Should You Pay Overnight Staff More in Assisted Living?
Feb 18, 2025
Running a residential assisted living (RAL) facility comes with many decisions, and one of the trickiest is figuring out how to compensate your caregivers fairly. A common question is: Should overnight caregivers earn more than daytime staff?
Let’s break it down by looking at the roles, challenges, and strategies for paying and supporting your team. By the end of this blog, you’ll have a clearer understanding of how to structure your pay and build a happy, loyal caregiving team.
Check out the video, too:
The Role of Daytime Caregivers
Daytime caregivers are the heartbeat of your assisted living business. Their day is packed with responsibilities like:
- Resident Care: Helping with bathing, toileting, and dressing.
- Medication Management: Ensuring meds are given on time and accurately.
- Activities: Keeping residents engaged with games, exercise, or meaningful conversations.
- Family Interactions: Updating families during visits and addressing concerns.
- Home Management: Cooking meals, coordinating with nurses, and preparing for inspections.
Their job is busy, hands-on, and fast-paced, ensuring residents and families are cared for and happy.
The Role of Overnight Caregivers
Overnight caregivers have a quieter shift but still play an essential role. Their tasks often include:
- Safety Monitoring: Assisting residents who may fall, need help in the restroom, or require medication.
- Light Cleaning: Tidying up common areas while residents sleep.
- Meal Prep: Prepping breakfast or getting meals ready for the next day.
While their workload is lighter than daytime staff, overnight caregivers provide peace of mind that residents are safe and cared for 24/7.
Should Overnight Staff Earn More?
The pay structure for overnight shifts can depend on several factors:
-
Workload Differences
- Daytime Shifts: Often more physically and emotionally demanding, justifying slightly higher pay.
- Overnight Shifts: Typically quieter, with fewer tasks and resident interactions.
-
Shift Desirability
- Overnight shifts can be less popular due to the hours. Offering a small pay bump for these shifts can help attract and retain staff.
- If you foster a great work culture and provide support, you may not need to rely on financial incentives.
How to Build Loyalty Among Caregivers
Caregiver pay is important, but a supportive environment often matters just as much. Here’s how you can build a loyal, happy team:
-
Offer Growth Opportunities
- Promote from within and encourage staff to grow into leadership roles like house manager or administrator.
-
Provide Support
- Be available to listen and solve problems. Show that you value your caregivers’ hard work.
-
Foster a Positive Work Culture
- Create an environment where your team feels respected and appreciated. Small gestures, like thank-you notes or monthly team lunches, can go a long way.
Key Takeaways
- Daytime vs. Overnight Pay: Pay should reflect the workload and shift desirability, but respect and support often matter more than money.
- Retain Happy Staff: Growth opportunities, a positive culture, and good communication keep your caregivers loyal and motivated.
When your team feels valued, they’ll pass that positivity on to your residents, making your assisted living home a warm and welcoming place for everyone.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
If you found this information helpful, please visit Assisted Living Investing for more resources. Remember to download our free Business Plan Checklist to help you create a successful business plan for your facility.
