Top Staffing Positions for a Successful RAL
Dec 11, 2024
Building a successful assisted living business starts with a great team. Each staff member plays a special role in helping things run smoothly. Here’s a look at some key positions in a residential assisted living facility (RAL) that make all the difference.
Check out the video too:
Owners and Facility Administrator: The Top Team
At the top of the team are the Owner and the Facility Administrator. The owner decides on the big things, like setting goals and handling the financial side to keep the business profitable. Meanwhile, the facility administrator is the one in charge of the day-to-day operations. They make sure the facility is running well, the team is happy, and all state regulations are followed. Together, they bring the owner’s vision to life and keep everything in check.
House Manager: The Helper for Daily Tasks
The House Manager isn’t always a required role, but they sure can help! They handle everyday tasks like staff scheduling, meal planning, and organizing medication schedules. Often, the house manager doubles as a caregiver, making them super helpful in smaller facilities where flexibility is key.
Caregivers: The Heart of the Facility
Caregivers are the ones who interact with residents the most. They help with things like:
- Daily activities (dressing, bathing, eating, etc.)
- Medication management
- Meal prep and light cleaning
Caregivers bring warmth and care to residents' lives, supporting their needs day in and day out. They may report to the house manager or the facility administrator, depending on the structure of the facility.
Extra Support: Part-Time and On-Call Staff
For even smoother operations, many assisted living facilities bring in additional help, including:
- Nurses on call for specialized medical care
- Cleaning staff to keep the facility neat and sanitary
- Part-time cooks to create tasty and balanced meals
While these roles aren’t always listed on the main team chart, they’re essential. They report to either the house manager or facility administrator.
Final Thoughts
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. Ready to dive deeper into setting up a great RAL team? Download our Business Plan Checklist.
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
00:00:27
In our last video, we talked a little bit about the types of organizational charts, what an organizational chart is. I'll put that up in a card there. And also in that video, I referenced a free resource that I have on my website, assistedlivinginvesting.net. It's organizational charts. You might find it handy if you're working with a lender who's asking for an organizational chart. So go ahead and jump over to the website and get access to that free resource.
00:00:51
Today, we're going to be talking about the different types of positions that are in an organizational chart, specifically for residential assisted living, for assisted living facilities, just so you can kind of have a feel for who's going to be the makeup of that operational organizational chart that we talked about in our last video. Again, I'll link that up here above.
00:01:14
So I'm gonna start at the top of that organizational chart. Up at the top, you've got your ownership, and I'm gonna even talk about the facility administrator kind of in this same breath, because we've talked a lot about those two positions in past videos. They make up a lot of the work that you're gonna be doing as an owner and operator, or even if you're a facility administrator and you're kind of doing this process there.
00:01:35
That's a lot of what the focus of my videos are on is those types of positions. And so I'm not going to get too in depth into them here. But, you know, these are the positions that sit at the top of the organizational chart. The owners at the top, there's a straight line that goes to the facility administrators. They're right below that ownership group. They report up to them. And that's kind of the how that structure is there. I mean, it's a pretty simple way of looking at things with ownership, operator and administrator.
00:02:05
are oh they're not interchangeable but for organizational chart purposes they kind of sit at the top and then kind of function in that way obviously the administrator is the one that's managing those daily operations of the facility and so everybody else at the facility all the caregivers every other person that we're going to talk about on that organizational chart today
00:02:27
They all report up to the facility administrator in some manner. So that's something that you just want to be aware of. Those are the people at the top and the people that are in charge. And that's where they kind of reside in this organizational chart.
00:02:41
The next position I'm going to talk a little bit about is a house manager. So this is something I haven't really talked about in past videos, but it's something that I think is really important in kind of developing talent and employee retention and those types of things. Taking a load off of the plate of the administrator, having a house manager is going to be really important. So the house manager, first off, it's not a required position within an assisted living facility.
00:03:06
especially small residential facilities you don't have to have this person it's totally fine if you don't have it it's not a big deal but the house manager like i mentioned can take off some of the responsibilities of your facility administrator it can free up some of their time so that they can
00:03:23
do more of those administrative duties that only they can do because of the license that they hold and the type of experience that they have. So having a house manager to offload some of that work is extremely helpful. A house manager can do some of those tasks. Some of the tasks that they could do are things like maybe scheduling staff, making a food prep schedule, coordinating the med pass, cleaning, scheduling all the cleaning and who's going to do the cleaning and when it's all going to be done and
00:03:53
And those types of things that are a little bit more time intensive that the administrator is typically doing, you can pass that off to the house manager. And it lets that person kind of really get...
