Same Jobs, Different Attractions

By Dwayne J. Clark, Aegis Assisted Living

The following is part one in a three-part series about identifying job benefits that are significant to different groups within your front-line workforce.

We all would like to have 40-year-old part-time moms who have a bachelor's degree in social services work in our homes in line-staff positions for $8 an hour. That would be ideal. The problem is these people don't exist in great supply. As much as we would like to deny it, our homes have become greatly dependent on the young-worker pool. With unemployment rates the lowest they have been in decades, all of us face the on-going battle of how to compete for these relatively unskilled workers. Since they do not view these jobs as careers, it is not uncommon to have turnover of our line staff sometimes exceed 150 percent. This is very painful and costly.

In looking closer at this problem, I have determined that there are three very different and distinct line-type of workers in our homes. The first will be what I define as young and rather transient workers. I call this group "young workers" and they are 16 to 23 years of age. They are enrolled in either high school or college, are heavily into their activities and personal lives, and view this job as a means of earning discretionary income.

The second group is what I term "career caregivers." These people have worked in nursing care, retirement homes, home health and a variety of other healthcare or service-industry settings. The average age of this group is 22 to 45. They have little formal education and frequently have very difficult issues going on in their personal lives. They are often the primary wage earner in their family, live paycheck to paycheck, and benefits are very important to them.

The third group is what I would call the "volunteer worker," albeit an oxymoron in terms. Nevertheless, a volunteer worker is using the job to fulfill some type of social/conscious void in his heart and mind. People in this group tend to be older, driven by the good work they do with the elderly, more educated, and feel more responsible toward their position.

We usually lump these three groups together, calling them our line staff. We treat them as if they were all the same. We have never taken the time to look at the differences in these three groups and identify the fact they have very different needs. Has it ever occurred to us to do this? For example, how many companies out there have different benefit plans designed to attract or to retain the group they prefer? I thought it would be an interesting exercise to spend some time with these three basic segments of the frontline workforce and really find out what each of them wants and needs in their work environment.

My experience tells me that our industry workforce is comprised of 25 percent young workers, 65 percent career caregivers and 10 percent volunteer workers. Depending on the acuity level of the residents, service level of your community and licensing requirements, this breakdown may or may not be true for you.

Doing an exercise centered on these groups could be very beneficial to your company. You may never have given any thought to the fact that they are not all driven by the same things. All of us have spent many hours brain-crunching ideas for how to define and retain the best line staff, but perhaps we have never looked at their different needs. We typically feel we need to try to come up with an extra 25 cents an hour or a better benefit package in order to keep them, that it is all about money. Hopefully, this three-part series will allow you to go beyond this thinking and determine what type of programs you need for your company.

In this first part of this series, I have focused on what I call the young workers. Most people in this group are in high school or college, and have a variety of other activities going on in their lives. When I tour communities, I am struck by the amount of responsibility we place in these people. We expect them to do everything from resident care to answering the telephone--both responsible jobs. Although you may not feel the phone is that significant, think about someone controlling the incoming leads we have spent thousands of dollars obtaining. Although the phones may not be their primary responsibility, they often get thrown into this and other positions when staff runs low and they become a warm body to take up the slack.

The training of these important young people is a whole other picture. Since this is a prominent and important part of our workforce, my focus here is on how to attract the best and brightest young people from this group of candidates for our companies. We do this by looking at the needs that they may have. In my research, I went to the obvious place: my children. My son, Adam, 20, is a sophomore at the University of Washington, and is majoring in business. My daughter, Ashley, 18, is a senior in high school. I asked both of them what they and their friends look for in a job. I extended the survey to Adam's fraternity, Alpha Sigma Phi, and my daughter's 10 closest friends.

Twenty typical young workers were in my group. Their best choice of employers included a bakery, health club, daycare center, retail shops and a variety of computer jobs. Four of the 20 had worked at a senior-housing complex before. All of these industries compete with each other to hire these entry-level employees. The young workers were either in college or had applied to college for next fall. All students held a GPA of 2.8 or higher, and all came from middle-class families. Ten of the respondents were male and 10 were female. Three of the 20 were ethnically diverse. We would be happy to have all 20 working in our communities.

