Top Tips for Staffing Your Residential Assisted Living Facility
Dec 17, 2024
Running an assisted living facility involves more than providing a safe space for residents—it’s about building a dedicated, knowledgeable team that ensures both the well-being of residents and smooth facility operations. Whether you’re opening a new facility or expanding an existing one, understanding the essential roles within your team is key to providing high-quality care and sustaining a successful business.
In smaller assisted living facilities, team members often take on multiple responsibilities, making each role even more significant. Hiring people who are skilled, adaptable, and passionate about care can help keep your facility running smoothly. Here’s a guide to the key roles to consider when staffing your assisted living team.
Check out the video, too:
1. Administrator: The Backbone of Your Facility
The administrator is the cornerstone of any assisted living facility. This licensed professional oversees day-to-day operations, ensures compliance with state laws, and collaborates with residents, staff, and families. Without a licensed administrator, your facility can’t legally operate, so be sure to check your state’s requirements if you plan to take on this role yourself.
Beyond administrative work, an effective administrator monitors the overall health of the facility, ensuring that residents' needs are met, and keeping staff engaged. A strong administrator is not just a manager but a leader who shapes the culture of care in your facility.
2. Assistant Administrator or House Manager
Serving as the administrator’s right-hand person, an assistant administrator or house manager can significantly reduce the administrator’s workload. This role, while optional, can be invaluable in managing tasks like meal planning, grocery shopping, activity scheduling, hiring, and admissions.
This position is also ideal for training future leaders. As your facility grows, a skilled assistant administrator who can step up as needed can streamline operations and support smooth transitions within the team. While hiring for this role may involve higher costs than a caregiver position, it’s worth the investment for efficient facility management.
3. Med Tech: The Medication Specialist
Med techs are certified to handle and administer medications—an essential responsibility in any assisted living setting. While they don’t require a formal license, med techs do need state-specific certifications to safely manage medication administration, ensure accurate documentation, and handle medication with care. Often, med techs are caregivers who have received additional training.
Though their duties may overlap with those of caregivers, med techs hold a higher level of responsibility and are typically compensated slightly more for their expertise.
4. Caregivers: The Heart of Daily Care
Caregivers play a vital role in assisting residents with daily tasks, such as dressing, bathing, meal preparation, and toileting. They’re the backbone of resident care, providing essential support that greatly impacts residents' quality of life. Caregivers also build strong relationships with residents, creating a compassionate and familiar environment.
Investing in your caregivers’ growth by offering opportunities to advance to med tech or managerial roles can help improve retention and ensure your residents receive exceptional care. Promoting from within benefits your team and strengthens your facility’s culture.
5. Housekeepers: Keeping Things Clean and Organized
Housekeeping is essential to creating a safe and healthy environment for your residents. Housekeepers manage cleaning and laundry tasks, which keeps the facility in top condition. If you're looking to bring in someone new to caregiving, housekeeping can be an excellent entry-level position that offers growth opportunities into other roles.
For instance, one of our administrators started as a housekeeper and worked her way up, eventually leading the facility. This kind of career progression is a win-win, benefiting your employees’ career paths and enhancing your facility’s reputation for promoting from within.
6. Optional Staff: Nurses and Activities Directors
Depending on your facility's specific needs, you may find value in hiring additional roles like nurses or activities directors. Nurses can enhance resident care by overseeing medical needs, medication management, and therapies. On the other hand, an activities director can significantly improve residents' quality of life by organizing engaging and stimulating activities.
You might find that current team members have an interest in these roles, eliminating the need for new hires. However, as your facility expands, hiring dedicated professionals for these positions can be worth the investment.
Building a Team That Lasts
Hiring the right staff ensures your assisted living facility operates efficiently and provides high-quality care. Creating a nurturing, growth-oriented workplace allows employees to progress from caregiving roles to med tech positions and even into administration. This approach not only supports your team but also strengthens your business, promoting staff retention and cultivating a consistent, caring environment for residents.
With the right team in place, you’re set to provide excellent care and create a positive atmosphere for both your residents and staff. Start with these core roles, and build a team committed to making a difference in the lives of your residents and the success of your facility.
