Top Caregiver Benefits in Residential Assisted Living Facilities
Feb 07, 2025
Running a residential assisted living facility is all about balance—caring for your residents while also supporting the caregivers who make it all happen. Offering great benefits to your staff is one of the best ways to keep your team happy, motivated, and dedicated.
In this blog, we’ll dive into why benefits are so important, the kinds of benefits you can offer, and how they can help your business thrive.
Check out the video, too:
Why Caregiver Benefits Matter
Caregivers are the backbone of your business. When they feel valued, they’re more likely to stay and give their best effort every day. Here’s why offering benefits is a game-changer:
- Boost Retention: Keeping your team together means less turnover, fewer hiring costs, and more consistency for your residents.
- Build Loyalty: Benefits show your employees that you care about their well-being, creating trust and a positive workplace culture.
- Save on Taxes: Some benefits, like health insurance, can qualify for tax advantages, helping your business save money in the long run.
Top Benefits to Offer Your Caregivers
Not sure where to start? Here are some popular caregiver benefits that make a big difference:
- Paid Time Off (PTO): Rested caregivers are happier and more productive. Offer vacation days, sick leave, or even personal days to reduce burnout.
- Health Insurance: Comprehensive plans for medical, dental, and vision care show you’re invested in their health.
- Retirement Plans: Help your team plan for the future with options like 401(k)s or IRAs.
- Reimbursements: Cover costs like mileage, uniforms, or cell phone expenses. Little perks go a long way!
- Bonuses: Offer performance-based incentives or holiday bonuses to reward hard work.
How to Set Up Benefits for Your Team
Adding benefits might sound overwhelming, but tools like Gusto make it easy. Here’s how you can start:
- Partner with a Payroll Vendor: Platforms like Gusto can connect you with insurance providers and handle employee benefit deductions.
- Offer Health Stipends: If full insurance plans are too costly, consider giving employees a monthly stipend for private insurance.
- Automate PTO Tracking: Use payroll software to track time off and streamline approvals.
- Start Small: Begin with one or two benefits and expand as your business grows.
Do You Have to Offer Benefits?
In most cases, offering benefits isn’t required, but some state laws might apply:
- States like Colorado require businesses to provide 401(k) options.
- Paid leave laws vary by state, so be sure to check your local requirements.
If you choose to offer benefits, remember to treat all full-time employees equally to stay compliant.
Balancing Costs with Care
Offering benefits does cost money, but the long-term value outweighs the expense. Here’s how to balance the budget:
- Review Your Margins: Check your revenue and expenses to see what’s affordable.
- Prioritize Retention: Remember that keeping employees costs less than constant hiring.
- Expand Over Time: Start with a small benefits package and grow as your business becomes more profitable.
How Benefits Improve Your Facility
When your caregivers feel supported, they’re more likely to give your residents the best care possible. A happy team creates a positive, welcoming atmosphere that families notice—and that’s great for your business.
Final Thoughts
Offering caregiver benefits might seem like a big step, but it’s one of the smartest investments you can make for your assisted living facility. Start small, keep it simple, and remember: when you take care of your team, they’ll take care of your residents.
So, what’s the first benefit you’ll add to your assisted living facility?
Need Help?
Offering benefits may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Every team member, from the top-level administrators to the caregivers, plays a big part in creating a profitable RAL. Building the right team will help your facility thrive, keep operations smooth, and ensure residents feel at home. Start by exploring free resources like our Business Planning Guide, to help you build a solid business plan for your assisted living business.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:01
hey friend it's Brandon Gustafson I help new and aspiring Real Estate Investors launch their Assisted Living business in today's video we are going to be talking about what kind of benefits do you offer your caregivers in your residential Assisted Living business if you're interested in learning about that make sure you stick around for today's [Music] video hey friend it's Brandon guson welcome back to Assisted Living investing before we get into our topic for today I want to remind you to get
00:00:29
over to the website Assisted Living investing. net we have our free underwriting calculator and a bunch of other freebies that are linked down below that will help you launch that Assisted Living business now let's get into the topic for today's video what type of benefits do you offer your caregivers in a for your residential Assisted Living business I've seen this question quite often on Facebook forums and things both in in my group uh which is linked down below and also some of the other ones that are out there people
00:00:55
want to know um you know there's a lot of information I I went through over uh kind of paying your staff and do you need to offer those benefits so let's start talking about that today what are some of the types of benefits that you might consider offering your staff at your facility um some of the ones that are kind of common are PTO U so pay time off um health insurance or I guess medical insurance which would include um Health vision and dental um Insurance you could be looking at doing a
00:01:25
401k or an IRA or some type of a retirement plan you could be looking at like doing reimbursement for things like um cell phone or mileage or those types of things as well you you might consider that as a benefit a couple others that that you might have thought about would be bonuses or even incentive pay which oftentimes is kind of reserved for your administrators in the way that they're helping you out all these benefits are great to include in a package of benefits and and really can instill some
00:01:55
loyalty and some confidence in your staff to to make sure that they are confident in who you are as an owner and as an operator of the business so but you don't have to do all of them um there's a lot of benefits out there it is a little bit cost prohibitive for you as an owner to be able to offer all those benefits and you need to take that into consideration as you are looking at how much money you're generating and can you offer those benefits are you actually able to do it from a financial perspective and and
00:02:22
offer those benefits so uh those at its core those are a handful if you are aware of any other benefits or or have offered benefits other than those that I just mentioned comment those down below I'd love to learn a little bit more about what other types of benefits um you have or that you're aware of people offering because I think it could really benefit and if you are somebody that's a caregiver that's thinking about getting into this I'd love to hear from you about uh what type of benefit you would
00:02:48
