Senior care leaders can look at problems recruiting and retaining employees as a “gift” to conduct an analysis of the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, a top accreditor says.
Facility and organization leaders can develop better workplace cultures that promote communication and incentivize employees to have a stronger connection to their work, emphasized Penny Gagnon, chief advisor for CARF International, an independent and nonprofit accreditor of healthcare communities.
“How many of you have thought about this very moment or this time where things are tough with recruitment and retention as being a gift?” Gagnon said. “This information that sits in the sweet spot of really thinking about the great things that you’re doing, the realities of your organization, and how we can recover and make sense of what’s going on and what the future will hold. This is a perfect time to do this analysis of your strengths and weaknesses and those opportunities and the threats that are before you.”
Gagnon’s talk was a preview of the Green House Project’s “Grow Bolder” conference in November. The group is posting a series of webinars to highlight key themes for the conference.
Nursing assistants frequently feel as though they have no ownership over their work in the “typical top-down hierarchy of nursing homes,” explained Alex Spanko, director of communications and marketing, for The Green House Project, in an email to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News Friday.
“By working to create an employee-centered workplace — one where everyone’s opinions and contributions are valued, and where caregivers feel their concerns and ideas are addressed — eldercare communities can take a major step toward creating a stronger, more durable workforce,” he said.
Productive workers, better residents
Gagnon’s talk focused on helping senior care leaders develop employee-centered cultures that will help residents thrive by empowering workers. She said that her talk stemmed from a survey she sent to 50 CEOs and executive directors asking how they were focusing on developing their employees coming out of the pandemic.
“An employee-centered culture starts really by investing in people,” she said. “One of the best ways to do that is recognizing your employees for not what they do in their roles but more importantly who they are as individuals. As leaders, it’s really important that you nurture and grow and care for this very tight connection between that organizational culture or personality and that energy and your leadership and really work toward that higher purpose and uncover your why and really start to live your mission.”
Gagnon recommended facilities look at the employees who consistently showed up for work during the pandemic as internal leaders, noting that COVID “pushed change in ways that we were not prepared for and in speeds that we didn’t expect.” She also said that being in a continuous reactive mode instead of planning can stymie the development of workplace culture.
“We want to move from being a stress- and crisis-driven environment to a more anticipatory environment where we foster proactive behaviors and encourage thoughtful planning and problem solving,” she explained.
Facility leadership can encourage staff to develop greater connections to their work by letting them take on projects that align with personal interests, such as resident safety, quality improvements, or corporate social responsibility, Gagnon said.
She added that facilities should view technology not as an expensive budget item but rather as a way to modernize operations and engage younger workers.
“Technology is feared,” she said “It’s expensive. It’s put on the back burner. Knowledge is sometimes a challenge. Are you doing a gap analysis of your current technology and are you listening to your employees? Gen Z is the first generation to grow up exclusively online.
“It was predicted by 2020 – and now it’s four years later – that they would account for 36% of the worldwide workforce,” she continued, “so think about that number and how you might use technology to improve experiences.”
