We saw this on a social media feed and couldn’t resist presenting it to you today.
Author: Antonia Norris
You can join our Village Management Professional Development program at any time.
Download a brochure HERE and check out the 12 month program, which includes three Professional Development Days in your state.
For operators – Code of Conduct and Accreditation
The VM PD program will equip your village management to be ready for the Code of Conduct by implementation date, 1 January 2020, plus build your preparedness for Accreditation.
For Village Managers – earn PD points and build your career
Every stage of the VM PD will earn you PD points as recognition of your investment in your village management skill set.
You can also gain prior learning recognition in the LASA leadership diploma, which is recognised across the sector and in other industries.
The investment is $1,850 for a 12 month single registration, with attractive discounts for group registrations.
Learn more HERE. Hope you enjoy us.
Our fourth Professional Development Day is happening today in Adelaide. We have already been to Brisbane, Sydney and Perth, with up to 30 village management people attending each day.
Plus we live streamed the days for regional managers that could not make it to the city locations.
Here is some of the feedback:
“Having had the opportunity to attend yesterdays session in Perth I wish to shout out to all RV operators that you need to support this long overdue but vital professional development opportunity that has been designed to empower, embrace and encourage all Village Managers of the industry to excel and feel supported in a practical sense in every aspect of their roles”.
“Thank you both so much for yesterday, it was fantastic. I am still processing a lot of the things I heard and it is was also intriguing to see hear how other Villages run their businesses. So looking forward to the next day”.
“It was great opportunity to network and look into the future in a positive light with all the changes in the industry. I also look forward in taking the journey with DCMI”.
“I thought the day was a huge success. The networking opportunities were fantastic, the speakers and content all very worthwhile. I have returned to work and started implementing a few things I have learnt already”!
“Personally I was really impressed with the content and the speakers. It was a bit scary committing so many staff to undergo the training but I know we made the right decision and the staff will get so much out of the next 12 months”.
This week Jodie Prosser and her team staged our first Village Manager PD days in Brisbane and Sydney.
Close to 100 village managers attended. Here are some of the comments and some pics.
(It is not too late for you to sign up for Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, which are coming up over the next few weeks. Check the dates and VM PD membership HERE).
“Just wanted to drop you a quick note to thank you for yesterday. The inaugural NSW State PD day was well facilitated, very informative with excellent speakers providing constructive and useful, practical information and it was also most enjoyable”.
“It was great to meet so many working in the sector, to hear of their passion, the substantial combined knowledge available within the Village Management & PD Network and to come away feeling encouraged about the support available via DCMI, The VM Peer Network and the positive steps toward ongoing development of village management personnel”.
“Feedback from our staff was that they really enjoyed the day and are looking forward to the next one. Personally, I was really impressed with the content and the speakers. It was a bit scary committing so many staff to undergo the training, but I know we made the right decision and the staff will get so much out of the next 12 months”.
Categories
Your team, your values
Last issue we talked about ‘customer experience’.
Being the leader of the village community, you cannot deliver or achieve consistent, quality customer experiences alone, without the commitment and engagement of your team.
This is often not a great challenge, as most people choose to work in communities because they like people and enjoy assisting residents.
However, are you getting the best out of your team in relation to harnessing customer experience opportunities?
Village ‘values’ and respect
When you induct a new team member (or permanent contractor that is taking the place of a team member) do you spend time with them going through the Village Values?
It is vitally important to have a short, printed document to give each new team member the values you have and expect.
Have your team sign off that they understand not only that you have values, but what they actually mean in terms of how you all deliver your roles in the village.
Respect is one of the most important values; the document explains exactly what RESPECT means to your residents. For example:
RESPECT means WE:
- treat one another with dignity and fairness
- show tolerance and have patience
- are polite
- show appreciation
- act with empathy
- treat others how we would like to be treated
- don’t talk down to people
- treat all people as individuals
- relate and interact positively with people
- acknowledge we each have a role to play
Team meetings
Having regular team meetings is very important. Use them to:
- share knowledge
- reinforce your values
- regularly share your knowledge
- celebrate achievements
- share likely upcoming changes or concerns
- provide opportunity for your team to share their own suggestions and challenges with you
Your team members will feel included and become ambassadors for you.
