Building a coveted ‘destination workplace’ requires diverse investments, active listening to staff: senior care experts detail

Faced with today’s complex array of financial, staffing and regulatory challenges, senior care operators need to rely on a broad range of solutions, a panel of experts said Thursday.

Providers should be actively listening to their employees’ needs and trying to meet the evolving desires of the labor market, they emphasized at McKnight’s “Meeting of the Minds” thought-leader discussion. This must take place whether they’re pursuing recruiting strategies, trying to improve staff retention, integrating new technological advances or investing in new benefits and professional development.

“The one area that’s going to undergird everything for your success is paying attention to the most important capital, which is human capital,” said Navin Gupta, CEO at software provider Viventium. “Pay attention to the caregiver experience from recruitment … to retention to recognition and development — the entire journey.”

That journey begins at recruitment, for which providers should already be using a wide variety of tactics, according to Sarah Friede, senior vice president of recruitment services for Health Dimensions Group.

Friede briefly outlined the holistic recruitment strategies used by her organization. They range from social media outreach to job ads, employee referral programs, applicant tracking systems and a variety of other technological aids designed to track the process and remove pain points for applicants.

“There really isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach,” she said. “You have to use everything in order to get to your candidates and effectively talk to them, have them be a part of your culture and brand and want to join your company.”

Recruiting to retain

The experts agreed, though, that retention efforts are just as important, if not moreso, than recruitment campaigns. The latter, in fact, should be fueled with the former in mind, they said.

“It’s easier to love on the people who are right in front of you,” said Dana Ullom-Vucelich, chief human resources officer at Ohio Living. “Control your controllables. I’m not going to be able to grow new human beings in the marketplace because there is a people shortage. But what I can assure is that the people who have already shown up are going to know they’re cared for and respected.” 

There is no “silver bullet” to accomplishing that sort of a workplace culture, according to Friede, but providers who actively survey and listen to their staff’s needs will have a leg up.

That requires flexibility to match a wide variety of staff needs, which might range from transportation assistance to childcare, better healthcare benefits or help with mental health, according to Anthony Scarpino, vice president for talent acquisition at National Healthcare Associates.

Higher pay and greater scheduling flexibility can be simple wins across the board, but a variety of more creative, niche benefits can add up to big culture wins as well, Scarpino told attendees.

“One of the things that I think discourages our teams when we do some sort of survey or we start a new program is that it’s not necessarily embraced or supported by the majority,” he said. “I would encourage people to not let that stop you from doing anything because if you can create several programs that are important to the different demographics that you have in your facilities, in aggregate you will be meeting the needs of most of the people.”

Investing in staff

Beyond creative recruitment strategies and employee benefits, success with the modern caregiver workforce will require investing in caregivers’ careers and development, the experts agreed.

That will only become more clear as the federal nursing home staffing mandate and other challenges for providers continue to make business in the sector difficult, noted Mark Stoever, CEO at healthcare workforce management company Smartlinx.

“We live in a market today where there are increasingly more concerns for providing enough labor to support the macro trends we all see ahead of us in senior care,” he said. “It’s just going to get worse.”

Stoever later added that his biggest tip to operators is “you have to create a destination workplace” to stand out among the crowd of providers trying to recruit from a limited pool of workers. 

Here, the expert panel again agreed that it is vital to listen to your employees’ career goals and to give them the tools and the autonomy to succeed on their own terms, and at their own pace.

That could mean using technology tools to streamline work processes and give employees more time to invest in care work and training, they noted. Technology also can be used for career advancement by recording optional training sessions and having them available for staff to reference at convenient times around the clock, Friede said.

Another underlying boost to staff members’ wellbeing could be investing in self-care and mental health tools, said Ullom-Vucelich. 

A “key driver” for National Healthcare Associates’ success, Scarpino said, has been getting staff involved not just in identifying problems but also in implementing solutions. 

“If there’s an issue that is brought forward that needs to be corrected, creating small teams that include the employees that brought it up … to help design the solution is far more effective than us in our ivory tower creating [a solution] and saying, ‘I knew what you wanted.’”