People make mistakes, and so do companies. It's not if your company or community will need a service recovery plan, it is when. Creating concrete steps for your employees and the community to follow when an error is made is a vital part of your business strategy. Learn how to rebuild resident confidence and trust, after it has been broken, and understand how to use previous mistakes to make your community better in the future.
The Whoops
Whether you failed with a personal care plan or have not been able to control turnover, there is a lot that can go wrong in senior living. Your residents deserve a service recovery plan that will help them understand the cause of the issue, how you are going to resolve it in the present, and how you will put steps in place to prevent similar situations in the future. The purest form of service recovery is a genuine apology, following it up with a concerted effort for change can make it that much more sincere.
Management Addressing Issues
The first step is to have local management acknowledge the community’s failing, and ask the resident to fully explain their issue or poor experience. Then, if it is within the team’s immediate ability, correct the problem through available channels such as employee training, employee reprimand, or process improvement. It is essential to seek residents' thoughts on how the correction should be handled, and use transparency to show how those suggestions were or were not followed.
Employee and Resident Panels
More overarching issues, such as low morale or chronic employee turnover need a more long-term approach. Resident and employee panels can be an effective way to identify deep issues and find creative, focused solutions that work. Creating resident panels in your community can increase morale, by allowing the residents to feel like they can affect their own community and care. Resident panels should represent a cross-section of your community's population, and it is often a great idea to include family members to voice their perceptions of the environment and care. The goal is to continually identify the issues that lead to poor resident satisfaction, move-outs, and turnover in real-time, helping to affect change with immediacy.
Staff Education
It is important to train your staff not only on protocols and their job duties, but to help them think critically about their role within the community, and how they can help identify issues as they arise. Whether they take the initiative to enact a small change on their own, or understand the channels and processes needed to create positive change in the community; giving staff the knowledge and tools to identify issues and create a pathway to change is vital to senior living communities.
Seeking Out Issues Through Surveys
You can't provide service recovery if you don't understand there is a problem. A concrete resident survey plan can help your team identify issues that cause poor resident morale, high employee turnover, or increased move-out frequency. Resident surveys, especially when conducted by a competent professional, can help residents feel comfortable discussing the less desirable aspects of the community and more personal topics. When surveys are done on a regular basis, patterns can emerge that can highlight changes (both positive and negative) that can help your community understand its current direction.
“It’s not enough just to identify a problem one time and think you have fixed the underlying cause. It’s the continuous asking and addressing of internal problems that leads to an overall change in a community.” – Colleen Aloise, Senior Living Alliance
Everyone will make mistakes. Look at your short-comings as possible strengths and learn how to harness that information to make a change for the better in your community. Failures are often opportunities in disguise.