HEALTHTAC East 2024 Panel: Staffing Solutions — Retention
AMELIA ISLAND, FL — HEALTHTAC East 2024, a senior living-centered retreat at The Ritz-Carlton on a small island near Jacksonville, Florida, is now behind us so we’re spotlighting some of the key takeaways from its four panels. Jim Nelson of Senior Living News moderated each panel (HEALTHTAC is the sister company of Senior Living News).
The first panel explored the recruiting side of staffing. On the next panel, we looked at the opposite side of that coin: once you get good staff members, how do you keep them?
All five panelists said their company’s retention has improved the past 12 months, and they described how they turned it around.
“Through concentrated effort between operations and human resources,” said Amy Birkel, the COO at Heritage Communities, “It can’t just be on the H.R. side; it can’t just be on the Ops side — you’ve got to partner together to make it happen.”
“We too, have dedicated all of our resources towards making sure that we not only recruit, but we retain our good staff,” added Amy Eubank, Silver Birch Living’s vice president for operations. “We have dedicated a lot of time resource as well as monetary resource.”
“We are really approaching recruitment and retention like we do with marketing,” Greystone Communities’ Vice President of Operations Julie Fenske mentioned. “We brought in a full-time recruiter.”
“The pandemic allowed us to really focus on our team and because of that we’re starting to see the benefits,” said Shelly Griffith, Eben Ezer Lutheran Care Center’s CEO.
“We are very intentional about watching our data,” Candace Johnson, the VP of human resources at Arrow Senior Living, shared. “We’re not afraid to take a dip in retention, because a lot of times that step back is a step you need to be retaining the best quality employees. So not only is retention going in the right direction, but I feel confident that the people that we are keeping are the people that we really want.”
Thinking about why people choose to leave, Amy Birkel commented on the importance of digging deeper than the symptoms to address the root causes of staff exits.
“I think it’s important [to] survey, if you do a 30-, 60-, 90-day for your new hires,” she said. “Sixty-five percent of our folks, if they’re leaving, leave in the first 100 days. So, you get the survey information, which is great, but then you’ve got to have a person present — not just an email; you’ve got to ask clarifying questions, make sure you actually understood what the root issue is to the dissatisfaction. And then you have to execute on that.”
“I agree with Amy in all of that,” Johnson said. “The only thing I would add is being intentional about who you are getting feedback from. I’ve learned that sometimes employees just aren’t comfortable being honest; we don’t get the best answer. Sometimes in the survey it takes getting face to face with those employees in that first 90 days, and sometimes it takes having a peer rather than someone on your leadership team.”
“I love that,” Birkel responded. “One thing we do is skip-level interviews — you skip over the direct supervisor, so my direct reports are talking to the owners. Same thing with my team — the folks that directly report to the people that report to me, I’m checking with them. If you’re not quite comfortable talking to your direct supervisor about something you’re unhappy with that’s how we try to combat that.”
The panel conversation then turned to company culture and fostering a sense of belonging with the staff.
“We start day one,” said Fenske. “The minute that they interview with us we are asking questions about how they’re going to fit into our culture, behavioral-based questions. We actually spent a lot of time studying the Ritz-Carlton concept and the principles of excellence, and we have put those into place at all of our communities.”
Eubank discussed ways that Silver Birch expresses recognition to its staff.
“We have dedicated a lot of resources towards appreciation of our staff,” Eubank told the audience. “In the recent year, we looked at how much we were spending as it related to recruitment and retention issues and that came up to be about $100,000 per community when you average out $5,000 to $6,000 worth of turnover per employee. With that being said, we dedicated that to a positive approach and developed a program called Investing in Excellence. That program had three key components: One was a Learn and Earn program — a catalog similar to what you give to somebody who’s getting ready to go to college. This was an opportunity for our culinary directors to learn about environmental services; our CNAs to possibly get their ServSafe manager specification. Not only did we pay for the course, we paid for the time that they were in the course, and we also gave them a monetary supplement. They enjoyed that because not only did it put more money in their pocket, it gave them growth opportunities as well.
“In addition to Learn and Earn,” Eubank continued, “we also have a Care and Share program for anybody who’s going through troubled times. They know that they can rely on a fund if they maybe have a fire or if they have a spouse or a significant other that has become unemployed.
“The third component,” she concluded, “is we reward our employees by being able to have a healthy meal for their entire family every single month, and it’s on us. We do it through our food distributor.”