WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
Community-level Training Yields Excellent Retention Results for Brightwater
By Patrick Connole
to workforce challenges in the senior living space, with his company managing and operating 12 communities mostly in the Western U.S. and in Canada. The shortage of workers is a problem on
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both sides of the border, triggering Bright- water to first test out and then roll out an innovative new program that has helped build retention levels. The change has come from the installation
of a staff educator/training lead inside each community. The community-level attention to staff in the form of the staff educator has helped boost retention rates by around 15 percent on a year-on-year basis, King said. “Every week there's a new training pro-
gram. Whether we train staff on how to look for residents who are struggling with falling or how to handle bed alarms. You name it, we cover it through this community-level education process,” he said. “We do all of the training in the building
itself. This is different than most other orga- nizations that are sending out training staff from headquarters.” From the employee perspective, they
want to know what they need that day from a community-level perspective, which makes each training program unique to their specific needs. “We are focusing on this for them. The
staff educator helps with training them, on- boarding, and then they go through weekly training on a regular basis on some new topic that's specific to that community,” King said. Brightwater only started the communi-
ty-level educator last year but is now rolling the program out across all the buildings
36 SENIOR LIVING EXECUTIVE MAY/JUNE 2023
uintin King, president, Bright- water Senior Living, Bend, Ore., knows the score when it comes
after seeing the initial positive returns on retention. “They feel like they’re more trained. They feel like they're better sup- ported in that process,” he noted.
Resident Outcomes Improve Training for training’s sake is of course not the goal. The point is to improve residents’ lives and make their health outcomes as positive as possible. At Brightwater, the community-level training lead has instilled a confidence in workers who are now better able to do their jobs. “We have to make sure people are doing
the routine correctly and be ready for any emergencies as well. For instance, we’re teaching employees the proper way to don and doff gear. Because there are certain ways to do it,” King said. When asked where the idea came from,
he said Brightwater had a health services director who was struggling in the role, but at the same time was a phenomenal trainer or coach. “I said, I wish we could keep her because
she's really good. In the end, we decided to invest in her because if she’s really good, I wanted to see how well this goes [as a com- munity-level training leader]. So, we kept her onboard and we just kept going,” he said. The move has paid off in the bottom
line as well, reducing the need for agen- cy in buildings as the retention rate rises.
“Some operators are spending $500,000 on an agency out there or would you rather spend an extra $60,000 to $70,000 on an educator and I can actually try to reduce that $500,000 down to $250,000.”
Working Both Sides of the Border King said the issues with finding workers is not unique to the U.S., and actually more of an issue in more lightly populated Canada. “Canada's a much smaller country than
the U.S., but they still have the same issues with an aging population. They have the same workforce shortages issues, too, which can be more challenging in many cases be- cause there is a smaller pool of workers to draw from,” he said. In Canada, there has also been a push
to bring in workers from foreign countries specifically to work in the senior living sector, with King pointing to recruiting efforts in countries like the Philippines, as an example. “The challenge is that with the influx of
migrant workers, a lot of them still want to go back home. So, I have a number of peo- ple who leave for a month or two months at a time.” Plus, King added, throughout the pan- demic, many migrants left
their home
countries with even fewer healthcare work- ers than what were needed. “It’s leaving them in disarray. It's creating that bigger challenge for the home countries.”
“The challenge is that with the influx of migrant workers, a lot of them still want to go back home.”
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