How Vi, Palace Group, Trilogy, Aspenwood Engage, Encourage Senior Living Employees

Career development and more targeted benefits are among the top ways that senior living operators are seeking to better support employees ahead of 2025.

Operators today contend with a range of workforce challenges, including the lack of licensed nursing staff and contend with the steep responsibilities associated with providing care to today’s senior living residents.

Employee engagement is linked with “higher customer satisfaction, ultimately higher retention and better results as an organization, financially,” said Trilogy Health Services Vice President of People Operations Todd Kiziminski.

Operators including The Aspenwood Company, The Palace Group, Trilogy Health Services and Vi are supporting their teams with programs such as career pathways and greater base wages and bonuses – all in service of creating the kind of workplace cultures that employees want.

None of these services are all that new, and operators have offered them in the past. But they reflect the kinds of staffing incentives and programs that operators are offering looking ahead to a crucial growth year in 2025.

Training, career paths ‘directly tied’ to higher retention

Turnover in senior living is an important issue operators have been trying to tackle, especially, given it is costly and difficult to replace workers on a regular basis. In 2022, annual turnover rates across primary markets tracked by The National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care (NIC) registered at about 85%.

Often, turnover hinges on whether an employee is engaged. A recent Argentum survey of 74 Cc-suite and human resource leaders found that disengaged employees are five times as likely to leave an organization. Almost half (45%) of the survey’s respondents said their organizations prioritized leadership development, and just over a quarter (28%) said their companies spent over $1 million annually on employee turnover.

To combat turnover, Trilogy Health Services runs one of the largest registered nurse apprenticeship programs in the Midwest. The program allows non-skilled caregivers to work up the ranks toward various certifications and along the way netting pay increases and new career skills.

“We can directly tie that to higher retention and for the folks in those programs,” Kiziminski said. “Instead of hiring from competitors, we want to grow the supply and find individuals that are looking for a career path.”

In 2025, the Aspenwood Company will continue its effort to offer monthly training for staff, with career advancement in mind across various departments, from care delivery to culinary services and including the director level. Aspenwood runs an executive director training program to prepare site leaders for broader, sometimes more regional, roles.

Being open and transparent about career paths ahead is one way to help people stay longer according to President Heather Tussing.

“We want to give them the tools to help them be a better, more comfortable leader and be better for their direct reports as well,” Tussing said.

The Palace Group runs an on-the-job training program that allows new employees to shadow leaders in various departments. In fact, three of the company’s general managers started off as receptionists before entering the program and working their way up the leadership chain. The Miami, Florida-based provider exclusively hires new GMs through internal employee development, reflecting its success as a program, according to Vice President of Human Resources Andrea Rodriguez.

“It’s not just something that sounds nice, it’s something that we actually follow through on and do,” Rodriguez told SHN. “We’ve mapped out all these different departments so we have everything that they want to do.”

Vi Living runs a student loan reimbursement program for harder to fill roles in the culinary and nursing departments, with a recent addition of the career ladder is the company’s effort to bring medical technicians through to licensed nursing roles. The company’s next push on career development will come for its environmental services department, according to Vice President of Human Resources Operations and Talent Renee Fath.

“We’ve created a learning culture here, and it’s permeated everywhere locally as our executive directors and human resources directors will do leadership development training,” Fath said.

Supporting the ‘largest and youngest’ workforce

Louisville, Kentucky-based Trilogy Health Services is grappling with supporting the “largest and the youngest workforce” the company has ever seen. To cater to this group of employees, the company added ancillary benefits beyond traditional health care employee benefits, such as child care assistance and transportation assistance.

Trilogy has also provided stipends to employees in need of car repairs to over 300 staff through its employee support foundation. The company is in the midst of piloting a childcare stipend, something that Kiziminski said was in its early stages.

Trilogy also offers a virtual care benefit for employees and their families to remotely access urgent care, mental health consultations from doctors and nurses. Doing so helps address mental anxiety, depression and stress that many senior living workers face, Kiziminski said.

The organization also provides a first-time homebuyer benefit double-matches funds saved by employees for a new home, up to $2,000 in total..

“We’ve been able to link those programs directly together,” Kiziminski said. “So engaging our employees and helping them grow is so important.”

Aspenwood helps new employees starting out in part-time frontline positions navigate the Affordable Care Act Healthcare Marketplace to find health plans that work for them.

“We have to be realistic and have something that might not be the most lucrative plan, but it’s something that’s cost effective for associates making $11 an hour to an associate making $16 an hour,” Tussing said.

Aspenwood employees have also asked for more flexibility in their benefits, including the addition of things like a pay-in-advance program that allows staff to access a portion of their earned income ahead of the payday. As many as around one-third of employees use the program, Tussing added.

“There’s a minimal cost to team members and it helps them take some of the mental stress and financial load off to where they’re not getting stressed out and frustrated,” Tussing said.

The Palace Group runs seasonal summer childcare camps for children of staff. The company also offers employees a potential $250 quarterly bonus for high-performers, Rodriguez said. Additionally, the company offers increased wages for staff working in communities after normal business hours, such as in overnight shifts.

To help with mental health, Chicago-based Vi covers counseling sessions for employees as a basic benefit. The company also partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness to train human resources leaders on educating staff about the options available to them, Fath said.

“There is a little bit of a stigma of utilizing those resources and so that’s something we’re trying to figure out,” Fath added. “Generally with employee assistance programs, they have great resources that don’t get high utilization and what I think most employers are trying to figure out is how do we get more people to use these resources.”

Looking ahead to 2025, Kiziminski said Trilogy would focus on improving its career education, transportation and childcare benefits as the industry grapples with the lack of licensed care staff needed to meet growing demand.

“It’s not going to get any easier because it’s going to get more competitive as the economy grows,” Kiziminski added. “There’s a lot of forces in front of us that we have to think of what the workforce is going to look like and the reality is those three things really aren’t going to change.”

At the Palace Group, Rodriguez said the organization would focus on financial fitness for employees in 2025, with an emphasis on financial literacy and education.

“We’re going to continue to push that and build on this special environment for our team members,” Rodriguez said.

Vi Living in 2025 will look to identify needs of existing employees and align ancillary support benefits to meet those needs, Fath said.

“Workforce support will be a big focus for us in 2025 and employee wellness, we want to be even more intentional around those today to create a strategy to meet the needs of our employees a little bit differently,” Fath added.

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