We are very proud and appreciative that 138 Village Managers nationally have signed up to our professional development program since April.

They are all now expanding their village management skills and earning points in their career development, plus equipping themselves for the requirements of the retirement village Code of Conduct that comes into effect 1 January.

With LASA now recognising the DCM Institute PD training program, each module completed can count towards a LASA’s Diploma of Leadership and Management.

The Retirement Living Council also backs the program.

The next round of professional development days commences in Brisbane next Monday 5th, Sydney Wednesday 7th and Melbourne Friday 9th.  Adelaide and Perth the following week.

You can join any time for this ongoing professional development program. The investment is $1850 for 12 months with attractive discounts for bulk registrations.

Check the website details HERE.

Chris

Evacuating residents, especially in events like fires, was a big subject at the Kathryn Greiner retirement village enquiry in New South Wales last year.

At the Wollongong session we attended, a resident in a wheelchair who lives in fifth floor village apartment stated he would be ‘toast’ in a fire because the lifts would not work, and nobody had responsibility to collect him.

Remember, 60% of villages are over 25 years of age and if we are honest with ourselves, highly combustible. Last week in a rural Fire service training session we were told it takes just 10 minutes for the average house to be fully ablaze.

We report in The SOURCE at least five fires in villages a year – especially in winter.

Regulators are onto this, and the operator’s obligation to ensure that the village has appropriate emergency evacuation procedures/plan, and that residents are aware of them.

‘Aware’ means really aware; they know what they have to do.

Emergency plans don’t have to be lengthy or complex. They should be easy to understand and tailored to your village.  

If you do not have an Emergency Plan, it is worthwhile working out a serious one. If you are a member of the DCM Institute we can assist you with the documentation and also engaging with the residents so it is a positive experience.

In the meantime here are some points to think about:

• emergency contact details for key wardens, for example fire wardens, and first aid officers
• note down and share specific roles and responsibilities with each of them
• list contact details for local emergency services (police, fire brigade, poison information centre etc) and have that prominently available at reception and office
• create a process for alerting people of an emergency or possible emergency, for example a siren or bell alarm or door knocking procedure
• create a process and arrangements for assisting any hearing, vision or mobility-impaired people
• create a map of the village illustrating the location of fire protection equipment, emergency exits and assembly points
• identify triggers and processes for advising neighbours, and the operator about emergencies
• create a post-incident follow-up process, for example notifying the regulator, organising trauma counselling or medical treatment.
• create a schedule for testing the emergency plan, say every four months

Having a plan is only one part. The staff and residents must be aware of the plan, remembering the staff and residents change over time.

Practising the emergency evacuation plan is also vital. Remember many fires, electricity failures, floods etc occur at the most inconvenient times – at night and on the weekend!

The regulator and insurers will also look for evidence of ‘practice’!

Reminder: as a member of the DCM Institute village manager professional development program, you will receive the tools to develop an emergency plan specifically for your State regulations. You can learn more about membership HERE.

Meet Vanessa Clarke, Chief Retirement Villages Officer, Dept of Health

Hear from our guest speaker Vanessa Clarke, SA’s Chief Retirement Villages Officer (Office of Ageing Well) who will talk about Code of Conduct & Terminations. 

This is an opportunity to network with other Village Managers in your area. 

Of course, there will be time to share an issue you may have in your village and hear if others with the same experience can help resolve it.

We are meeting at Brighton Dunes village at 8 AM next Thursday 25 July.

To attend simply register and the Regional Meeting hub section of the DCM Institute website HERE.

Travelling around the country delivering the Village Manager Professional Development Program, I was asked by a program participant an interesting question that I didn’t have the total answer for.

You see she was relatively new into her role (around 9 months) and she described to me that she had been employed as the Community Manager.

She shared what excited her most about the role was the chance to give back, to make a difference, to facilitate information or activities to provide choices to residents to live “their best life”.

And her job description also had resident welfare and the building of community, but also the typical variety of responsibilities – from managing budgets to maintaining assets. 

