There are two main reasons you should be measuring resident and employee engagement in your senior living communities. One is to understand the broad emotional sentiment residents and employees have toward your organization. The other is to understand practically which service areas should be the focus of your continuous improvement efforts. These two levels of analysis work together to give you a big picture of engagement as well as what kinds of things are being done or should be done to get you to your A-game.
Broad Sentiment Metrics
When we talk about engagement, we are referring to a level of emotional commitment your residents and employees have toward your organization, and more importantly their willingness to act on those emotions in your favor. These broad sentiments are what we are referring to when we say things like engagement relates to lower turnover or more referrals or higher net profit. It’s not that one time the chef put fresh parsley on the chicken breast or that one time the management team remembered your birthday. It is an emotional attachment that builds over time as a result of many episodes of residents or employees being surprised and delighted and coming to trust your brand.
Three broad sentiments we recommend you gather from your residents and employees:
Delight: Are they very satisfied with their senior living community as a place to live/work?
Loyalty: Do they have firm intentions to stay at their community?
Advocacy: Would they happily recommend their community to others?
Measure all three on a five point agreement scale and calculate the percentage of respondents who are willing to say they strongly agree. If the number is above 50%, go out and celebrate because you have a majority of constituents who not only love you but probably tell others! The rest of your residents and employees may be on the fence, by the way, which is very different than being on the strongly disagree side, so it’s important to look at ratings from all respondents when interpreting your survey results.
Service Area Metrics
Now what? Broad sentiment metrics will help you understand engagement levels in your communities but provide almost no practical insight on how to improve engagement. This is why performance in specific service areas also should be measured. Ratings of specific service areas from your residents (for example service in the dining room, responsiveness of community management, and building security) and your employees (for example training, recognition, and advancement opportunities) will tell you what is going well and what could be better. A valuable analysis we conduct for our clients will tell you which areas to work on first because they are driving engagement the most and have room for growth…even if they are not your lowest scores.
Want more info? Contact Sensight Surveys at 630-237-4138 or lynn@sensightsurveys.com