I started by asking a basic question, the answer to which really puzzles me: Why did these kids choose the job they chose? Is it career planning, the wages, benefits, the location? What exactly is it? The jobs they currently hold don't pay more than what a standard assisted-living job would pay, so wages would probably not be the issue.

The answer, as it turns out, was overwhelmingly the same: The number-one reason why these people chose their job was because it was in a fun and friendly environment. Sixteen out of the 20 commented in a variety of ways on this issue. One respondent said he liked his job because it was in the mall and he saw a lot of people, including his friends, when they passed by. It was almost a social event for this person rather than work. Ten of the respondents said that the work duties they had were actually fun--and this was important to them. Three of the respondents said their bosses were understanding and comforting when it came to their personal issues. This made the employee have a special feeling of loyalty toward that employer. Two of the respondents said they had even had their boss or co-worker help them solve a major personal problem within the last year.

The second hottest topic was convenience and flexibility. There are a variety of ways this came out in the answers. The first was that the job was easy to land. That meant that the application process was easy, when they applied they had a positive experience with the person giving them the interview, and they got the job fairly quickly. They seemed to be driven by how easy and fast they could get the position. Ten of the 20 said they had had jobs where they were employed within three days of the first interview. This may be right in step with our oncoming culture as generations become accustomed to instant information and rapid responses.

Sixteen out of the 20 said they heard about their current job from a friend or a person who was already working for their present employer. It seems this segment of employees relies heavily on word-of-mouth for its jobs. All 20 of those surveyed viewed flexibility in working hours and days off as a critical element of job selection, since they had activities or classes that needed to be worked around when committing to work hours. The convenience of location was a big driver, too. Eighteen of the 20 said they wouldn't drive more then 15 minutes for an $8 an hour job.

The third deciding factor for this group is what I call creative benefits. This does not fall into the category of health benefits, since most were covered by their parents' or schools' plan. For the most part, creative benefits seemed to be a great motivator for very little cost. Some of the examples included free tanning appointments, health-club memberships, discount on retail goods where they were employed, movie passes and free food.

No one in the focus group viewed compensation as a primary driver for accepting or rejecting a job. They seemed resigned to the fact that they were going to make between $6 and $8 an hour. Taking a job revolved around deciding which position would offer the greatest combination of the above elements.

When all 20 were asked if they would work in an assisted-living community, 18 said they would not. When asked why, nine said they were afraid, offended or nervous about the behavior of the elderly. Four felt as though they wouldn't know what to do if there was an emergency. Three felt as though it wouldn't be any fun, and two felt it was a dead-end job. Obviously, the things they identified as important benefits to them were missing in our industry, at least in their perception.

Young workers are very different from the other two groups. Of the 20 who were surveyed, only one of them said he worked to pay his actual living expenses. The others used the money for activities, car payments and shopping for non-essential items.

Attracting this targeted group of employees has become very sophisticated. There are some wonderful young people who bring a great deal of positive energy to their jobs. Companies such as Abercrombie have launched major campaigns to attract the best, brightest and most popular of young people (see the February 8 issue of Fortune Magazine, "The Alpha Teenager" by Lauren Goldstein). As labor markets become even tighter and we struggle not only to attract good staff, but also to retain them, we need to do a better job of understanding the different needs of employees. We need to be more creative and strategic in our recruitment and retention efforts if we are to provide quality care.

This survey was far from scientific, and I will be the first to shoot holes in it. It does, however, raise some interesting questions about what our staffs may truly want. How will we know if we never ask? And, it may have to do, not with things, but with cultures. Within the melting pot of our country, we have a diversity that is reason for celebration, but it is also an opportunity to ask questions about needs, opportunities and comfort levels, and then see what we can do.

Next month's column will deal with the career caregivers and their needs.

Dwayne J. Clark is president and chief executive officer of Aegis Assisted Living, a start-up assisted-living company based in Redmond, Wash. With more than 13 years of assisted-living experience, Mr. Clark is a former executive vice president of Sunrise Assisted Living, a founding member of the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) and past president of NorALFA, the regional affiliate of ALFA. Within the next five years, Aegis Assisted Living plans to build 35 to 40 communities throughout the Western United States, emphasizing optimal living for its residents and creative care for Alzheimer's disease. Mr. Clark may be contacted via e-mail at dwayne.clark@aegisal.com

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