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Good morning. Today, let's explore how senior living leaders can build a culture of accountability, a key to ensuring consistent, top-notch care. Today's article was inspired by this webinar from Eldermark, which dives into how The Waters uses standards, data, and accountability to define their culture and success.
Elevate your Operation
In my opinion, the best part about what The Waters has accomplished is clearly defining what success looks like in every community they manage. From top to bottom, their team knows their standards and how adherence to those standards is measured and celebrated. The simplicity and transparency of it all is refreshing.
Let's dive into how you can replicate their success.
Narrowing the Focus: Less Is More
When setting standards, the key is to narrow your focus. It's tempting to try and cover every base with dozens of standards, but that can lead to a diluted impact and measurement challenges. Aim for fewer, well-thought-out standards – ideally less than ten. These should be the ones that truly drive your core objectives, whether it's improving resident care, enhancing team efficiency, or elevating overall service quality.
Setting Standards: Strategic and Focused
With a narrowed focus, setting standards becomes a strategic exercise. Each standard should be clear, measurable, and directly tied to your overarching goals. For example, if improving resident satisfaction is a goal, a standard could be related to response times to resident requests. The idea is to create standards that guide day-to-day operations and steer your team towards your long-term vision.
Communication: Essential for Alignment
Effective communication is critical in this process. It's essential to ensure that every team member understands the standards and why they are important. This understanding fosters a more profound commitment to these goals and creates a more cohesive team environment.
Using Data to Monitor and Adjust
With focused standards, monitoring becomes more manageable and meaningful. Use data to track how these standards are being met and to identify areas needing improvement. This approach allows for more targeted adjustments, ensuring your efforts always align with your desired outcomes. It's important to consider that not every standard needs to be monitored 100% of the time. For example, if you have a standard around prospect tours, perhaps you audit three random tours each month to determine your baseline and whether or not further attention to adhering to the standard is necessary.
Training: Focused and Continuous
Training should align with your narrowed focus. It should aim to impart skills and reinforce the importance of the standards you've set. This ensures that your team is capable and fully invested in meeting these standards.
Recognition: Celebrating Focused Achievements
Recognize and celebrate when these specific standards are met. This not only boosts morale but also reinforces the importance of these critical areas in the minds of your team.
Action Steps
Narrow Your Focus: Identify the key areas most significantly impacting your goals. Limit these to a manageable number to ensure effectiveness and ease of tracking. Avoid the temptation to overcomplicate or overextend yourself and your team.
Set Strategic Standards: Develop clear, measurable standards in these critical areas. Ensure they are aligned with your overarching goals.
Enhance Communication: Ensure your team understands and buys into these standards and their importance.
Leverage Targeted Data: Use data to track progress in these specific areas, allowing for more focused improvements.
Invest in Aligned Training: Ensure your training programs align with these critical standards.
Recognize Targeted Achievements: Celebrate successes in these specific areas to reinforce their importance.
Ensure Simplicity: Ask a few random team members from each department these questions.
Do you know what standards we have within your department?
Do you know why the standards exist?
Do you know how we measure those standards to ensure our collective success?
You can create a more effective and accountable environment by narrowing your focus and aligning your standards, communication, training, and recognition with these key areas.
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Eldermark’s comprehensive software suite is built for the business of senior living. Managing your entire operation from one centralized platform gives you the data and insights you need to increase revenue, enhance care, simplify work, and create more meaningful resident outcomes.
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