest risk facing the industry in the next several years: a lack of workers to meet the growing demand for senior living services.
“You’ve got to have a differentiator to get people who want to work there,” Willhite said.
Convincing capital partners to invest in employee engagement programs, he said, requires data to support the thesis that the investment will drive earnings.
The good news, according to moderator Jessica C. Dudley, MD, of Press Ganey, is that engagement is up for the first time since the pandemic. Press Ganey’s national employee engagement trends revealed a slow downward trend in employee engagement for several years in healthcare, then a “cliff dive” during the pandemic. But that trend is moving upward as employers realize that an individual’s emotional and personal connection to an organization is influenced by the work environment.
Feeling respected was the top driver of engagement, followed by leadership behavior, according to Press Ganey. An employee who does not feel respected or engaged is 7.6 times more likely to report that he or she does not intend to stay at an organization compared with an employee who does feel respected and engaged.
The easiest way to engage employees, Kiziminski said, is to talk to them and help them grow professionally. Part of the feedback comes through surveys, he said.
Gray agreed, saying that employers have to “walk the walk” and act on what they hear from their employees and make changes to help drive results.
“They don’t need financial ownership. Feeling like they own something because they have a say — that gives them buy-in,” Gray said. “It’s the right thing to do, and it helps drive results.”
Gray said her companies used surveys and studies to find quantifiable evidence that resident length of stay also increases with higher employee satisfaction. The other panelists also said that they have tied employee engagement to financial performance.
“It’s all about serving seniors and having the best quality of life,” Willhite said. “You can’t provide the best quality of service if you don’t feel like you’re working at the right company.”
The conference concluded on Wednesday.