Imagine the difference in how a resident will feel if the handyman is asked about an increase the village budget, and he is able to show knowledge of the situation and provide the appropriate response.
It might be, “I am aware of the changes to the budget and I understand it is going to provide an improved service to the residents, however the detail is quite complex so I would recommend you make an appointment with Village Manager if it is of concern to you” versus “Oh, I have no idea but I hear “THEY” are always putting up the fees”.
This second response reinforces the resident’s concern when it could have been made a positive.
A strong team ethic is so very important to ensuring the culture of the village is maintained and that consistent Customer Experiences are achieved.
The hardest thing to achieve is getting ‘new money’ after budgets have been set, so now is the last chance to ‘ask’ for cash to support sales and marketing for the next 12 months.
Not the village budget, but the operator’s budget. Sales activity is the owner’s responsibility.
What should you be asking for? What is going to give you best bang for your buck, is easy to implement and cost efficient?
We all know that word-of-mouth referrals from residents to friends is the best sales tool, plus digital.
Here are three strong suggestions:
First up is the village newsletter. If you don’t have a budget, ask for $1,000. Then you have some cash to support a volunteer, resident or staff member to assemble it and cover any small costs that may come up – even postage of copies to recent sales enquiries.
Second is money for events. A sausage sizzle, wine and cheese night, donation to a local singing group to come in, a band for a Saturday night party. These help to build positive relations with residents, photos for newsletters, events to invite potential residents to, etc.
Check out this video discussion with Patrick Smith, owner of The Henley On Broadwater, a 145-unit retirement village on the Gold Coast. He says this is his best marketing investment – and he has no vacancies.
Ask for $5,000 (or more).
Third, we recommend our web site directory villages.com.au, the number one directory of retirement villages. Nearly 900,000 people a year search for every village in the country here.
This means close to 100% of all people who do a digital search do so on villages.com.au.
Every major village has a promotional listing – you may also. If not, the investment is $1,000 a year.
These three actions can add up to $7,000 for 12 months. If you need to ‘sell’, say, 10 homes a year at $300,000 each, that is $3,000,000 in sales. The $7,000 is equal to 0.2%!
Or you can add $600 to each property price.
The important thing in this difficult sales market is to keep doing things that keep the phone ringing and people ‘walking down the drive’.
Good luck.
Have you heard that compulsory ‘buybacks’ are coming your way and do you understand them?
In simple terms, regulators across the country are moving towards forcing operators to ‘buy back’ village units that haven’t sold after a reasonable time – irrespective of what is in the contract.
In QLD, VIC and SA, it is now regulated that units be paid out at 18 months if not sold.
The NSW Government is looking hard at introducing buybacks at six months for metro villages and 12 months for regional villages.
The buyback argument seems to pass the ‘pub test’ as being reasonable at first sight, but the impact is turning out very different.
Last week the first buybacks came into effect in QLD (meaning the regulation has been in place for 18 months and now operators are being forced to buy unsold village homes).
On the first day, over $30 million had to be raised by operators to pay out village homes and hundreds more are expected.
In SA, this will start next month.
These states are also taking up the ‘Aged Care Rule’, which you most probably know. It says when a resident moves to an aged care home, the operator will pay the Daily Accommodation payment (DAP) until the home is sold. As a benchmark, this is likely to be around about $50 a day.
There are three things to consider. Will your operator have to use cash they would have used to reinvest in your village to keep it fresh? Most likely ‘yes’.
If a resident lived outside the village, would someone come to their rescue if they had not sold their home after 18 months? ‘No’.
