For your Residential Care Facility for the Elderly (RCFE) to function its best, your team needs to work well together. That makes it important to understand and put work into managing multi-generational staff dynamics.
The expectations of your Boomer staffers are probably fairly different from your Gen Zers, for example. Fortunately, when you foster a spirit of collaboration, the strengths of each generation blend together to provide the best experience for your residents.
Here are a few suggestions your RCFE can use to reap benefits and minimize challenges with a multi-generational workforce.
Create Open Lines of Communication
You don’t want any intergenerational problems to fester. To make it easier to spot problems early so you can address them before they grow, encourage your team members to share their work experience with their supervisors.
Regularly scheduled one-on-ones create a dedicated time in which employees can voice any concerns they have or obstacles they face. But don’t stop there. Some workers struggle to share negative experiences. To eliminate the fear of judgement or retribution, consider opening up an anonymous submittal portal. Creating a secure, regularly monitored box where folks can slip notes is a simple but effective way to ensure your team has a way to share their feedback.
Consider a Mentorship Model
It’s not uncommon for new hires — especially young ones — to rankle staffers who have been with the company for a long time. Your Boomer and Gen X team members probably feel like they’ve put in the time and paid their dues. Since Gen Z generally enters the workforce immediately expecting flexibility and work-life balance, they can ruffle some feathers.
Those differences present an opportunity. If your individual team members seem open to it, look for ways to partner established staffers with new hires. A day of shadowing can go a long way toward helping them understand one another. It gives older team members the opportunity to share their tips and tricks around managing the demands of the job. And it can give new hires the opportunity to ask for advice in a forum where that’s encouraged.
Cultivate a Safe Workplace
Consider the needs of each generation to create a safe, productive workplace. Older employees might need more ergonomic support. Younger workers may more readily receive information about safety protocols in digital formats. Don’t assume that what works for one generation will work for another.
In fact, you might want to assemble a facility safety task force with representatives from each generation on your team. Working together, they can recommend safety protocols and ways to communicate them most effectively with each demographic. This should help you create a safe workplace for each of your staffers and, in turn, a better living environment for your residents.
As an added bonus, because implementing safety protocols helps to lower your facility’s risk of an incident, they can lower your liability insurance premiums, too. If you establish new processes or guidelines to keep your multi-generational staff and your residents safe, tell your RCFE insurance agent about them.
For help getting the right level of RCFE liability coverage at the right price based on your unique risk level, contact us at (805) 413-5668 today.
