Focusing on Staff Experience? 5 Tech Must-Haves to Boost Retention

We talk a lot about the senior living staff experience on this blog, and for good reason: it’s still a major barrier to employee retention. In the midst of an ongoing staff shortage, a revolving door effect can seriously impact residents and drain your team’s institutional knowledge.

Competitive pay and benefits are important, yes – but they often aren’t enough to keep employees from feeling overwhelmed or undervalued. Here’s where senior living technology steps in. The right digital tools can lighten workloads, boost engagement, and make it easier for your staff to stick around. Here are five tech must-haves that can help.

1. Easy Activity Calendar Planning Software

Many senior living communities still use paper-based systems to plan and announce life enrichment activities. And more often than not, employees still wind up manually adding each activity to their own digital calendars. Apart from eating up valuable time, there’s a high chance that something slips through the cracks.

Digital-first activity calendar planning can make a huge difference. Centralized software can shave time off your staff’s day to day with features like…

• Intuitive scheduling that lets employees create and update events in a few clicks.
• Automated notifications that push event updates to your resident portal to keep residents in the loop.
• Easy third-party calendar syncing via Outlook and Google Calendar integrations. (We’ll touch on this again in a bit.)
• A mobile app so staff can handle quick scheduling tasks on the go.

You don’t have to ditch paper completely – it can still be valuable for less tech-savvy residents who choose to opt in. But by taking a digital-first approach to your activity planning, you can boost staff efficiency and easily update residents on community goings-on.

2. Automated Communication Tools

Communication can be tedious – and senior living staff often have a lot on their plate. Whether they’re sending community-wide announcements or requesting routine documents from family members, things can get overwhelming fast.

The right software can automate many of these tasks. Make sure the platform you choose lets staff…

• Schedule resident reminders for things like appointments and events.
• Push community-wide alerts via email and SMS.
• Share important documents with minimal hassle.
• Communicate directly with residents and families in a central hub.

The benefit for staff: less tedium and more time back in their day.

3. Time-Saving Integrations

If your community has a robust tech stack, there’s a good chance your staff spends a lot of time toggling between digital tools to get work done. That context switching doesn’t just take time – it can frustrate employees and slow down productivity.

Integrations can slash friction by allowing all of your tools to share data back and forth. The ideal scenario for your staff: the ability to check activity calendars, update dining menus, and review POS transactions from a single portal. These integrations help residents out, too; they can access all the community info they need on a central app. 

Not sure which integrations you should have? At a minimum, make sure you’ve integrated your…

• Activity calendars.
• Resident and staff communication tools.
• Family engagement software.
• Dining and reservation software.
• POS software.
• EHRs and eMARs.

Some integrations are easy to implement. But others demand a bit more expertise. We’ve got the full rundown to help you understand the ins and outs.

4. Gamification Technology

Rewards and recognition are powerful ways to help senior living staff feel valued. The key is to do so in a way that feels fresh and energizing – going beyond the typical office pizza party.

Enter gamification. It’s proven to boost engagement, encouraging everything from completing training modules to hitting KPIs. And technology makes it easy to gamify the staff experience. Here are some examples of how to apply it in the senior living space:

• Award performance points for completing specific tasks or goals, which staff can redeem for, say, an Amazon gift card.
• Create leaderboards that display the top performers in various KPI categories; it’s a great way to boost motivation and encourage friendly competition.
• Offer achievements for completing training modules – and reward the employees who complete their modules the fastest.

Pairing gamification with rewards and recognition can have a major impact on morale. What’s more, staff will feel more appreciated for their work – key to improving retention.

5. Smart Home Devices

Many senior living communities are turning to smart home technology to improve communication and give residents more control over their wellness. There’s a major staff benefit, too: it lets employees optimize their time and resources and only conduct physical wellness checks when necessary. 

Here are two ways you can use smart home technology:

• Voice Assistants: Residents can talk to devices like Amazon Alexa to, say, hear the dining menu, schedule appointments, or call the front desk. This eases the manual burden on staff and frees up time for other tasks.
• Wearables: Smart watches and other wearables can notify staff of health emergencies (like an elevated heart rate) or send alerts if a resident falls.

The bottom line? By leveraging smart home technology, staff can remotely manage residents’ wellness needs and dedicate more in-person time to residents who need it most.

Empower Your Team with the Right Tech

A robust tech stack can automate manual tasks and empower employees to spend more time on the resident-facing work they love most. The long-term impact: higher job satisfaction, more productivity, and lower turnover rates.At Icon, we’ve designed a suite of technology to alleviate senior living staff’s biggest pain points – and improve the resident experience in the process. Interested in learning how? Book a demo or reach out to us today.