Discussion amongst operators is this will be a major issue soon and the only way out is to sell village homes faster, so they don’t reach 18 months. They will be talking to you to help this sales effort because at the end of the day, village managers create happy residents who generate word of mouth sales.
Last issue we talked about ‘Customer Experience’.
In that discussion is the concept of village managers being leaders. We cover this deeply in our Village Manager Professional Development program but in general terms what does ‘leadership’ mean to you as a village manager?
Leadership means leading. In layman’s language that means getting things done that need to be done to achieve an overall positive outcome.
Delivering services, like good gardening and responsible budgets is not leadership. These are expected services.
Identifying a garden initiative that delivers a better experience or a saving to the budget so that new gardens can be built is leadership.
Here are two real-life examples. A village manager, walking the garden regularly, notices that four or five residents meet for a chat at the post boxes every afternoon and decides to invest in some benches there so that they can sit while they chat.
Another village manager walking the village identifies that a lemon tree planted 25 years ago in a corner was old and not serving any function; they discussed with residents what could be done to bring that location alive.
Neither action was expected by residents, but they demonstrated the village manager was invested in the best interests of the residents.
It wasn’t the money spent on the benches or the new landscaping, it was the fact the village manager walked the village with a purpose, to inspect the village and how it could be improved.
The unengaged manager just walks around; the leader tours the village with purpose.
The dividend is trust. Confidence will build in the leader such that when more difficult discussions are required, the sincerity will be established.
A tip: seasoned managers will walk the village at least once a month with the purpose of meeting at least three residents that they know they have to ‘catch up to’. Maybe it’s to check their health position, maybe it’s because the resident has been expressing concerns to others or perhaps, they simply haven’t been seen for a month or two.
Over 12 months that is 36 residents that will experience an unexpected ‘reach out’ and genuine interest in the person. More ‘trust’ in the bank, and more knowledge in the vault.
This knowledge will also bolster your leadership position with staff. This is the respect that reaffirms you as a leader. You have invested in knowing what is going on.
And all these simple things build the ‘customer experience’.
“I didn’t expect it. My manager understands how we live and was genuinely interested in making where we live better…without being asked. I feel we are in good hands”.
This sounds like great leadership to me.
There is an increasing discussion by state regulators around mandated buybacks.
Started by QLD 18 months ago, the concept is that the operator of the village will be required to ‘buy back’ a home after a set period if it has not been sold.
The driver for governments has been the introduction of the accommodation fees in aged care, the RADs and DAP fees. A person moving from a village to a nursing home will be means-tested for income and assets – and may be required to pay either an upfront payment (RAD) or a daily accommodation fee (DAP).
The upfront payment (the RAD option) must be paid within six months of joining the aged care home. Up until when the RAD is paid, the resident will have to pay daily interest (the DAP amount) on a sliding scale dependent on their wealth.
The government sets the Maximum Permissible Interest Rate (currently 5.96%). If the RAD is $300,000, then until it is paid the DAP interest of $48.99 per day must be paid.
How does a village resident make these payments if they have not sold their village home?
The state governments are thinking of making this the operator’s problem by mandating the operator buys the home back.
This is a significant challenge. Operators explain that market demand, which depends on the price that the family wants for the home being rational and the home being reasonably refurbished, will dictate how quickly it sells, and the resident receives their money.
QLD has led governments and compromising, saying, ‘okay, but 18 months is the maximum time we will allow you to sell the home.’
VIC has added that they want the operator to pay the DAP from six months until the home sells, and then the operator can get this money back.
NSW is starting to talk about the operator having to buy the home back within six months in metropolitan areas and 12 months in regional areas.
For people who don’t understand the retirement village market, all of this sounds reasonable.
But is it? After all, the resident ‘owns’ the contract to the house, just like a normal home in the suburbs.
Often the family controls the sale price and the refurbishment investment, as well as when this work gets done. When does the 18 months start?
