By Steve Moran

I have been holding this article for a while to protect the guilty.

A number of months ago, I was at a conference where various operators talked about some of the amazing things they were doing to make the lives of people who live and work in their communities better. One set of presentations was on workplace culture.

I will be honest, it was a company I know a tiny bit about, and it didn’t quite ring true. While still at the conference, I started exploring their Indeed and Glassdoor ratings — sitting at around 2. For some context, most senior living companies are in the low to mid-3s.

With most of the recent reviews being 1 star. The complaints are pretty standard, but all boil down to a single thing: “Management doesn’t care about us.”

The Translation Game

This translates into “We think management only cares about money.”

It’s impossible to do great work, to do a great job of serving residents and their families, when your company sees you and your leadership team as the enemy. It’s impossible to have great margins for your investors when your team members hate you.

Back to Cynicism

I am not some young guy who sits in an office, goes to conferences, and writes about the industry as an expert with a kind of professional detachment. This is my life, for better or worse. I eat and breathe senior living. I have been an owner-operator. I have been a consumer. I have visited well over a thousand communities and spent the night in several dozen.

I have seen some amazing communities and some not-so-amazing ones.

When I think about senior living, when I write about senior living, it is intensely personal.

And when I go to senior living conferences and listen to leaders talk about the great things they are doing when I know they are not … I get cynical.

I Am Not The Only One

Over the last year, I have had numerous conversations with people who make their living as part of the senior living ecosystem and have become senior living consumers, and they talk to me. Way too often they become cynics too, because they know what can and should be. They are ashamed and embarrassed when leaders they know are running organizations and communities that are doing a crummy job of providing for their loved ones.

The Bottom Line

We simply can and must do better. I am realistic. I know there are crummy operators; there will always be crummy operators.

But if you are going to get on stage and talk about all the great things you are doing, then deliver on that promise.