How to Slash Digital Friction for Senior Living Staff

The ongoing senior living staffing crisis has put pressure on leaders to boost employee retention. As a result, many senior living communities have invested more in tech that can improve the employee experience.

The problem: though well-intentioned, this technology doesn’t always make employees’ lives easier. In fact, it can sometimes introduce new processes and hurdles that get in workers’ way – in short, creating “digital friction.”

The question for leaders: how to invest in tech without creating digital friction. In this piece, we’ll offer four tips that can help. But first, let’s take a closer look at the steep cost of a high-friction workplace.

Background: The Steep Cost of a High-Friction Workplace

Digital friction refers to the unnecessary effort employees waste using software that should be helping them. It can take many forms, but it often looks like…

• Too many apps: When employees have to juggle nine or ten different apps, it can lead to confusion and cause them to waste time context switching. And if information is scattered across different systems or poorly organized, it can be a nightmare for staff to find what they need.
• Unintuitive interfaces: Clunky interfaces with confusing menus or unclear instructions can be a major source of frustration. And if that exists on top of the friction point above, the problem can magnify tenfold.
• A poorly integrated digital ecosystem: When different programs don’t work well together, it can force employees to jump through hoops to move data or complete tasks.

No matter the friction point, the impact is almost always the same: high frustration, decreased efficiency, and burnout. Over time, a high-friction workplace can crater retention rates and cause turnover to spike. That’s bad news for any community focused on boosting staff retention.

The takeaway? Before you invest in new tech, it’s important to make sure you’re not creating digital friction. Let’s explore a few tips that can help you achieve that goal.

Tip 1: Choose Intuitive Software

Staff members need easy access to essential information, no matter the software at hand. But far too many platforms force users to click through multiple menus, dropdowns, and pages to find what they need.

User-friendly software can make a huge difference. The most intuitive software will typically…

• Label menus clearly to reduce confusion while navigating.
• Minimize clutter by only putting the most important information on screen.
• Make it easy to get anywhere in three clicks or less.

With software that prioritizes the user experience, senior living staff can stay productive and move more smoothly throughout their digital ecosystem. The result: less digital friction and greater employee satisfaction.

Tip 2: Make Sure There’s A Mobile Component

Mobile apps aren’t just valuable for residents – they’re important for senior living staff, too. 

If your dining staff notices a menu error while they’re in the dining room, they should be able to correct it from a mobile app and have it populate on every digital sign. And if your activities coordinator thinks of a new event idea while they’re walking down the hallway, they should be able to draft an event page on the go – instead of clinging to that thought until they’re back at their desk.

In short, a mobile app lets staff handle important tasks when and where they want to. And alongside the intuitive experience we outlined in the last section, a great mobile app should…

• Be optimized for mobile devices. This may sound like table stakes, but many apps are essentially wrappers for a browser experience and may not offer mobile-specific functionality.
• Enable real-time updates. Staff should be able to update anything from life enrichment calendars to resident directory info and trust it to reflect on every resident and staff portal.
• Support instant communication. It should be easy to message residents, family members, and colleagues with a few taps. 

By adopting mobile tech, senior living communities can enhance staff workflows and mitigate friction in the process.

Tip 3: Automate Core Processes

Senior living employees perform a lot of repetitive tasks each day. But there’s a good chance many of those can be partially – or even fully – automated. The vision: fewer time-consuming tasks and more time to actually engage with residents.

Automations can slash digital friction by simplifying tedious or complex workflows. At a minimum, look for software that automates…

• Activity planning. AI can analyze your life enrichment calendar history, flag the most successful activities, and suggest ways to retool them for the next quarter. (At Icon, we call this Smart Aging™. Here’s a deep dive.)
• Appointment reminders. Software can automatically notify residents and family members about key appointments at preset intervals. And it can do so via any channel: phone, email, or text. 
• Reporting. In seconds, staff can pull detailed reports about everything from activity attendance to resident satisfaction scores.

The benefits of automation extend beyond time savings alone. Fewer manual tasks means lighter workloads and less stress – which can boost overall job satisfaction.

Tip 4: Integrate Your Tech Stack

A robust tech stack is a powerful asset for any senior living community. But a disconnected tech stack? Not so much.

When systems don’t communicate well with each other (or at all), that’s a recipe for serious digital friction. For instance, your work order management system may not talk to your resident portal software. So every time a resident calls the front desk with a new maintenance request, your concierge has to enter the request into the system.

Friction like this isn’t just tedious to handle – it also makes it easier for something to fall through the cracks. That means staff have to make corrections on the back end that eat up valuable time.

To avoid this, look for senior living software that supports robust integrations. A well-integrated tech stack allows data to flow seamlessly between systems. The ideal scenario: the ability to manage all aspects of your community from a single portal. The most powerful integrations…

• Connect third-party tools via APIs for real-time data exchange.
• Only require a single login to access everything from menus to EHRs. 

What might this look like in practice? In our example above, integrations would let residents submit a work order directly from their portal – and the information would instantly show up in the maintenance team’s queue. What’s more, residents could also track the status of each request, eliminating additional calls to the front desk.

The outcome for your staff: a lot less headache and a lot more time savings – both crucial for satisfaction.

Invest in a Frictionless Staff Experience

Digital friction can be a huge obstacle for senior living staff retention. With the right approach, though, you can invest in tech that doesn’t just avoid friction – but actively reduces it.

We designed Icon’s suite of solutions with that need in mind. What we offer: intuitive, automated, and mobile-optimized tools that integrate well with the rest of your stack. You’ll notice the positive impact on your staff – and so will your residents. Want to explore Icon’s senior living technology for yourself? Book a demo or reach out to start a conversation.