And the operator must accept non-binding deposits from elderly buyers who, understandably, are often slow in putting their homes on the market and achieving a sale. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.
The impact on village owners will be significant, especially in today’s housing market.
With slow sales, operators can quickly build up a vacant stock of, let’s say, five homes they must buy back which is (at $400,000 a home) $2 million. This will mean a visit to the bank for a loan for most operators.
If half the industry has slow sales – 1,000 villages – in 18 months’ time this will equate to ($2M x 1000 =) $2 billion. The banks are unlikely to lend this because, at the same time, this pressure will drive the value of the village down.
It also means that operators won’t have cash to reinvest in the village, which will make homes harder to sell – and all residents will see a drop in the quality of the village and their experience, and the value of their homes.
This will also impact your ability to do your job well as a Village Manager.
Mandated buybacks is a very important issue for us all to follow and understand.
In QLD, operators are about to buy back the first round of homes that have been on the market for 18 months. So, it is a very real problem.
Ask your operator for their thoughts.
Chris
Has your owner or others been talking about ‘customer experience’, how important it is and how you should be implementing it?
What is ‘customer experience’ and why are we talking about it now?
We are talking about it for four reasons.
First, 19,600 residents in the January 2018 villages.com.au National Resident Survey told us that just 35% of residents felt they were ‘valued as a customer’ by head office and operators.
Not a good result generally – and it certainly demonstrates a lack of respect.
Second, if residents don’t feel that you value them, they are not going to recommend you (the village) to their friends. This impacts sales, which you know.
Third, sales enquiry has never been so important given the downturn in the housing market. Every village needs far more enquiries to achieve sales as deposits fall over while people try to sell their home.
Fourth, ‘regulation creep’ is occurring across the country. State governments are developing new rules to protect the lowest customer experience. If they don’t hear positive resident advocates, they will think all villages are the same.
And more regulations restrict your freedom to try new things.
Isn’t this just ‘customer service’?
No. Customer service is reactive – you are asked to do something, and you respond.
Customer Experience, on the other hand, is proactive – you do things before you are asked and your customer (your resident) has an unplanned positive experience – and appreciates it.
So, if you like, customer service is expected, while customer experience is an unexpected delight.
Good hotels do this very well. You arrive after a long trip with planes and traffic, check into your room and find a chilled bottle of wine waiting for you. Unexpected and appreciated.
Cost to the hotel may be $10, but it sets you up to liking the experience – and telling your friends.
These are great concepts, but how do you as Village Manager even start creating ‘customer experience’?
This buzz concept starts with the ‘customer journey’.
What this means is to understand what the customer is going through when joining and living in a village – and getting ahead of their expectations.
This is a big subject, and we can’t cover everything here, but we’ll come back to it in our next newsletter (also check our Village Manager Professional Development program).
However, here are some quick tips.
Traditionally in our sector, we are conscious of the Customer Journey between ‘enquiry’ and ‘move in’. But what happens to our relationships with residents once they are settled in?
Take a step back and think – how do we consciously build relationships with residents (all residents)?
Do we interact more with those that seek us out, and the rest of our relationship is built on a monthly newsletter and a meeting here and there?
Do we have a planned strategy for keeping and developing strong long-term relationships with each resident?
It is important to ensure that there is a series of continuous different interactions with all residents so you can meet their long-term expectations, which may change over time.
Here are some simple ideas to get you thinking about proactive interactions with residents that can generate a very positive experience:
- Monthly VM morning tea
- Quarterly all resident update meetings
- Monthly birthday lunches
- closed Facebook groups
- Neighbourhood events
- attend or participate in local community activities together
- Work on a project together
- Operator funded village outings
- Donation drives
- annual clean out the cupboard garage sale
- Sub-committee volunteer groups
- Village consultation groups
- Annual individual check-ins
Over the next few issues we will put more structure to the concept of ‘customer experience’.
Until then.
Cheers,
Jodie