Tag: organizational culture

The following is a recap from Varsity’s Roundtable, a weekly virtual gathering of senior living marketers and leaders from across the nation. For updates about future weekly Roundtable gatherings, submit your name and email address here. 

Senior living has a built-in advantage when it comes to attracting and retaining employees: the work has purpose. But purpose alone doesn’t create a strong workplace culture. Employees also want to feel valued, understand what’s expected of them and see their own values reflected in the organization. And despite plenty of talk about generational differences, those expectations cut across age groups.

Denise Boudreau, President of Drive, joined Varsity’s weekly Roundtable to explore what today’s workforce really wants and how senior living organizations can build cultures where people want to work, contribute and stay. Below are a few Fresh Perspectives from her discussion.

PURPOSE IS NOT A GENERATIONAL ISSUE

Workers across age groups are looking for greater meaning, balance and fulfillment at work. Denise shared data showing the importance of work-life balance actually increased with age. The opportunity for senior living is significant because purpose is already naturally built into the work.

EMPLOYEES WANT ACCOUNTABILITY, BUT ITS MEANING IS CHANGING

Accountability consistently ranks among employees’ most desired workplace values, but the conversation is shifting from holding others accountable to taking personal ownership. Employees want to understand what they are responsible for, where the organization is headed and how their work contributes to larger goals.

CULTURE CAN AND SHOULD BE MEASURED

Culture is more than a feeling. Denise emphasized using data to understand whether employees’ personal values align with what they actually experience at work. That alignment drives engagement, fulfillment and an employee’s ability to show up authentically.

STRONG CULTURE HAS A MEASURABLE BUSINESS IMPACT

Organizations with strong cultures saw 38% lower turnover than those with poor cultures. Stronger culture scores impact occupancy, including one organization where the strongest-culture sites averaged 94% occupancy compared with 66% at the weakest.

COMPENSATION ALONE WILL NOT SOLVE RETENTION

Paying a living wage matters, but Denise cited research showing toxic culture was 10.4 times more likely to drive employees away than compensation.  

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The following is a guest blog entry from Larry Carlson. Larry is an advisor, board member, and author of Avandell: Reimagining the Dementia Experience. A longtime CEO in senior living, he now writes and speaks about helping older adults finish strong — living with purpose, vitality, and impact in their third age.

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6:54 a.m… The day shift is gathered outside the nurses’ station. The charge nurse reviewed the overnight report, answered a few questions, then paused before dismissing the team.

“One reminder before we head out,” she said. “We’ve been talking a lot about giving residents more choice throughout the day. Before helping someone with their morning routine, don’t assume what they want. Ask. Give them options whenever you can.”

Heads nodded. The meeting ended. Within moments, nurses and certified nursing assistants disappeared into hallways and resident rooms to begin the day. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary shift report.

It wasn’t.

It was strategy being translated into behavior.

In senior living, strategic plans aren’t supposed to tell employees exactly what to do. They describe aspirations: resident-centered living, exceptional hospitality, employee engagement, operational excellence. Those are important goals. But they remain abstract ideas until someone translates them into behaviors that employees can understand, practice, and repeat.

That translation rarely happens in the boardroom or the executive conference room. It happens through frontline leaders.

Whether it’s a charge nurse beginning a shift, a dining manager preparing breakfast service, a life enrichment director reviewing the day’s activities, or a maintenance supervisor assigning work orders, every frontline leader faces the same challenge: How do I turn organizational priorities into today’s actions?

In my experience, organizations don’t struggle because they lack strategy. They struggle because strategy often loses clarity as it moves through the organization. The strongest organizations don’t simply communicate strategy well. They equip frontline leaders to translate it into behaviors employees can put into practice immediately.

Here are three ways leaders can make that happen.

1. TRANSLATE ASIPRATIONS INTO OBSERVABLE BEHAVIORS

Many strategic plans emphasize concepts like service, quality, innovation, or resident-centered care. Those are important aspirations, but they aren’t behaviors. Employees can’t consistently perform an aspiration. They can perform a behavior.

Instead of asking teams to “improve hospitality,” identify the specific actions that demonstrate hospitality. Instead of encouraging “resident-centered care,” define the everyday behaviors that bring that commitment to life.

Clarity begins when employees know not only what matters—but what it looks like.

