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Senior Living Employee Recruitment: Tips for Attracting Great People

Senior Living Employee Recruitment: Tips for Attracting Great People

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Question: Do you know the top five reasons a candidate would want to work for your senior living community?

If you don’t know the answer, start thinking about it. Because understanding why your company is a great place to work will help you attract great staff.

It’s no secret that it’s a competitive hiring market in senior living. Many companies are vying for the same candidates, from care staff to executive directors. So when you find a candidate you like, how do you convince them that they should work for you? You have to market your community to potential job candidates with the same intensity you market to prospects.

Which is why knowing the top five reasons candidates would want to work at your community is a great way to engage prospective employees and stand out from the crowd.

How do you come up with your list? Start by asking your current employees why they work for you and what they like about their job, the community, their co-workers, their managers, and even the residents. You’ll probably get some valuable feedback and great insights into why staff members stay with your community.

When you’re talking to job candidates, share these insights with them and ask which one is most important. Then, talk about that particular topic in more depth. For example, if a collaborative workplace culture is important, show them the ways your community and team foster this sort of environment.

value proposition

Senior Living Marketing Strategy: Creating Your Value Proposition

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When it comes to devising a killer senior living marketing strategy, we need a new shtick.  I’m tired of listening to recorded calls and mystery shops and hearing the same things: We have the best people. You’re going to love the food. We’re resident-focused.

If every senior living community is saying the same thing, then what’s the point? How can you possibly differentiate? To stand out, you and your team need to agree on your community’s value proposition.

How do you go about creating one?

Well, when was the last time you spent time with your team to honestly discuss your senior living marketing strategy? Have you recently looked at your place in the market, your differentiators . . . and then figured out a story that conveys those things? Remember, people are more engaged with stories than information. Finding time to brainstorm can be a great team-building exercise. It will also help get everyone up to speed with what your community’s value proposition is. (And how to communicate it.)

Senior living marketing strategy: Start with a thorough competitive analysis.

This involves going on a tour of each competitor and acting as the prospect. Ask all the questions that prospects ask you to see how the community sales person answers them. How are they are positioning their community? Do they explain their pricing, levels of care, amenities, lifestyle, memory care program, etc.?  Pick up a full marketing packet to see how your community’s presentation compares. Make notes of your impressions right away while the experience is fresh in your mind.

Senior living marketing strategy: Do a SWOT with the team.

Schedule an hour or two to strategize as a team about your community’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).  You can go online to get an outline, training, and tools on how to do a SWOT. But for now, here is a quick overview.

Strengths & weaknesses refer to internal aspects of the community

  • Demographics, location – close to cultural, community & healthcare resources, on a main road, easy to find? What are the characteristics of your current residents and families? Why did they choose your community?
  • Physical plant – first impressions, age & condition of interior & exterior, updates needed, does the model apartment Wow? Size of community, apartment mix, etc.
  • Amenities – dining, activities, transportation, recreation, social, spiritual, intellectual activities, pool, spa, etc.
  • Care – survey results, memory care program, levels of care available, niche programs, acuity management, training, technology
  • Team – stability, experience, turnover, leadership, culture, mission, values, etc
  • Other – reputation, ownership, customer service, friendliness, family engagement, history of community (who built it & why?)
  • Price/value – drill down into competitive analysis

Opportunities & threats refer to external aspects of the community

  • Marketplace Changes – new communities in development, competitors adding on units or products (i.e. memory care), hospital closing, businesses coming or going?
  • Competitors – running specials, renovating, creating niche programs, have an ACO relationship with the local hospital that could reduce your referrals? Changes in leadership/ turnover/ stability?  Acquisitions?
  • People Changes – have key referral sources moved, are there new relationships that have to be nurtured, are there new docs in town, new homecare companies?
  • Regulatory/Economic – Did the state create a grant program to encourage homecare?  Is the hospital forming an ACO?  Are there new state regulations that may affect you?

When the SWOT is completed, your team will be able to identify unique characteristics that will create your “better and different story.” In other words, your value proposition. So, when someone asks why they should select your community, you have your answer at the ready.

