Month: March 2021

We don’t need to remind you about the diverse range of roles and responsibilities that are a part of every Village Professional’s role.

But something we always find interesting about Village Professionals is their background – the roles they had before entering the village setting.

Village Professionals can come from a variety of areas including property management, care services, hospitality, sales, community services and even the police force.

And often their induction, initial training and ongoing professional development is just as varied.

Getting it right isn’t always easy

We know from experience ongoing professional development is key.

In an industry where the legislative requirements and consumer expectations change so rapidly, professional development is the only way to keep your head above water and put a vast amount of difficult-to-interpret information into context.

Professional Development activities assist village professionals to update knowledge, access new resources and reinforce their current skill sets to ensure currency in capability.  

Resources at your disposal

In support of this idea, the Property Council Retirement Living Council released the Management Capability Framework for the retirement living sector, which you can find here.

This framework outlines seven domains that you want to be maintaining currency in during your roles as a village professional:

• Operations
• Governance and Compliance
• Self-Management
• Change and Innovation
• Community Engagement
• Population Wellness
• Sales Professionalism

Not only does professional development provide these currencies, new learnings and a peer network, it provides Village Professionals with confidence, tenacity and resilience to continue with their often isolating and challenging roles.

Better villages and helping your carer

Professional development isn’t just a way to increase productivity.

It’s a coupling of tools and technologies to meet the expectations of current and future consumers, and a must in all contemporary business in 2021 and beyond.

This is especially true in retirement living , where all village professionals must constantly balance business needs with resident expectations.

For information about how DCM Institute can help with your professional development, click here.

It’s that time of the year again when many village professionals will be commencing their planning for annual village budgets.  

You many be responsible for developing or providing input in budgets for:

• Village operations – funded mostly by resident contributions.
• Long term maintenance – funded via the operating budget, as a contribution upon exit or as a surplus of operation funds.
• Capital expenditure – the funding of this can vary from being funded as a contribution via contract terms typically upon exit, funded by the operator or a combination of both.

In my experience, much of the discontentment or complaints that come around budget time are down to a lack of communication, poor processes, or operators not fully understanding the legislative and contractual requirements of village financial management.

Therefore, it’s imperative that your budget process:

• Starts early ideally around February or March
• Takes into account whether multiple meetings are required
• Caters for time needed for stakeholder feedback, approvals and sign off
• Understands legislative and contractual requirements
• Has a sound communication strategy

I’ve always found the following points helpful in budget planning:

• Develop a budget worksheet (organisation is key, so make sure you keep tabs for line items and assumption details for full transparency)
• Be proactive in checking increases from utilities, service contracts
• Consider contract expiry plans/renewal costs
• Consult the continuous improvement program
• Consider cash flow management
• See if larger service contracts can be smoothed over a year
• Have a policy for recovering and/or apportioning deficits/surpluses
• Make sure you’re following legislative steps
• Understand contractual/policy obligations
• Make allowances for legislation changes (not just the RV Act)
• Keep up with market trends and consumer expectations
• Have a firm checking process in place

The key thing to remember as a village professional is most residents are on fixed incomes, regardless of whether they are pensioners or self-funded retirees.

This means their capacity to increase income or assets, match inflation or large village budget increase is diminished.

Planning and good processes are the best way to minimise nasty surprises.

DCMI Institute has developed a Budget Planning Guide to help village professionals manage their budgets.

You can download your guide here.

Three major peak bodies play an important role in our sector.

They are:

Leading Aged Services Australia (LASA)

A national association for aged services providers across residential care, home care and retirement living.

Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA)

A leading national peak body supporting Not For Profit church, charitable and for purpose providers of retirement living, community, home and residential care.

The Retirement Living Council (RLC)

A dedicated national division of the Property Council of Australia, focused on retirement villages and senior housing.

Through their collective membership, they represent more than 50 per cent of retirement communities across the private and Not For Profit sectors.

So what do they do?

While LASA, ACSA and the RLC represent different sector groups and operators, they each provide a valuable service to their members and the retirement living sector as a whole.

This includes:

Representation and advocacy to Government for their members and the sector, to influence policy and legislation.

Member services, which do differ for each body but include advice on specific elements of the sector, reports and briefings, events, and operational service support.

Industry promotion through media campaigns and public facing initiatives like the A Wise Move website currently hosted by the RLC.

Research and partnerships to support innovation, best practice and insight into all aspects of our sector, and the services we provide.

Collaboration, coalition and alliance to drive better outcomes. Collaboration between the bodies is strong, as evidenced by the Retirement Living Code of Conduct and more recently the Australian Aged Care Collaboration.

These organisations can add real value to our villages, teams and residents, so it’s worth checking each peak body out and seeing how they might be able to suit your needs.

For more information on these peaks, contact the DCM Institute here.