TRY THIS:

At your next leadership meeting, choose one strategic priority and ask: “If a new employee started tomorrow, what would they actually see someone doing if we were living out this priority?”

If the answers vary widely, your strategy may still be too abstract.

2. EQUIP FRONTLINE LEADERS TO BECOME TRANSLATORS

Frontline leaders are the bridge between organizational vision and daily execution.

The CEO introduces strategy. Department leaders develop plans. But supervisors, charge nurses, managers, and team leads are the ones who answer the question employees ask every morning: “What does this mean for me today?”

When frontline leaders understand not only the strategy, but also the behaviors that support it, execution becomes remarkably more consistent across the organization.

TRY THIS:

During your next supervisors’ meeting, ask each frontline leader to identify one strategic priority and explain how they would translate it for a new employee beginning today’s shift.

The goal isn’t to repeat the strategic plan. It’s to translate it into language employees can immediately act upon.

3. MEASURE BEHAVIORS BEFORE OUTCOMES

Organizations naturally focus on outcomes—resident satisfaction, employee engagement, occupancy, quality measures, and financial performance.

Those metrics matter. But they are lagging indicators. Long before those results appear on a dashboard, employees have already been practicing the behaviors that created them.

Leaders who regularly observe, coach, reinforce, and recognize desired behaviors are far more likely to achieve the outcomes they seek.

Behavior comes first.

Results follow.

TRY THIS:

Choose one strategic priority for the next 30 days and identify two or three observable behaviors that support it. Then intentionally reinforce those behaviors during team meetings, coaching conversations, recognition moments, and daily rounding.

What leaders consistently reinforce eventually becomes organizational culture.

A few minutes after the morning huddle ended, one of the certified nursing assistants quietly knocked on Mrs. Anderson’s door. “Good morning, Mrs. Anderson,” she said with a smile. “Would you like to get dressed before breakfast today, or would you rather enjoy your coffee first?”

Mrs. Anderson smiled. “I think I’d like my coffee first.”

It was a simple conversation. No one would have recognized it as strategy. But that was exactly what it was.

A strategic commitment to resident choice had been translated by a frontline leader into one simple behavior—and then carried out by a caregiver who understood exactly what it looked like.

That’s how successful senior living organizations execute strategy. Not through strategic plans. Not through mission statements. Not even through leadership meetings.

But through ordinary interactions repeated every day by people who understand what the strategy looks like in practice.

One employee.

One interaction at a time.

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The following is a guest blog entry from Larry Carlson. Larry is an advisor, board member, and author of Avandell: Reimagining the Dementia Experience. A longtime CEO in senior living, he now writes and speaks about helping older adults finish strong — living with purpose, vitality, and impact in their third age.

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The retreat ended an hour ago.

The CEO of a senior living organization stood near the back of the conference room while members of the leadership team gathered notebooks, coffee cups, and half-finished conversations before heading out the door.

The conversation had been good. Honest. Productive.

They had spent the entire morning talking about alignment—vision, priorities, culture, communication. Whiteboards filled with ideas. Strategic goals clarified. Department leaders nodding in agreement. For the first time in a while, it felt like everyone was rowing in the same direction.

But by Tuesday afternoon, small cracks had already begun to appear.

One department interpreted the priorities one way. Another moved in a different direction. A manager communicated something inconsistently to frontline caregivers and community staff. A decision made in one meeting quietly contradicted what had been emphasized in another.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing malicious. Just drift.

And that’s usually how misalignment begins. Not through resistance. Through assumption. Because alignment isn’t created in the meeting where everyone agrees. It’s created afterward—in the small moments where leaders either reinforce clarity… or unintentionally weaken it.

In my experience, there are three places where that drift shows up most clearly.

1. The “Say-Do” Gap — When behavior contradicts the message

Most organizations have clear values. The challenge is whether everyday leadership behavior consistently reflects them.

Leaders say people matter—but only numbers get celebrated. Teams are encouraged to collaborate—but silo behavior gets tolerated. Culture is described as essential—until a high performer starts producing results and suddenly gets a different set of rules.

None of these moments seem large on their own. But over time, people begin paying less attention to what leaders say and more attention to what leaders actually reinforce.

That’s when trust starts to erode.

Because alignment doesn’t happen through messaging alone. It happens when behavior and priorities consistently match the message being communicated.

