CHICAGO — While interest rates have hogged the headlines of late, the seniors housing industry’s labor challenges have not disappeared.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many in the sector — particularly caregivers — left for other careers. To fill the gaps, many operators resorted to third-party agency labor, which is more expensive and means that employees may not be dedicated to the community at which they’re working.
Justin Hutchens believes in a few solutions to these challenges. Hutchens is an industry veteran currently serving as executive vice president of seniors housing and chief investment officer at Ventas, a Chicago-based REIT that is the second largest owner of seniors housing in the United States by unit count (67,679 units as of June 1, 2023, per the most recent data available from the American Seniors Housing Association).
Hutchens’ suggested solutions came during his keynote address at France Media’s InterFace Seniors Housing Midwest conference, which was held June 26 at the Swissotel Chicago. Laura Cambria, senior vice president of operations at KARE, a company that helps connect operators with workers, served as the interviewer for the keynote.
Hutchens has served in executive roles at several major owners, including National Health Investors, HCP (now Healthpeak) and U.K. operator HC-One. However, his career started as a seniors housing caregiver. He spent 18 years on the operations side of the business before spending the last 12 with REITs, describing himself as an “operator in REIT clothing.”
“There’s no confusion for me on what’s important — it’s our residents and taking care of our residents,” he said. “That’s always where I’ve been grounded.”
Hutchens joined Ventas just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020. He brought back quite a few lessons regarding labor from his time in the United Kingdom.
For example, Hutchens personally spoke at Parliament to plead for changes to immigration law as many caregivers from other countries left the U.K. in the wake of Brexit. Immigration reform to solve labor issues is a message frequently echoed by the American Seniors Housing Association (ASHA).
“Nurses had a lot of clout. The care staff did not. And we needed more,” said Hutchens. “We were losing one of our best sources of labor. We needed to professionalize that role so it would be a priority for immigration.”
Upon his hiring at Ventas, Hutchens helped implement a policy for new executive directors. Rather than immediately starting at their new community, directors must have a two-week orientation at a “best-practice” community.
“They’re not allowed to set foot at all in their new site. It created a lot of confidence in the person. It got them off to a good start. They learned how to do things right, how to interact with a big company and the resources we had to offer.”
Ventas also brought its recruiting and training functions up to the corporate level, rather than having each community handle it locally.
“To centralize on scale, you need technology, so we have an applicant tracking system we put in place.”
Hutchens also noted that in the U.K., retention is measured differently. Employees don’t count at all in the statistics if they leave before their probationary period, which is generally 90 to 180 days.
“For myself, being on the workforce solutions side of things, this is a trend that I hear consistently — moving to centralized staffing, centralized recruiting, and then the first 90 days,” noted Cambria. “That turnover rate in the first 90 days still was extremely high when I talk with operators across the country.”
“We need to put more energy on those that made it through [the probationary period], and how we train and retain that group,” said Hutchens.
He went on to note that by bringing recruiting up to the corporate level, the vacancy rate at executive director went from 14 percent to 2 percent, while caregiver turnover fell from over 40 percent to 20 percent.
— Jeff Shaw