Nine months into my time as Director of Workforce Strategy and Development at LeadingAge and the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston, I’ve learned a lot about the issues and challenges that members across the country encounter in their daily efforts to maintain staff stability. That stability is crucial to ensuring quality care and services.

This Workforce Development Month provides a great opportunity to reflect on and assess these learnings to determine the strategies that will best help us foster the diverse, qualified team of caregivers needed to meet the needs of our country’s rapidly growing older population.

Fortunately, I’m not doing this work alone. I’m surrounded by smart, knowledgeable, and thoughtful professionals willing to share insights. One of my most prized resources is a group of experts known as the Workforce Hive. Each Hive member is responsible for developing workforce strategy and development programs within their state partner organization.

Members of the Workforce Hive meet monthly to learn, support, and work together on a meaningful project that will enrich state efforts and meet members’ needs. Finding our focus didn’t take long. Retention is one of the most complex hurdles that all leaders and their employees must address as they work to tackle workforce stability.

Understanding the factors that contribute to high staff tenure raises many questions. What makes people stay in a job?  Is it fun? Do they like going there each day? Do they enjoy spending time with their co-workers? Is the environment ‘good’?

Retention, it seems, is tightly connected to workplace culture. The validity of that conclusion was reinforced by a recent survey fielded by investment bank Ziegler. The survey asked chief financial officers in senior living and care about workforce stability and how their organizations address staffing shortages. Positive workplace culture (78%) led all responses, followed closely by increased wages/bonuses (77%).

But what is culture? As an LTSS Center team member, I turned to research and found this definition:

Workplace culture is the character and personality of an organization; the sum of attitudes, norms, values, beliefs, and traditions in the workplace (Keefe, 2024).

One of my favorite definitions of culture comes from Southwest Airlines:

Culture is the development, improvement, and refinement of the originality, individuality, identity, and personality of a given people.

My LTSS Center colleague Natasha Bryant shared insights from current research of home care aides that “underscores the need not only for fair compensation but also ensuring a workplace culture that addresses their on-the-job experiences. It starts with good onboarding and continues throughout their employment. Solid communication, both about the client and also from managers providing feedback on patient-caregiver interaction, is one example of the type of managerial oversight needed to keep aides engaged, thriving and—retained.”

And here is the beautiful thing about culture: you already have one. Is it a good one? A bad one? A litmus test: what is your retention rate?

Interested in hearing a member’s perspective, we reached out to  DuPage Care Center in Illinois, a nursing home whose numbers impress: average staff tenure (328 employees), across all positions, is nine years; average management tenure is 18.5 years. When asked about the secret of this success, Executive Director Janelle Chadwick summed it up in a few words: “Compensation, benefits, autonomy in their role to build ownership and strengthen leader retention.”

Whew! But how does that happen? Chadwick credits her “star squad,” a team responsible for developing and implementing strategies to improve employee satisfaction and retention. The squad creates recognition programs and wellness initiatives. It gathers feedback on engagement through focus groups and one-on-one interviews. It also collaborates with department leaders to tailor engagement plans that address specific challenges and leverage opportunities.

Other strategies include:

• Training programs focus on creating a positive environment in which an individual’s potential is recognized and developed.
• New employees are trained with the same coworker, when possible, to develop a mentoring relationship.
• If personal issues arise, empathy is a priority, “to show we care about them as a person, not only as an employee.”
• Managers are given space and autonomy to lead their teams. “Maybe they will falter or fail,” says Chadwick, “but that’s an additional opportunity to learn and build strength and confidence as a leader.”

In short, be intentional. At DuPage Care Center, positivity is the priority. They believe it and live it. As a result, the care center is a desired place to work.

Still curious, I also tapped the wisdom of some Hive members. The top three characteristics of a positive culture, says Ellen Quinn, vice president of human resources at LeadingAge New York, are “strong leadership, trust and collaboration, and growth opportunities.” For Robin Wolzenburg, senior vice president of clinical and regulatory services at LeadingAge Wisconsin, it is “trust and respect, collaboration and support, growth and recognition.”

Clearly, there’s a lot to mine here. So, our next step in the Workforce Hive’s exploration of culture is to conduct an inventory across all LeadingAge state partners of educational offerings for members. Our focus for 2025/2026 is to determine whether culture and leadership training currently exists and if it has helped members implement a positive culture.

We’re excited to get going! Look for more details in the future and be sure to reach out to me if you have any interest in the Workforce Hive.