For our clients in the senior living industry, having appropriate staffing is a necessity to keep each community running smoothly. Since the onset of COVID, senior living providers have experienced unprecedented levels of staffing shortages, which has left many communities without a sufficient number of caregivers. According to a 2021 American Health Care Association survey, 94% of nursing homes and 81% of assisted living communities have faced a shortage of staff members.
As our industry faces a significant shortage of, and a growing demand for, quality workers, we are well aware that many communities are trying to do more with less. Finding and retaining new employees can be a challenge on top of the need to properly train and onboard new hires. And unfortunately, the hiring and training process for new employees can often feel endless and exhausting. This is where LifeLoop can step in and create efficiencies that benefit all parties involved. Here are 5 crucial ways that the LifeLoop technology can assist with employee efficiency, retention, and training
- Keep Resident Information Easily Accessible
In order to provide residents with the best care possible, it is essential for staff members to have a true understanding of their needs. According to a recent Linked Senior survey, 74% of resident engagement leaders say that staffing shortages are preventing them from engaging all of their residents meaningfully. By having resident information readily available to all staff members within LifeLoop, they can maximize their level of care and proactively identify what can be most impactful or beneficial to their residents. This allows new staff members to get to know residents more easily with our detailed resident profiles. Within each resident profile, staff can see photos, room numbers, and a detailed bio for each person. Staff can also compile a list of personalized resident likes and dislikes which is beneficial for 1:1 meetings or can even assist with activity or care planning. By having this information easily accessible, you are empowering your staff with the tools to do their job effectively.
- Maximize Productivity
No matter what department they are in, staff members can increase their productivity with the use of LifeLoop. Our technology helps your staff to create workflow efficiencies and can slash documentation time in half. For life enrichment and care staff, the process of entering activities and building out future calendars with recurring activity features can be done in a matter of minutes. In addition, taking attendance, sharing activity photos with families, tracking resident 1:1’s, and producing resident reports/care plans has never been easier. For maintenance and transportation staff members, LifeLoop makes it easy to schedule rides, organize work orders, and input preventative maintenance requests.
- Communicate Quickly & Easily
At LifeLoop, we believe that time savings on operational tasks gives staff members the added benefit of being able to spend more one-on-one time with residents. As our industry has learned through COVID, transparent communication is key for staff, resident, and family satisfaction. But now more than ever, timely communication is an expectation for families as they look for the best place for their loved one and it is vital for communities to deliver.
When it comes to communication for your community, LifeLoop offers valuable time savings by allowing you to send out branded messages and announcements to staff, residents, family, community vendors, and more. By sending announcements through LifeLoop, families, staff, and residents will immediately be notified keeping everyone on the same page with minimal effort required to distribute these updates. And you can ensure that recipients never miss an important message because they will receive notifications for all messages you send as a push notification, text message or via email.
- Seamless Integration
We’ve learned from our clients that residents love calendars and being able to see the upcoming activities for the week and month ahead. As with anything in LifeLoop, you can expect a seamless integration from your calendar to other features within the platform. Your calendar can be automatically shared and updated real-time on your website, on your displays, in the resident portal and in the family mobile app in a matter of minutes which prevents staff from having to make updates in multiple places.
The real value here comes in the form of extreme time-savings for staff members which allows them to spend the hours saved with residents or on other important tasks. Staff who feel more efficient and productive in their jobs usually feel more personally fulfilled compared to when they feel stretched thin. Technology that not only benefits staff members but amplifies their productivity is key to successful operations for any community.
- The LifeLoop Learning Community
We are well aware that the onboarding process for new employees can be time intensive. That is why we have developed the tools here at LifeLoop to help simplify the process. The LifeLoop Learning Community is designed to help onboard new staff members quickly and easily. Staff will have 24/7 access to a large collection of videos in the Learning Community that go over LifeLoops many features in detail, giving them a vast understanding of how to use the platform efficiently. Each community will also have a LifeLoop Customer Support contact, if they can’t troubleshoot a problem by themselves then a LifeLoop Employee will have the answer. Our Customer Support team also hosts live monthly learning courses to offer your staff an additional level of support.
As we look back on the staffing challenges of the past few years, and as we look ahead to what the future of our communities will look like, we simply cannot ignore the correlation between staff efficiency and community success. Meaningful engagement, from staff members all the way down to our residents, has a direct impact on community ROI. Your staff members and their ability to effectively and efficiently do their jobs has a direct correlation to resident satisfaction, engagement data, quality of life, and more. So investing in the tools to keep staff efficient by simplifying daily tasks is a meaningful step in the right direction.
If you’re interesting in finding out more about LifeLoop and what it can do for you community you can request a demo here: https://lifeloop.com/demo