TRY THIS:

Ask your leadership team: “Where might our actions unintentionally be contradicting our message?”

Don’t rush past the conversation. The answers are often more revealing than leaders expect.

2. Priority Overload — When everything becomes important

Sometimes teams drift simply because they’re overwhelmed.

A new initiative gets introduced before the previous one is fully embedded. Priorities shift. Meetings multiply. Messaging expands. And eventually, people stop knowing what matters most. In those environments, confusion often gets mistaken for poor execution.

But many senior living teams aren’t resisting leadership. They’re struggling to interpret it.

Confused teams don’t become aligned through more communication. They become aligned through clearer priorities. The best leaders understand that clarity often requires subtraction—not addition.

TRY THIS:

At the end of your next leadership meeting, ask: “If team members remembered only one thing from this conversation, what should it be?”

If leaders answer differently, alignment may already be slipping.

3. Inconsistent Reinforcement — When clarity fades over time

Most organizational initiatives begin with energy. The rollout is strong. Communication is clear. Expectations are visible. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, reinforcement begins to fade.

The language stops showing up in meetings. Accountability softens. Recognition shifts elsewhere. The initiative quietly disappears beneath the next urgent priority. And eventually, people conclude: “I guess this doesn’t really matter anymore.”

Culture follows repetition.

What leaders consistently reinforce becomes organizational reality. What leaders stop reinforcing slowly disappears—regardless of how important it once sounded. Alignment isn’t sustained through intention. It’s sustained through rhythm.

TRY THIS:

Choose one value, behavior, or operational priority and intentionally reinforce it for the next 30 days:

• team meetings
• recognition
• coaching conversations
• decision-making discussions

Consistency creates clarity.

Back in that conference room, the retreat itself wasn’t the problem. The strategy may have been sound. The conversations may have been sincere. But alignment is never a one-time event.

It’s a leadership discipline. And over time, teams stop listening primarily to what leaders say. They begin watching what leaders repeat, reinforce, and protect.

Eventually, that becomes the culture.

 

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The following is a guest blog entry from Larry Carlson. Larry is an advisor, board member, and author of Avandell: Reimagining the Dementia Experience. A longtime CEO in senior living, he now writes and speaks about helping older adults finish strong — living with purpose, vitality, and impact in their third age.

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It’s Monday morning. The numbers came in late Friday.

They’re down. Again. Not dramatically. Not enough to cause alarm. But enough to feel it.

She’s already run through the explanations in her head. Seasonality. Market shifts. Increased competition. All true.

None of it changes the number.

She walks into the conference room a few minutes early. The team will be in soon—sales, operations, nursing. They’ll be looking to her for direction. For tone. She knows what the conversation needs to cover.

Leads. Conversions. Follow-up. Urgency.

She also knows something else. What gets said in this room today won’t just shape the next 30 days. It will shape the culture. Because under pressure, something subtle begins to happen.

Standards start to bend. Language starts to shift. Decisions get made a little faster, and a little differently.

Not all at once. But enough. And for a moment, there’s a choice. When occupancy drops, the real risk isn’t the number. It’s what leaders are willing to trade to fix it. Because census pressure doesn’t just test your strategy. It reveals your culture.

Maybe you’ve been in a room like that.

In my experience, there are three places where that shows up most clearly.

Early Warning Signs – When culture starts to slip

Culture rarely breaks all at once. It erodes quietly. A phrase here. A decision there. A moment that doesn’t quite sit right—but gets rationalized and moved past.

Language begins to change. Residents become “units.” Move-ins become “wins.” Conversations become more about pace than people.

High performers—especially in sales—may begin to get a little more latitude. Not intentionally. But because the pressure to produce is real. And slowly, what was once non-negotiable starts to feel… flexible.

The challenge is that none of this looks like a problem in isolation. But over time, it becomes the culture.

TRY THIS: 

Before your next leadership meeting, ask yourself—and your team:

“What have we started tolerating in the past 30 days that we wouldn’t have accepted before?”

Don’t rush past the answers. That’s where culture is either being protected… or traded.

Decision-Making Under Pressure – Where values get tested

Most organizations don’t abandon their values. They just begin to reinterpret them under pressure. The conversation shifts.

“This is what we believe… but in this case…”

“We wouldn’t normally do this… but given where we are…”

And often, the decision itself doesn’t feel dramatic. It feels reasonable. Necessary, even. That’s what makes it dangerous. Because culture isn’t shaped by the decisions you’re proud of. It’s shaped by the ones you justify.

