goHappy Resources

Solving Unique Challenges for Senior Living

Written by Shawn Boyer | Apr 4, 2022 7:49:40 PM

Every industry has its own unique challenges in communicating with its various constituents - prospects, customers and their employees.  

Senior living communities are certainly no different.  And, their communication challenges are unique and heightened in two ways:

1. Like most industries that have a large number of frontline employees who don’t have company issued email, they struggle with how to effectively communicate with those employees; and
2. they have an added layer of complexity because they need to communicate (in real time in a lot of instances) with their “customers”, who in a lot of cases are both their residents AND the family members of those residents, and they are not tied to a desk/email during the day.

To say that we have enjoyed working with these companies is an understatement - we have LOVED working with them and seeing all of the different ways in which they’re using the goHappy platform to solve for those challenges.  Below are a few examples of those just in case it can be helpful to anyone else out there who has similar challenges - we hope it can get your wheels turning!  In all of these instances, they are using goHappy to send text messages directly through our software to their frontline employees, residents and family members.

Frontline Employees

We get an automated daily feed of the company’s employee file from their HRIS/System of Record so that we always have the most up to date employee information (to account for terms and new hires).  And, we pull over information from that platform that can include whatever information the employer may want to segment their communication by - location, job type, preferred language, benefits eligibility, etc. That way, the right people are getting the right message and you're not filling up people’s text inboxes with irrelevant stuff.

Communication from Corporate
Corporate administrators (whomever you want that to be) have the ability to send messages to anyone in the organization. They can send messages to everyone, or to just specific subsets.  Here are just a few examples of things we see our senior living community customers sending out from corporate:

  • Video Welcome Messages from the CEO - we see our customers recording a video message from their CEO (or other senior leader(s)) that automatically goes out to new hires on their first day.  The video typically highlights how important their frontline is to the organization.
  • Notes of Appreciation - These vary in nature but range from a Shout Out to a specific group of people, to sending a text on Employee Appreciation Day, to wishing all Moms a Happy Mother’s Day, etc.
  • Monthly/Quarterly Newsletters - most customers have a newsletter that comes out monthly or quarterly but rarely is their frontline aware of when it comes out.  So, people send out the link to it through the platform.
  • Open Enrollment and other HR related items - customers are notifying the right employees when open enrollment kicks off with the link to their benefits provider or when certain training is due with a link to that, etc.
  • Communication from Executive Directors - A number of our customers cascade permissioning down to the field level leaders - Executive Directors and others at the local level - so that they can be communicating things like the following :
    • Welcoming New Residents - Letting employees know when a new resident is arriving and a little about them.

    • Logistical Updates - reminding people of meeting updates, and protocol changes. 
    • Scheduling Updates - when there are real-time changes made to schedules, links to the schedule are being sent out.


      •  
      • Culture Building - things like “dress in pink tomorrow to support women’s roles in senior housing, giving appreciation/shout outs to team members, wishing people happy birthday and happy work anniversaries.


Residents

We get an automated updated daily file feed of the company’s residents/family members from the company’s CRM of record so that we always have the most up to date resident information (to account for terms and new hires).  And, we pull over information from that platform that can include whatever information the company may want to segment their communication by - facility location, hall/wing, type of care, etc.  
  • Communication to Residents:
    • Introducing New Residents - Directors are letting residents know when a new member is moving in and a little about them so that they feel welcomed right away.
    • Communicating re: Who is on Duty - Directors are communicating to let residents know what managers are on duty and when.
    • Communicating the Daily/Weekly Schedule - Directors are letting residents know about the schedule of events each day and week.
  • Communication to Family Members of Residents:
    • Logistical/COVID Updates - Directors are communicating to family members about all sorts of logistical issues and COVID related issues to keep family members in the loop.

    • Scheduling - Directors are communicating updates about the upcoming week’s schedule so that family members know what’s happening at the community.

We often hear our senior living customers use the term “community”, and they all have such great hearts for the people they serve.  They want ALL of their people - team members, residents and family members - to feel like they are valued and appreciated members of that community - because they are.  And, we are overjoyed when we’re able to play a small part in that equation by helping them better communicate and engage with those community members.

If you’d like to learn more about how we’re helping our customers (especially Senior Living Facilities!), we’d love to chat with you!