Making Quality Visible

This blog post is part of a weekly newsletter written by Elizabeth, founder and CEO of Welbi. Subscribe to get this newsletter every week.

Gamifying Resident Experience: Programming Standards and Transparent Reporting

Great Programming Deserves to Be Measured

We ask a lot of our life enrichment teams: creativity, compassion, energy, flexibility. But we rarely give them clear benchmarks for what “great” actually looks like.

It’s even harder when you’re managing multiple communities:

• How do you know which teams are excelling?
• Where do you offer support?
• What programs are moving the needle on resident outcomes?
• How are communities sharing best practices with each other?
• Where do you set the standards at HQ or let the community tailor to their residents?

To build a better experience – for residents, families, and staff – we need to make quality visible and measurable, not just assumed.

Standards Aren’t About Control, They’re About Elevation

Programming standards are often misunderstood. They’re not about limiting creativity or prescribing identical calendars regardless of resident needs. They’re about defining what good looks like at the resident level and giving life enrichment teams the tools to deliver on it.

At Welbi, we’ve seen communities set standards around:

• Weekly participation targets by care level
• Participation measured for program variety across their dimensions of wellness – like cognitive, physical, emotional, spiritual, and other domains
• Minimum number of signature programs per month
• Number of programs on evenings and weekends
• 1:1 engagements for residents at risk of isolation
• Specific program types for residents at risk of fall
• New resident onboarding programs with all touchpoints scheduled across their first 30 days
• And many more

With clear expectations, teams know what to aim for and how to make improvements.

Make It Fun. Make It Collaborative. Make It Count.

Some of the most successful communities we work with have taken programming standards and turned them into culture-builders, where their life enrichment teams can share best practices and experience the results themselves:

• Activity Olympics
  For one month, all communities in this organization compete to be the most engaged, with resident participation goals tracked and shared in friendly competition across the portfolio – with prizes and bragging rights.
  
  
• ‍Spy Briefs & Themed Missions
  One organization created monthly programming themes with “missions” for each community. Points were awarded for creativity, participation, and outcomes: sparking innovation while aligning with standards and goals.
  
  
• Monthly Showcases
  Teams submit standout programs or resident stories that exceeded expectations, creating cross-community learning and inspiration, along with connecting resident outcomes to company goals.

These strategies create moments worth sharing, whether it is highlighting your work to the executive team or sharing families and prospects, too.

Making It Work

Clarity and accountability to resident engagement comes down to operational strategy. What gets measured gets managed. You need:

• Flexible reporting based on your own programming standards
  
• Custom KPIs by community, region, or care level
  
• Insights dashboards for both leadership and rec teams
  
• Real-time visibility into participation and program mix so that rec teams can make adjustments on the fly
  
• Tagging that tracks how each program supports resident wellbeing across their needs, whether that’s their personal interests or your dimensions of wellness

You don’t have to chase down spreadsheets or wonder how a community is doing. When the data is logged, you can report on it.

Measurement Isn’t About Checking Boxes for Compliance, It’s About Showing You Care

Families don’t just want to hear that you “offer great programming.”

They want proof that residents are:

• Seen as individuals
• Offered opportunities to thrive
• Engaged in ways that matter
  
  

Your staff want that too. By tracking and reporting on your metrics, you’ll now have the data to back up your claims. Your community is an engaging place to live, and residents thrive.

When you give your team the structure to be excellent, and the freedom to make it their own, you’ll see just how far they can go.

Thanks for reading,
Elizabeth Audette-Bourdeau
CEO, Welbi