Master Your Org Chart: Setup & Manage for Assisted Living Success
Dec 13, 2024
Getting your team set up the right way is a big deal when you’re building an assisted living business. Your team’s structure affects how smoothly things run, how happy your residents feel, and how engaged your staff is. Let’s dive into how to set up an org chart that makes it all work!
Check out the video, too:
Why Your Org Chart Matters
Think of your org chart as the backbone of your business. It helps everyone know who’s who and what they’re supposed to do. Plus, a clear structure makes things simpler for you, from legal stuff to handling taxes. My dad and I run our facility together, sharing ownership 50/50, and having a good structure helps us focus on what matters most.
Key Players in Your Assisted Living Org Chart
1. Facility Administrator
This role is the heart of any assisted living setup! Your Facility Administrator keeps things running by managing staff and handling daily operations. They make sure you’re following all state rules, so your facility is always in good shape legally. We stay in touch with our administrator often, so communication stays strong, and we’re always up to date.
2. House Manager & Caregivers
The House Manager is like the Administrator’s backup, especially if the Administrator steps out for a day or takes a vacation. Our House Manager once handled an important issue when our Administrator was away, showing just how valuable this role can be! Meanwhile, Caregivers provide hands-on care to residents. Every state has rules for how many caregivers you need based on how many residents you have, so make sure to know your state’s requirements.
3. Activities Coordinator: The Fun-Maker!
The Activities Coordinator organizes fun things like game nights and outings, like trips to the zoo! This role isn’t required by law (though it is required to have activities for your resident's daily), but it’s a great way to make life better for your residents. Promoting a caregiver to this role can give them career growth while keeping your residents entertained and happy. Plus, it helps you keep great employees around!
Do You Really Need All These Roles?
You may wonder, “Do I need all these team members?” The only required role in most states is the Facility Administrator, and, of course, caregivers to care for residents. But adding optional roles like House Managers or Activities Coordinators can make a big difference in how smoothly your business runs and how happy your residents are.
Special Roles: Nurses and Chefs
Depending on where you’re located, you might also need part-time nurses or chefs on the team. For example, some states require a nurse to be on-site for a few hours each week. Chefs are great if you want to serve specific meals for residents, making meals something your facility is known for. Always check your state rules, as they guide what’s required.
Wrapping Up
Building the right team isn’t just about filling roles. It’s about creating an environment where your facility can thrive, your staff feels valued, and your residents feel like they’re home. With a solid org chart, everyone knows their role, and your business can run smoothly for years to come!
If you’re in the process of structuring your assisted living business, don’t forget to check out the Business Plan Checklist here. This checklist will walk you through the essential components needed to build a successful business plan, from operational structure to staffing.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
hi everybody i'm brandon gustafson i own and operate two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people like you learn the ins and outs of investing in assisted living welcome to assisted living investing [Music] in our last video we talked about the different positions that you can see in an organizational chart for an assisted living what are those positions how do they work and give a quick overview of what those are and i hope that was helpful for you today we're going to be getting into how
00:00:42
do i set up my own personal organizational chart what does mine look like so first off i'm going to go over our entity structure and i covered this in a previous video so go ahead and watch that on how we set up our entity and kind of what that process is like um but just a recap we have a two-person ownership group for our entity so both my father and i own 50 of the business and so our organizational structure looks very similar to this one um you know as a reminder i've got this this chart um as
00:01:13
a free resource for you on assistedlivinginvesting.net uh go over there on the free resources page and you can access it there you might need it for something if you're talking to a lender or somebody like that they might need something like this so just kind of be aware that that might be something you need so next i'm going to talk about our operational structure our operational structure again looks very similar to something like this structure that we went on in a previous video that
00:01:39
i'll link up above um we um sit at the top as our as the owner and operator we have a facility administrator that reports up to us directly and we have our regular meetings with our administrator and i'll link a card up above where we kind of go through the process of how we have our meetings and things like that with our facility administrator and then the house manager and caregivers report up to that facility administrator we do have house managers at each of our facilities have both of
00:02:08
them and they've been just extremely valuable when we've had our administrators out for things like vacation or an illness or something like that we had one of our administrators went on a week-long vacation and we had a an issue come up and our house manager was on top of it and she uh just she kicked knocked it out of the park she just did an incredible job in responding to us and helping us through the issue and we're so grateful to to have her um do that and she was at a point where she
00:02:39
was able to understand things and she had been trained by the administrator so she knew kind of what types of reports she needed to make and how to handle things and who to talk to with the state and different things like that and so it just made the process so much more smooth for us as an ownership group when our administrator was out and made it so our administrator didn't have to handle it while she's on vacation and those types of things and so a house manager is just extremely valuable
00:03:05
we also have a position as an activities coordinator in our colorado facility and i didn't get into that in a previous video but it's another one that's kind of like the house manager where you can kind of promote from within and this person is also one of our caregivers but they plan the activities that we do with the residents so this is typically something the administrator might do or in a larger facility you're going to have a designated activities director and they plan the activities for these
00:03:30
for the residents um in our smaller facilities it's just an additional responsibility we give to our caregivers where allows us to pay them a little bit more um kind of build in that structure where we can you know then help promote them and and work on employee retention which for us is extremely important especially in a time like like we're living in right now but some of those activities that the activities director activities coordinator might do are things you know like a game night
00:03:57
or a barbecue off-site activities like in colorado i know we've gone to the zoo in the past there's a zoo just not too far from our facility and those types of things haircuts is another one that we've seen happen so just a lot of different activities that are going to happen the activities coordinator is the one that coordinates those activities brings people in or coordinates transportation to some of these other locations and things like that and like i mentioned having positions like a
00:04:26
house manager and an activities director really frees up some of that time for your facility administration administrator which we talked a lot about in our last video so i'll reference that up above now the next question that i know you're going to have is are these required positions all the ones that i talked about that we have at our facility and the only position that is really truly required is going to be that facility administrator we've talked about in a previous video why that person is important so go ahead
00:04:55
and watch that but that person you know your facility administrator is is a licensed professional and you have to have them in order to operate your facility you also need caregivers they're required if you're going to operate your business there are going to be certain uh regulations in in your state for uh caregiver to resident ratio so you want to do some research on that and and how many caregivers you need especially as you're underwriting a deal um to determine if it's the right one for you
00:05:25
but it's something you know you're going to have to have caregiver caregivers if you're going to have an assisted living facility but those those are the only positions that are required um you know the house manager the activities coordinator those are not going to be required for you to operate your facility some of those positions i talked about in the last video that are more of those third party you know a nurse or a chef or some of those depending on your state you might be required to have a nurse be at your
00:05:53
facility for a certain amount of time so you want to make sure you do your research on there to figure out do i need to have a nurse do i need to contract with a nurse to come in what's that process like that might be one that is required but those are just kind of things that are more state specific and you'll just have to kind of figure out what is needed at your specific facility next time we're going to be talking about promoting staff from within your organizational structure in assisted
00:06:18
living we've talked a lot about that in the past but i want to kind of get into it and talk a little bit more about it in depth so we'll talk about that in our next video to learn more about investing in assisted living make sure you visit over on assistedlivinginvesting.net i've got other content over there uh working on setting up scheduling for consulting calls and and things like that as well uh with me and just follow me on my other social media platforms we'd love to continue the conversation over there
00:06:44
and remember it doesn't take a lot just a little bit just a little bit keep going keep making that step-by-step progress if you do that you'll be successful thanks for watching [Music] you
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