love to have at at your facility uh or or you know that that would have been really important to you because it's something that I can learn from and the rest of the group can also learn from so we can create something that is that's really good for staff because it's not it's something that you know I I work in a very different world from that and would love to see and hear what is most beneficial so comment those down below as well so let's run a scenario here let's say that you have decided that you
00:03:13
are going to offer benefits how do you get those set up it's a really good question a lot of times you can set that up with your payroll vendor and I have a link for Gusto who we use for payroll and I've done some videos on them in the past as well so we'll link one of those up there um at the top but Gusto is our payroll vendor they you can we are able to set that up by the way that link down below it's a referral link I'll get a little bit of Kickback but you also get a $100 Visa gift card if you sign up
00:03:37
using that link so why not do it um anyways back to the point uh Gusto and other payroll vendors will allow you to kind of make connections with an insurance carrier or or somebody else that is offering those benefits or providing those benefits or you can do it directly in Gusto for things like PTO you can set up those policies and track that information on there so you're able to do all of that and of that payroll vendor it's going to be really beneficial for you to to be able to do that does the automatic deductions from
00:04:05
their payroll as well which helps you out um because that's one of those things that's just a headache that you don't think about when you're starting to offer benefits so they take care of a lot of those things for you so payo vendors are great at helping you administer another thing that uh you could do is if you go with somebody that's like a private insurance company you can actually offer those people uh the ability to get reimbursed for that you could say we will give you an
00:04:31
allowance of a couple hundred um per pay period or per month to go and find your insurance and and we just add that on and Tack it on as an extra benefit for you and then you have to prove to us that you're actually getting the insurance otherwise um we just kind of hand it over to you and um you know give you that information um so that you can use those funds to get that benefit uh so that's another option of how you can actually get those benefits out to somebody now let's talk about is it
00:05:00
required to offer benefits and the answer that is it kind of depends um typically no uh it's not required that you offer benefits there may be certain states that have requirements to offer certain types of benefits so for example in Colorado we are required to offer a 401k to our staff and also provide a PTO policy so those are two things that are required by the state and so we've had to learn exactly what that looks like but if it's not required by the state there is no law that mandates that you
00:05:30
have to put those benefits in place um at like a federal level or anything like that so it is not a requirement for you to get the those benefits in place however if you are looking at doing benefits and you want to do something like health insurance you need to keep in mind that a lot of carriers and this actually might be a law that makes you if you are offering benefits to one employee you have to offer benefits to all employees and they don't have to accept it but you have to be able to
00:05:57
offer that plan which as you're doing some planning to to identify if this is something that you can afford or not you're not looking at doing benefits for just one staff member you're looking at doing it for all full-time employees so you need to keep that in mind because that could be a huge number for you that could make it cost prohibitive in allowing you to um provide those benefits for your staff so just something for you to keep in mind as well not required but if you do do it
00:06:23
there might be certain requirements you do have to meet or your state may have some certain requirements for different types of benefits that you need to be aware of and make sure those are set up and that you're following and staying compliant with those rules and regulations and those laws otherwise you could get hit with some significant financial penalties so why would you offer benefits and there's two big reasons here actually one is there's actually some tax benefits when you're
00:06:46
offering those those benefits to people um those can be offset um offsetting some of the other income that you are getting from the business and it can help you out a little bit from that standpoint because you're offering the these extra benefits and paying for those so that's one reason the other one is employee retention and um loyalty so you're setting up the this benefit package you're offering it to your staff um and and they are able to see that oh man they are committed to me they like
00:07:13
me they want me to stick around and it it just kind of instills it especially in this industry where there are a lot of places that do not offer benefits and that's because margins can be slim especially in these small homes but if it's something that you can offer and you're able to then it can really help create that culture that you're hoping to create and reduce the turnover that happens for um people that work in Assisted Living um just the Staffing that that happens here so at its core
00:07:42
that is benefits that's the overview of benefits we have been talking about quite a bit here today we talked about number one some of the different types of benefits that you might consider getting uh and then we got into how to set up those benefits we talked about some of the you know is it required to put those benefits and then we talked about why you might even consider doing benefits so I hope this was helpful if you found this helpful make sure you like the video subscribe and ring the
00:08:07
bell as well so you get notified when we put out this content and if you want more information need more help get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net I've got a bunch of resources for you over there those are all linked down below free resources or you can get access to the business planning guide which is going to help you build out a business plan there's a section in there that's all about Staffing and it's going to help you make sure that you are are building out a a
00:08:29
good Staffing model that's going to support the the staff in a way that is going to allow you to run that business so Assisted Living investing. net BPG for business planning guide or if you want some extra support get over as well to the website Assisted Living investing. net and go to Mastermind um as well and get an overview of exactly what we are offering in The Mastermind it is a year-long program that's going to help you build that business plan help you um get find the property get
00:08:54
the funding and get the facility license so you can be up and running and and give you the support and guidance that you need as you are trying to figure out how to launch that Assisted Living business does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net we are here to help you through the process start to finish helping you launch that Assisted Living business so you can obtain that time and Financial Freedom that you've been dreaming of and
00:09:18
remember it doesn't take a lot just a little bit just keep going step by step by step if you keep going 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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