00:04:05
some experience in working on things that an administrator is typically going to do. Um, so that if they aspire to be an administrator or you're trying to develop things, you're trying to grow your portfolio and you want to develop an administrator in house, these are great ways for you to kind of do that and giving somebody that position of a, of a house manager. It really takes some of those time intensive tasks off the plate of your administrator so that your administrator can focus on those things and
00:04:32
that only they can do up to their license. The house manager is often also going to function as a caregiver and hold both of those responsibilities. So they are not typically just a house manager. They're a house manager that is also working on the floor with the residents and doing those things. They are still a caregiver. They're still working
00:04:54
working on those things they just have a little bit more responsibility you might consider paying your house manager a little more because of those increased responsibilities but it's often a good way to really build up that pipeline for a future administrator if you're looking to scale your business or if you know your administrator is going to be leaving or something like that those are this is a great way to kind of build up skills that are going to allow you
00:05:18
to have somebody in the pipeline as you continue to grow or as needs arise. So it's just a really good thing to have. The next one is going to be the caregivers. So caregivers are obviously the people that are administering the care. They're administering that care for your residents. They're the ones that are there. They're helping out with those activities of daily living. So they're addressing residents. They're assisting with toileting or bathing or eating.
00:05:42
They're helping out with those different activities of daily living. Some of those other responsibilities that a caregiver might have is like passing medication, preparing food, cleaning the facility. Some of those things are things that in a downtime where they're not needing to go and do showers or something like that, they're able to prepare food or they're out passing the meds or they're just kind of taking care of other things and just kind of being aware of everything that's going on in the facility.
00:06:11
And I mentioned this in the house manager section, but I just want to reiterate the house manager and even your administrator can also function as a caregiver and they can perform those duties. Oftentimes, you know, especially in a small facility, your facility administrator is going to have to act as a caregiver, especially right now. You know, this is I'm filming this in 2021. Staffing is probably the biggest issue that we are coming across right now. And our administrator has to.
00:06:36
fill both of those roles and it's a lot of work. And so you need to be attentive and responsive to their needs and just make sure that you're working through that. But the house manager and the administrator can both function as a caregiver as needed, which is nice to have, especially in a small facility. The caregiver though is, you can see this on the chart, is at the bottom of that organizational chart. And they report up to a house manager or the facility administrator, kind of depending on how you structure things
00:07:05
how it's going to look. But that's kind of where they report up there at the bottom there. Other positions, and I don't have these on that org chart right now, but it's something you could easily add. And these are people that are going to be kind of dotted line reporting to your administrator, your house manager. Some of these people would be, you know, like a nurse. They kind of coordinate with your facility administrator. You could have cleaning staff. So maybe you
00:07:32
have a larger facility and you need somebody to come and clean, or you're going through a staffing shortage and your caregivers just don't have time to clean the facility. So you need to go out and hire a, you know, a custodian type of a company to come in and clean the facility once or twice a week or something like that. Or maybe you're a high end and you have a chef that is kind of a part-time person that's preparing all your food.
00:07:57
Those are all kind of instances where these people, they're not maybe directly under you, you're not running their payroll for them, but they are working at your facility. So you kind of want to be aware of them and throwing them on your own operational organizational chart is probably going to be helpful just so you can kind of keep track of who these positions are and how things work. But each of those people are going to report likely up to the facility administrator, but depending on how you have it structured, they could report also up to the house manager,
00:08:27
but they're generally going to be those third-party contractors unless you hire them directly and they are more of a dotted line reporting out to their manager, quote unquote. Next time we're going to be talking about how do I, me personally, how do I set up and manage my organizational chart? What does my chart look like? And what does that process look like? And I'll put that up here in a video so you can go ahead and watch that one. And then in closing, just to learn more about it,
00:08:55
investing in assisted living, make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net. Links down in the bio. And I have other content up there, setting up some consulting calls as well. And then follow me on my other social media platforms. Would love to continue the conversation over there. And just remember, it doesn't take a lot, just a little bit. Keep going. Keep making that incremental step-by-step process. You can do this. Keep making progress and you
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