Where is the time for ‘community’?

Yet now she has been in the role some months she is finding that she rarely has time to focus on these very aspects of community building that excited her so much. 

She feels she has become a Facility Manager. She asked me: how do I find time for the residents?

I guess there are two aspects to this in my experience.

The first is that even by coordinating the maintenance, garden, budgeting and cleaning etc, she is still actively contributing to the service provision for residents that was promised to them.

However, secondly, it is up to her to prioritise these functions to create time for community building.

Start small

My advice is to start small. Remember, an ‘event’ only requires two people – that is two people achieving enjoyment out of interacting with each other (including you – who is equally important).

I recommended:

• Make a list of the easy things that you can do that are ‘building blocks’ to creating and maintaining community
• Place the easier ones that take the least time at the top
• Check the activities calendar for holes or things that are already being addressed
• Check if there are any obvious volunteers in the village that you can rely on

Now allocate even just one hour a week to your list – and I have found it is good to alternate the activities. Here are some suggestions:

• Conduct two resident check-in discussions
• Visiting a resident that may have experienced a life changing incident recently
• Attend a resident function
• Research and communicate activities occurring in the local community
• Plan a social event or activity
• Organise a guest speaker of interest

I guess the message is that, just like allocating time to the compliance and service provision role of being a Village Manager, we need to make a conscious effort to allocate specific time to the building of ‘community’.

This is time allocated for us – making sure we get fulfilment out of our role; because it is a 100% certainty that the village residents will greatly benefit from our positive enthusiasm to contribute to their ‘community’.

After all, we are not facility managers – we are community builders.

Jodie

Everyone likes to feel ‘connected’.

In fact the World Health Organisation and Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs both identify that one of the key attributes for wellness is human connection.

But is connecting residents in your village and their wellness in your job description?

It is common knowledge that residents join villages often for the sense of community.

Multiple surveys and research outcomes over the last decade find that in fact one of the most satisfying aspects of village life for residents is the sense of community, interaction with neighbours and the human connection experienced.

We all get that. But….

The resident journey

As operators we promise a lifestyle… which for most residents is enjoyed in its fullest in their early years in a village; but what happens when residents start to age? They experience an increase in frailty, poorer health, and ultimately their ability to access social activities in the wider community or within the village decline.

For instance Bob moved into the village 15 years ago with his wife who has recently passed.  Bob has been always played bowls twice a week and he continues to see many of his friends. 

However a month after his wife passed Bob had a stroke which has resulted in his loss of his drivers license. Without his license and his wife he now finds getting out to social activities difficult, so he starts to spend more time just at home, rarely attending Happy Hour or other village functions as it is not the same on his own.

What is our duty of care or what role should we play in assisting Bob remain connected?  Part of the appeal in moving into a community is the promise of connection, neighbourhoods, lifestyle, social activity etc…. 

A Village Manager can play a pivotal role in helping Bob remain connected, social and active.

Perhaps you can put a system in place to check in on Bob over the first 6 months? Talk with Bob about what are the options he might like to access to remain socially connected.

Can you assist Bob by linking him up with someone at the Bowls Club that may drive past, or is going from the village?

Can you link Bob with a buddy from the village to attend some of the social functions?

Do you have a village Friends and Neighbours Support group of volunteers that may be able to help from time to time?

Can you show Bob how easy it is to access Uber? 

Would Bob perhaps qualify for some social transport under a home care package – can you point him in the right direction?

Wellbeing and reward

The wellbeing of residents as they age will rely on the skill of the Village Manager to be proactive and identify the steps in each resident’s journey, and the resources and knowledge to be able to support them to access opportunities for social and human connection.

In our experience the positive impact is fast and incredibly rewarding – for residents and your own job satisfaction.

To give you some ideas you can also check this terrific video by Southern Cross Care NSW & ACT, on their 10K Project. (Click HERE). 

We saw this on a social media feed and couldn’t resist presenting it to you today.

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.

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