Trina Cousar’s best day at work was about creating a better day for a resident at Brightview East Norriton, a senior living community outside of Philadelphia.
It was a few years ago, and Cousar, a Senior Resident Assistant at Brightview, noticed that a new resident in her organization’s dementia-care area was struggling.
The woman, Fran, wouldn’t leave her apartment.
She didn’t want to socialize or participate in any of Brightview’s activities. Cousar tried a variety of strategies over the course of two weeks, including offering Fran her favorite vegetables as snacks and asking her to join in the day’s activities. None of it worked.
But Cousar didn’t give up. Far from the stereotype of the disengaged employee, Cousar says Brightview’s collaborative, caring culture encourages her to go the extra mile for residents. In Fran’s case, Trina did her homework.
She asked Fran’s family what made her happy, discovering that she loved tidying up and gardening. Cousar then thought of an idea to try—folding clothes—and brought some clothes from Brightview East Norriton’s central laundry room. She invited Fran to help her fold the clothes outside, near Brightview’s sunny garden filled with cucumbers and tomatoes.
“Fran looked at me, and she said, ‘Ok kid, come on—let’s go out,’” Cousar recalls. “You know what? She was out there in the garden all day. I couldn’t even get her back in. Afterwards, she would always come out of her apartment.”
Cousar’s tale of proactively, creatively helping Fran thrive encapsulates the philosophy at Brightview Senior Living, which operates 45 residential communities for older adults across the U.S. As a core principle, Brightview puts its 4,500 associates first, and trusts those employees to provide a great experience for residents. Indeed, Brightview’s employees feel a striking level of dignity and purpose at work. In Great Place to Work®’s Trust Index™ survey, 85% of employees say they experience respect on the job, and 92% say they are proud to tell others they work at the company. The company ranks No. 1 on this year’s 25 Best Large Workplaces in Aging Services: Senior Housing and Care list, which Fortune publishes in partnership with people analytics firm Great Place to Work.
“We’ve always said our number-one priority is to be a great place to work,” says Brightview CEO Marilynn Duker. “If that’s the basis of the company, if associates are happy and engaged, it will be a great place to live.”
Culture is key in senior living
A positive workplace culture is vital to the aging services field. The pandemic has worsened workforce shortages and employee turnover in the sector, as employees have worried about their health and the well-being of their families. In addition, our research shows that better cultures translate into lower employee turnover, and studies in health care have shown that a more stable workforce leads to better care outcomes.
Senior living companies today are working hard to woo new residents as well as attract staff. Earlier this year, the number of applicants to job openings fell nearly 50%.
Brightview, though, has been a beacon of relative stability. Turnover of full-time staff at the Baltimore-based company is 25% annually—much lower than attrition elsewhere in the industry, which can reach 80%.
Low turnover at Brightview has something to do with how the company has protected its people during the pandemic. Cousar, for example, says she and her co-workers at the East Norriton site have had all the personal protective equipment (PPE) that they needed, including N95 masks, safety goggles and foot coverings. By providing comprehensive PPE, Brightview stood in contrast to other institutions—including some hospitals—where desperate care-providers turned to social media over the lack of such resources over the past 18 months.
But Brightview’s appeal to Cousar goes well beyond how it cared for employees amid COVID. For one thing, she has come to cherish working with people living with memory loss.
“This could happen to me. It could happen to anybody. You treat people how you want to be treated,” Cousar says. “Talk to them, try to understand what they’re trying to say, what they see.”
Brightview’s hiring is a bright spot for staff
Then there’s Brightview’s focus on promoting from within. While the industry overall fills 17% of its roles by promoting existing staff, 41% of Brightview’s director-level hires are filled by internal promotions.
Internal promotions among frontline associates also are common. Cousar, for example, has moved up from resident assistant to senior resident assistant, where she helps lead the dementia care area.
Cousar also loves how leaders at Brightview act more as colleagues than “bosses.” Her supervisor, for example, “doesn’t just sit in her office and do paperwork. She comes on the floor. If a resident needs to go to the bathroom, she takes them. If someone needs a shower, she does it.”
Overall, Cousar gushes about the level of teamwork at Brightview. She notes how it far surpasses what she has experienced working at other aging services organizations.
The camaraderie isn’t just about employees enjoying each other’s company. It’s about bonds of trust that enable Cousar and her colleagues to solve problems and enhance residents’ experience. This begins as soon as people are hired at Brightview. In the Trust Index survey, 94% of Brightview employees say that new staffers are made to feel welcome. And about eight out of 10 employees report that you can count on people to cooperate. Roughly the same share of employees say that people avoid politicking and backstabbing as ways to get things done.
Humble leadership at Brightview
Stories about Brightview staff making a difference in residents’ lives aren’t surprising to Duker. One of her favorite tales involves a man who entered a Brightview community slumped in a wheelchair, hunched over in grief at the death of his wife. A programming assistant at the community encouraged the man to exercise in the community’s swimming pool, offering to swim with him.
“We talk a lot at Brightview about function versus purpose,” Duker says. “Her job function was to lead programs for groups of residents—she viewed her purpose as helping this resident find joy again in his life.”
“She was so committed to this man,” Duker adds. “Over the next weeks, she got him stronger and stronger in the pool. After several months, he was walking again with a walker. And when he walked, he walked upright, not hunched over, and he began engaging with other residents, making new friends and participating in group activities.”
Duker has been a leader at Brightview or its predecessor company for nearly 40 years. But she demonstrates humility as CEO. She says the best ideas come from Brightview’s different senior living communities, and regularly gathers the executive directors of these sites together to share innovations.
One tradition that keeps company execs grounded in the reality of providing a positive living experience for seniors is an immersion program. All top leaders at the home office spend four months working in various resident communities, doing jobs including cleaning rooms and serving meals.
A few years ago, Brightview hired a new president, Doug Dollenberg, Jr. He told Duker he thought four months wasn’t necessary and that just a couple months would be sufficient.
No, Duker responded: Take the full four months. He did, and then he wanted more time learning on the front lines and building relationships with the community teams.
“Doug actually called me and said, ‘Can I have another month?’”
Next up for the industry—better end-of-life conversations?
As much as Brightview is a leader in the industry, Duker isn’t resting on her laurels. She believes the senior living field has an opportunity to have more honest conversations about end-of-life matters.
“I’d love to see industry talk more about having a ‘good, less medicalized death’ with family and residents,” she says. This means offering education and tools to enable residents to “die in the way they want, with dignity and at home.”
With visionary leadership and a supportive culture, Brightview often finds that people return to work at the company even if they leave for a spell. Sometimes, employees gain new degrees or credentials and instead of leaving, want to grow with Brightview.
Cousar plans to be in that category. She’s been earning a Licensed Practical Nurse degree. Once she gets the credential, she hopes to stay at the company, where she’s already spent 14 years.
In other words, Cousar hopes to have more great days, creating positive experiences for residents like Fran.
“I love my job. I love my coworkers,” she says. “Brightview is a great place to work.”
For more examples of how companies are successfully retaining staff and keeping employees happy, get the company culture newsletter from Great Place to Work.
See the 2021 Best Workplaces in Aging Services lists:
- 15 Best Workplaces in Aging Services: At-Home Care
- 25 Best Large Workplaces in Aging Services: Senior Housing and Care
- 25 Best Small and Medium Workplaces in Aging Services: Senior Housing and Care.
Jacqueline Kung is chief executive of Activated Insights, the senior care affiliate of Great Place to Work. Ed Frauenheim is co-author of several books on organizational culture, including A Great Place to Work For All.
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