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Transcript
00:00:00
so what kind of Staff do you need in an assisted living facility if you are kind of confused and don't know what to expect when it comes to Staffing your assisted living facility make sure you stay tuned for this video and I'll teach you a little bit more hey everybody it's Brandon Gustafson and welcome back to the channel excited to have you here today at today's topic we're going to be getting into the different type of staff that you're going to have at your assisted living
00:00:30
facility especially if you are kind of a smaller assisted living facility and kind of trying to figure things out and what it might look like to get your Staffing in place for your facility so one of the first things that you want to be aware of is an administrator so an administrator is key to operating your facility they are licensed to operate the facility they uh get certified with the state they're license there and uh they're the person that's going to operate everything for you at the facility so you want to make
00:00:59
sure that you have that person they are key you can be that person um if you qualify you just want to make sure that you are following the rules and regulations of the state go to your State's website or reach out to somebody um at the state to ask them what it takes to become an administrator if that's what you are interested in doing uh a link up above a video that I have that's kind of the day in the life of a facility administrator so you can kind of get a feel of what that person does
00:01:24
and the interactions that they have with your staff and the residents and the families of the residents and all of the other other things that they are doing at your facility the second person that you might want to be aware of as you're getting into this is like an assistant administrator or a house manager now this person is going to kind of be the right hand of your facility administrator things that that person can't do or doesn't have time to do your assistant administrator SL house manager
00:01:54
is going to be there and and help out a lot of what I like to try to do is have that person um take care of of uh some of the things that take a longer or a large amount of time from the administrator it could be um meal planning and and groceries it could be um activities it could be uh new hires it could be new admits um you could kind of look at a different a few different ways of going but this person is intended to be the right hand of your facility administrator and to take off some of that administrative burden now
00:02:25
that assistant administrator slous manager is not a requirement um it's just kind of nice to have you are probably going to pay that person a little bit more than a standard caregiver um or Medtech at your facility um but it's not necessary and you're not paying them quite as much as your facility administrator either but there is some extra benefits in having them um in addition to taking that administrative burden away from the administrator you're also able to train that person and help them get the hours
00:02:54
that are necessary in the event that you want to expand your portfolio um or your administrator leaves you have that person that's ready and willing to step into that role for you so there's a lot of perks to doing it it's going to cost you a little bit more um but it's it's a really good way to also promote people um from within next position number three is going to be your Medtech so these are the people that are certified to to pass medications it's not a license it's a certification each state
00:03:22
is going to have their own different rules um there's classes or courses that these people have to go through um but it basically says you know they have gone through the education of what it means to pass medication the sensitivities around that and why it's so important to maintain um that security and um that awareness of what's going on and and making sure that those things are documented correctly so it's all going to go through there go through that process these are typically
00:03:49
caregivers that have just gone through the certification process to be able to pass medications so uh you're likely going to be paying them a little bit more than a standard caregiver um because they have the responsibility of doing Med pass um but they are basically doing much of the same job in that process so you're not paying them a a whole lot more just a slightly different role and it also gives you a tier um to to get people up and work people through your organization the fourth person is a
00:04:20
caregiver so you want to be aware of your caregivers they are kind of that that Baseline these are the people that are providing care to your residents they can do anything except for past medication um is the difference between them and and a Medtech uh so that's the big difference there between those two uh but they can help out with activities of daily living such as bathing um toileting dressing um preparing meals all of those things this the caregiver can help out with those things you just
00:04:46
kind of want to those are really core people your med techs and your caregivers um with slight differences in the education that they have and the certifications that they have as you're kind of going through that process the fifth one that I'm going to talk to you about today is going to be be a housekeeper so a housekeeper is somebody that you just bring in and they're there to help out with laundry or keep the house clean this could be somebody that's in high school it could be
00:05:08
somebody that um doesn't know if they really want to be in the caregiving space yet um you know somebody that's new um that that is trying to kind of work their way up into the industry it's a good entrylevel position to bring people in and see how they work with staff and residents and then uh if you find good people that are housekeepers um and they want to stay there great but if they want to move on then you can kind of progress them up through the the ranks of caregiver to Medtech all the
00:05:37
way up our administrator in Colorado actually started at the facility that we own there as a housekeeper and has worked her way up progressively to the point that she's now the administrator so um which is awesome for her uh I think it's really rewarding something she's super proud of and I'm excited for her because uh it's something that you know shows how hard of a worker she is and how good she is at at her job that um people before her uh before us as as owners saw that in her and she's been
00:06:04
able to continue that um through different ownership um ownership of the facility which is great A few other uh possessions that you want to be aware of that you're probably going to need as you get into this um but they're not necessarily required and you can have other people do these things um with the exception of this first one is nursing so you're going to probably need a nurse um it could be a house nurse could be somebody that you go ahead and um find you can kind of mess around with this
00:06:32
how you want to be if you have the U nursing background you could be that nurse as well but that's going to be the person that is um working on getting prescriptions and things like that uh for your resident so that person is is going to be key that you want to have them um having an activities director um you can have one of your staff do this or you could hire somebody else to do it but that they are there to plan activities for your residents and make sure that they have all the things that
00:06:56
they need to kind of keep them engaged so each of these positions are going to be really important in operating your facility you want to make sure you have really good people as you are starting your facility and these are the types of staff that you want to do and the different levels that they are and how you can kind of tear that in a structure that's going to let people learn and grow and get to that point where they have a really good ladder of success within your organization you can retain
00:07:19
them and help them uh reach their career goals while also caring for a lot of residents so you want to be aware of those people and how you can help them out through that process and this is a great example of how you can do that does assisted living investing sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing we help you through the process from start to finish make sure you visit us at Assisted Living investing. net and sign up for our free underwriting calculator thanks for
00:07:44
watching and have a great day
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