Here’s an example: “We’re locally owned, and we do business with our friends and neighbors. Our owner built this community because he wanted his mother to have a lovely place to live. And she lived here for six years until age 92! Our owner is here every week to speak with our team, the residents, and their families. And because we don’t own hundreds of communities, we can make sure that this community runs well. Our residents develop strong bonds with our staff. We have very low turnover! Our staff has worked here an average of 5 years. We got a perfect score on our most recent state survey and a 92% satisfaction score from residents and families.”

Now THAT’S a story, right? And certainly much more compelling than “We have the best people and great food.”

Need help with your senior living marketing strategy?

You’ve come to the right place. We have deep expertise in senior living and marketing. Set up a complimentary brainstorming session today.

sales tools

Putting the Right Tools in Your Sales Toolbox

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It is always tricky creating the right Sales Toolbox – one that creates urgency without eroding revenue.  Used correctly, incentives can be used to shorten the sales cycle and achieve move-in targets but they can also be overused leaving money on the table.  Choosing the tools that are right for the job of occupancy & revenue growth requires good analysis and the flexibility to make changes as occupancy fluctuates.  Here are a few things to consider:

Customize the Toolbox for the Size of the Job

Different tools are needed to boost occupancy by 20% than by 5 % so create different toolboxes for communities at various levels of vacancy.  This can be accomplished by simply using the same incentives but with different values (dollar amounts or percentages) or by sweetening the incentives when the occupancy drops to a certain level.  For example, communities above 90% occupancy may be able to offer a variety of incentives up to a certain dollar amount (reimburse moving costs, apartment upgrades, etc.) or use discount percentage (discount community fee by x%, etc.) but if occupancy drops below 90% the dollar amounts and percentages increase.

Short Term vs. Long Term incentives

Some incentives are short term as the incentive is applied once, usually upfront, and other incentives are applied on an ongoing basis.  This is where the revenue vs. occupancy growth must be considered and balanced.  Waiving or discounting a month’s rent or community fee is a short term incentive that erodes revenue for only the month the incentive is applied; discounting rent or offering rent locks erodes revenue over a longer period of time.   Operators and sales leaders have to work together to determine what the goals are in order to create the right toolbox.

Inspect, Analyze and Adjust

There are certain trends to look at in creating the right toolbox.  The first is the average length of stay by lifestyle (IL, AL, ALZ), which helps to project the impact of long-term incentives.  There is a difference in offering a two-year rate lock when the average length of stay is 18 months then when it is 48 months.   Also, the average rate per unit by type of your current residents is helpful to consider ensuring that new residents are not paying less on average than your residents who have lived in the community for years.  Once the sales toolbox is created and approved, an approval process must be established for transparency and to track the success of each incentive offered.  If families show no interest in one of the offers, change it up!

Best Practices

Here is what I have learned in building sales toolboxes over the years:

  • Have a sales toolbox for the Sales Team and another one for the Executive Directors.  I like to give the sales team the short-term incentives and empower them to use the toolbox to shorten the sales cycle and reserve any incentive that impacts ongoing revenue in the hands of the Executive Director.
  • Get feedback from the community and regional teams while creating the toolbox and be willing to adjust the incentives based on individual market differences.  Everyone likes to be part of the process and collaboration increases buy-in.
  • Make sure there are good systems to track the impact of the incentives.  Knowing the historical move-in numbers, market rates and actual collected rates will help evaluate the impact of the program.  The purpose of a sales toolbox is to increase the move-in volume by empowering community teams to overcome objections and shorten the sales cycle.  In six months the trend should show a correlation of incentive dollars relating to increased move-in volume.
  • Evaluate which incentives are working as it may reveal an underlying issue that can be addressed.  For example, if most families are choosing a 5% rent reduction, you may have a pricing issue or if they are choosing an apartment upgrade (a studio deluxe for the same price as a standard studio), you may have a barrier based on the size of your apartments.

Are there any other tools you would add to your sales toolbox? Let’s Chat