Pressure doesn’t create values conflict. It exposes it. And in those moments, leadership isn’t about having the right answer. It’s about having the discipline to pause long enough to see what’s at stake.

TRY THIS: 

Before making a key decision, ask:

“If this decision became visible to every team member, would it strengthen trust… or weaken it?”

You may still make the same call. But you’ll make it consciously.

Communication – Setting tone without creating fear

When census is down, teams don’t just look for direction. They look for signals. What matters now? What’s changing? What’s not?

Some leaders respond by increasing pressure. More urgency. More accountability. More focus on the number. Others go the opposite direction—softening the message, trying to protect morale by minimizing the reality. Neither approach builds trust.

Because your team already knows. They see the numbers. They feel the shift. What they need isn’t spin. They need clarity—and steadiness.

The ability to say: Yes, this matters. Yes, we feel it. And no, it doesn’t change who we are. That’s what anchors a team. Not the absence of pressure. But the presence of leadership within it.

TRY THIS: 

In your next team communication, name both sides clearly:

• The reality you’re facing
• The values that won’t change because of it

Say it out loud. And then live it in the decisions that follow.

In that Monday morning meeting, the numbers will get discussed. They should. Plans will be made. Expectations clarified. But something else is happening at the same time. Your team is watching. Not just for direction. For signals.

What matters now? What’s negotiable? Who are we under pressure?

And over time, those signals become your culture. Not because you declared it. But because you led it, especially when it was hardest to do so.

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The following is a guest blog entry from Larry Carlson. Larry is an advisor, board member, and author of Avandell: Reimagining the Dementia Experience. A longtime CEO in senior living, he now writes and speaks about helping older adults finish strong — living with purpose, vitality, and impact in their third age.

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It’s early. Just after sunrise.

The household is quiet, except for the soft hum of the coffee machine in the corner and the faint sound of a television no one is really watching.

She’s kneeling beside him. He’s confused again. Agitated. Asking for his wife—who passed years ago. His voice rising, his hands restless, searching for something he can’t name.

She doesn’t correct him.
She doesn’t rush him.
She places her hand gently over his and leans in just enough for him to see her eyes.

“Tell me about her.”

He pauses.

The tension in his shoulders softens. And for a moment, the room changes. He’s no longer lost. He’s remembering. And she stays right there with him—unhurried, present, steady. Not because it’s in her job description. But because it’s in her.

She didn’t learn that in orientation. She brought it with her.

The question is… did we hire for it?
Do we recognize it?
Do we protect it?
Do we build around it?

Because mission doesn’t live on the wall. It lives—or dies—in moments like that. In my experience, there are four places where that happens.

HIRING

If you don’t hire for mission, you won’t lead with mission. Too often, we hire for experience and hope for alignment. But the deeper question is whether the person sitting across from you already carries the heart your mission requires.

TRY THIS: Add one question to your interview process tied directly to your values: “Tell me about a time you chose people over efficiency.”

You’re not just listening for the answer. You’re listening for the instinct.

RECOGNITION

What you celebrate becomes your culture. If that moment in the household goes unnoticed, it slowly becomes optional. If it’s named and honored, it becomes the standard others move toward.

TRY THIS: In your next team meeting, recognize one team member specifically for how they lived out a core value, not just what they accomplished. Make the invisible visible.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Values that aren’t reinforced aren’t values—they’re preferences. The hard part of leadership isn’t writing values. It’s protecting them when they’re inconvenient.

TRY THIS: When addressing a performance issue, name the value being missed—not just the behavior. It changes the conversation from correction to alignment. From “what you did wrong” to “who we are.”

DECISION MAKING

Your hardest decisions reveal your real values. Strategy, budgets, census pressure—these are the moments when values are most at risk of becoming negotiable.

TRY THIS: Before making a key decision, ask: “Which of our values does this support—and which might it compromise?”

You may still make the same decision. But you’ll make it consciously.

Mission is not sustained by intention. It’s sustained by repetition—what you hire for, what you recognize, what you reinforce, and how you decide.

And over time, something begins to happen.

Those quiet, early-morning moments—the ones no one sees, no one measures, no one reports on—they become the culture. Not because you declared it. But because you built it.