By Steve Moran
Senior living owners and operators appear to have an almost lemming-like compulsion to get bigger. Somehow, having more communities spread across the land means more profits, more wealth, and more families helped.
Wrong Thinking
But there is some evidence that this is often a recipe for disaster. We have seen at least one large senior living provider shutter and many others forced to radically shrink their number of communities. Larger means more layers of leadership, more systems, all of which make it harder to achieve optimum operations.
A Better Default
What if this year were the year you decided not to grow at all, but rather the year you decided to get better?
A year to . . .
- Get your occupancy over 90%
- Make your life enrichment program the reason families and residents choose your community
- Get your staff turnover under 30%
- Streamline your systems in order to allow your teams to do the interpersonal stuff that only people can do
- Enhance your technology use to the benefit of residents, team members, families, and your bottom line
✅ I would rather have 10 communities at 98% percent occupancy than 20 communities at 88%.
✅ I would rather have 10 communities where the life enrichment offering was world-class than 20 where it was ordinary.
✅ I would rather have 10 communities that were fully staffed than 20 where I was running short-staffed using agency staffing, burning out team members, and putting residents at risk.
✅ I would rather have 10 communities where the staff turnover was 20% than 20 where the turnover was 80%.
Why?
- You will be more profitable.
- You will be less stressed.
- Your team members will love coming to work.
- Your investors will be happier with you.
- Your residents will be safer, be happier, and live longer.
FINALLY
After doing all this, you will be in a position to expand faster and better than any other senior living organization.
