I am the founder of Senior Living Foresight (formerly Senior Housing Forum) and I am passionate about helping the senior living sector grow and flourish. While I am passionately curious about all things related to aging, I am particularly passionate about leadership and helping individual team members live out their dreams because when that happens they are able to help older people live purposeful meaningful lives.
Really appreciating this conversation about keeping people and stopping quits. The creativity matters — paying for skill acquisition, communicating in ways younger workers can actually hear, and treating the workforce like a talent pipeline instead of a revolving door.
One thing I hope we keep naming out loud is the manual reality of direct care work. So much of the job still depends on handling a person — lifting, bracing, steadying, positioning — in ways that unintentionally keep residents dependent and keep workers injured. When we talk about “skills,” this is the part that often gets left out.
We’re working on a complex bedside commode that shifts the aide’s role from manual handling to supporting graded independence — coaching, cueing, stabilizing, and activating the resident’s own capacity instead of doing the whole task to them. That is a real skill. It’s safer, more dignified, and more aligned with what younger workers actually want: clear purpose, clear technique, and clear recognition.
And yes — this absolutely feels like a discrete, skill based pay bump opportunity. If an aide can demonstrate competency in graded independence toileting (versus manual transfer-and-hold), that’s measurable, teachable, and directly tied to outcomes: fewer injuries, fewer dependency spirals, better resident engagement.
If we want people to stay, we have to pay for the skills that make the work safer, more modern, and more meaningful. This is one of them.