Senior living and care operators looking to attract new leaders to their organizations, and to the profession in general, should emphasize the personal nature of work and the fact that it is a great way to make a “positive difference.”
Along with that, senior care and services leaders must portray a more uplifting image of their field.
Those were key conclusions drawn from the Vision Centre’s Emerging Leader Survey released Tuesday at the group’s sixth annual symposium.
“A career in this field is not all about complying with regulatory requirements or meeting financial performance goals — it is also about experiencing purpose in a job,” said Vision Centre President and CEO Doug Olson, PhD.
Olson’s group surveyed more than 1,200 students and potential future long-term care leaders in advance of the conference, which was held at Indiana University in Indianapolis on Monday and Tuesday.
Survey respondents (whose average age was 28) said the most important things when looking for a field or training experience are the ability to gain more professional knowledge, the possibility of future employment, and having a paid internship-type position. The locale of the work did not factor highly in their preferences, Olson pointed out.
“The strong sentiment was senior living and aging services need a different message — one that includes personalizing and emphasizing the central purpose of what the field does,” Olson explained. “‘Doing good for those that have done good for you’ was one of the direct quotes and a common theme from this next generation of leaders. “
An answer to workforce need
The Vision Centre was founded to shape and expand senior living and care leadership programs at US colleges and universities. It emerged in response to the pressing workforce and management needs in the aging services field. The older adult population is increasing by 10,000 per day, and the industry will need to fill more than 20.2 million occupational openings by 2040 to meet the demand, Olson said, citing Argentum figures.
Survey respondents said early experiences with the profession, such as volunteering or tending to family needs were the most common doorways to later professional access, along with college exposure to certain topics.
That is precisely what makes the growth of the Vision Centre so vital, pointed out board of trustees member Nancy Swanger, founding director of the Granger Cobb Institute for Senior Living at Washington State University, which established a Senior Living Management degree track in 2020. Almost 800 students have taken the school’s “Business of Aging” class, she said, while the degree was conferred recently, and seven other students minored in it.
She also noted that meetings recently took place with officials from George Fox University in Oregon, which is exploring starting a senior living management track.
“Even though I’m at Washington State University and technically we would be a competitor, I don’t see it that way,” Swanner said. “ I couldn’t put out enough graduates from Washington State University to even put a dent in the challenges related to the workforce for this industry. So we have to come together and help everybody so that all ships rise.
“Everyone’s programs are going to look a little different,” she added. “But if we can come together and put forth best practices and ideas, and I’ve seen that over the last year, that’s very encouraging.”
Even the location of this week’s conference proved telling, she explained. Officials at Marian University in Indianapolis are starting to build a senior living and care management program and met with Vision Centre officials this week.
“We had no relationship with Marian University at this time last year, but because of the laser focus from our leadership, we’re having a board meeting on their campus, and their president is sitting down with great interest and spending time with us, saying this is important,” said Vision Centre board member Steven Nash, who is also the president and CEO of Stoddard Baptist Home Foundation in Washington, DC. “This is going to continue to happen with more and more universities, where presidents and deans will sit down with us and say, this needs to happen and how can we make it happen and who can we partner with?”
Nash said there has been a noted rise in relationships with universities, providers, associations and vendors over the past year.
“The fact we have all the major players in terms of associations sitting in the same room, agreeing with each other and all on the same sheet of music in terms of making sure we have great leaders in long-term care in the future, speaks millions for an organization as small as we are,” he said. “The proof of that will be more leaders down the road in our profession, more students in the university. There are some good things happening.”
The Vision Centre is backed by a deep group of endorsing organizations and an advisory council comprising leaders in a wide variety of academia and aging services.
This article originally appeared on the website of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News.
The McKnight’s Tech Daily is an e-newsletter for the audiences of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care. Content is hosted on the McKnight’s Senior Living website.