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
hey friend I'm Brandon Gustafson I help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months in today's video we're going to be talking about do you pay your caregivers more for an overnight shift or not as you get into operating your business so if you're interested in that make sure you stick around for today's [Music] video hey friend before we get started I want to remind you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net you can get access to our free
00:00:30
underwriting calculator which is a great tool that I've created to help you kind of understand if you've got a good investment or not so go ahead and grab that we'll have links down below let's get into the topic for today's video do you pay your overnight staff more than your daytime staff so let's talk about that a little bit first off I think it's really important to understand the level of I guess the the type of work that each of your daytime staff versus your nighttime staff what are they doing so
00:00:56
you have an understanding of what that looks like I've seen this question in a few Facebook groups and so this this is something I wanted to bring up but uh it's really important to kind of understand the base there so your daytime staff what are they doing they're going to be taking care of the residents they're going to be you know changing them toileting bathing a lot of that stuff that goes into the cares during the day um Med management they're going to be doing all of those things
00:01:19
interacting with the residents they're going to be carrying out activities especially in a small residential home like what you're like what you're trying to do so they're going to be very active they're going to you know be cooking they're going to have to deal with families when they come over um the nurse when the nurse comes over they've got a lot that they're doing they always have a ball in the air there's always something going on and making sure that the residents have what they need and
00:01:42
making sure that they are entertained as well so that's what a daytime um staff is going to do for you there's a lot that goes into it honestly just kind of being engaged with the resident something that they need to do now what do your nighttime staff do nighttime staff don't do quite as much because the residents are sleeping they're not not going to be interacting with residents all that much they're not going to be bathing them or changing them they might help out with some toileting every now
00:02:07
and then but they're the level of care that they're providing is is much smaller they're probably going to be cleaning the facility in the evenings um while the residents are asleep they're going to maybe do a little bit of meal prep and get some of the food ready for the next day for breakfast or or maybe lunch or dinner as well they could be looking at at doing any of those things but the level of care that they're doing is is pretty minimal they just need to be at the home make sure it's safe and
00:02:32
secure make sure the residents when they need to get up and use the restroom or if they were to fall in the middle of the night or something like that or maybe they need some kind of pain medication for some reason they're able to to be there and help out and and provide that to them but that's basically what your nighttime staff are doing they're they're kind of providing that level of care but not a lot of one-on-one care and there's not a lot of interactions so let's talk a little bit
00:02:55
about who gets paid more in reality the payment rates are pretty pretty close to the same we don't really have a nighttime shift you know it's kind of the same with weekends weekends are are different as well they're people it's a more undesirable shift is is the problem with weekends but in reality you're paying your caregivers pretty much the same rate um they kind of become interchangeable if anything you're probably going to end up paying your daytime staff a little bit more because
00:03:22
of the amount of care that they're providing to the residents and the interactions they have to have and being ready for a state survey or something along those lines so if if I had to tell you do does nighttime get paid more than daytime um probably not honestly they're probably getting paid the same if not slightly lower than than what you get paid for the daytime shift all in all they're your caregivers they're your med techs they kind of are at about the same level you want to treat them with respect you
00:03:50
want to love them and make sure that there's a good amount of loyalty built into them as they get going in into their jobs so that they can get promoted and things like that but there's no real difference there between those two so to recap today's video we've been talking about daytime Shift versus nighttime shift and who gets paid more and so you can kind of get a feel for what's that going to look like for you and for your residents as as you get into this a little bit deeper if you found today's
00:04:16
video to be helpful make sure you like the video subscribe and ring the bell as well cuz it's going to help you get notified when we go live on Tuesdays and when we do this long form stuff on Thursdays I'm really putting all this stuff out here to help you out and make sure you get over to the website as well Assisted Living investing. net we have our free underwriting calculator that we chatted about we also have the business planning guide which is going to build the base for everything that you need to
00:04:39
do to help you get started on your journey to investing in Assisted Living so make sure you go check that out and if you feel like you need more you need some extra coaching we have the Assisted Living investing Mastermind I love this program I love the people that are in it and kind of helping them along their Journey like you know the purpose of Assisted Living investing is to help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months and that's what we do in The Mastermind
00:05:03
it's it's so much fun to interact with people and help them along their journey and help them achieve their goals and would love to have you there if you are interested in checking that out go to Assisted Living investing. netmaster we have linked down below if You' like to do a free strategy session to see if it's a good program for you or not if it's a good fit check out check me out at Assisted Living investing. net strategy and we can set up a call and just chat about where you're at what
00:05:25
your goals are and maybe what barriers you have that are stopping you from getting started and see if I can help you get unstuck and help you progress and launch that business in the next 12 months does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net we're here to help you through the process start to finish to help you reach that time and Financial Freedom that you have and help you make progress to toward achieving
00:05:48
that I want to thank you for watching and remind you that it doesn't take a lot just a little bit just keep going step by step by step if you do and you're consistent and persistent I promise you you're going to be successful thanks for watching and have a great day [Music]
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