I can’t even figure out exactly how I ended up looking at this article but as soon as I read it, I thought “Ah ha! Perfect and simple for senior living!”

By Steve Moran

I can’t even figure out exactly how I ended up looking at this article but as soon as I read it, I thought, Ah ha! Perfect and simple for senior living!

Better Than Money

We have, or at least think we have, this huge problem of being stuck paying an inadequate rate to frontline staff. Even department heads are not really receiving what they deserve. It is a tough problem — raise the rates and you reduce the number of total seniors who can even afford senior living. As bad or maybe worse, you become uncompetitive in your market area. 

There was this little tech company located in Orlando and they were trying to compete with big name tech companies like Google and Facebook for talent. They were paying market salaries and providing decent benefits; however, they were not nearly as sexy an employer as the big name tech giants.

They did a bunch of things, but the one that really caught my eye was that they went out and purchased season passes for team members and families to the big theme parks in the area and gave them to their team members.  

It was sort of big dollars but nothing compared to the cost of not having the labor they needed or the cost of losing team members to bigger organizations.

Senior Living

Even if your communities are in markets that don’t have Six Flags or Disney, they have something. Even fairly small towns have waterparks, mini-golf, or something. You might spend a few thousand dollars a year providing this perk, but — compared to paying for agency labor, providing subpar service, or the liability of providing inadequate care and staffing — it is pretty trivial.  

The Right Message

Best of all it sends the right message to your team and to prospective team members: we are thinking about you, we care about your family, we want to make it a little easier for you to spend time with them. And, just as good, they will start telling their friends about this really cool place they work, that cares about them, about families.  

What do you think?