Several days ago, Glass Door released their list of 50 best places to work in America. These are companies that have at least 1,000 employees and the highest employee star ranking. Top of the list is Google followed by a bunch of technology companies. But not just tech companies, the list includes a wide swath of other industries including healthcare.
It is kind of sad that while there are hundreds of senior living companies that have over 1,000 employees not a single one of them is on that list.
I find myself thinking it would so cool for some large senior living company to set a corporate goal of landing on that top list for 2015. It would so cool if Brookdale Senior Living, Life Care Services, Golden Living, Elmcroft Senior Living, Capital Senior Living, Five Star Senior Living, Senior Lifestyle Corporation or Merrill Gardens (to name just a few) made a corporate commitment to be in the top 50 for 2015.
Senior Living Should Dominate
In fact, I believe this list should be dominated by senior living companies. Sure Google is a cool place to work, but at the end of the day, no one goes home from Google saying “Wow, I was able to make a real difference in someone’s life.”
No one who works for Google or just about any other tech giant wakes up in the morning and says, “I can hardly wait to get to work today because I will make the life of a elderly person better today.”
How To Make it Happen
- Make a commitment to creating great days every day for every resident, family member, team member and vendor. Not just as a slogan or mission statement, but as a rubber meets the road commitment.
- Tell your whole team as part of your commitment to creating great days, you are going public by asking team members to rate the company at Glassdoor. That your goal is to make your senior living companies one of the top 50 best places to work.
- Keep telling stories about how you are impacting the lives of seniors, the lives of families and the lives of team members.
- Ask your team members to go in and rate the company. Remind them of your goal but tell them to tell the truth.
- Provide an alternative way for team members to voice concerns in a way that will not ever result in retaliation.
- Each month update the entire team about how you are doing.
Remember, your team members want to be working for one of the 50 best companies. Unless you are treating residents and team members terribly they will be glad to help with this. Imagine how much better your recruitment process would be if you can boast of being one of the 50 best companies to work for.
Steve Moran
