Category: What the research tells us

On a weekly basis, I am delighted to receive emails from participants in the Village Management Professional Development program about the many wonderful initiatives that are being undertaken to support retirement living residents in their villages.

Tracey Palser, the Village Manager at Catalina Village on the NSW North Coast, shared with me a simple but yet very much appreciated strategy she has put in place for the dual benefit of residents and local food suppliers. 

On a Friday afternoon, the local seafood truck, a local Fruit & Veg truck and now a coffee van visit the village. This activity has created for the residents the opportunity to gather socially (social distanced of course), support local business and maintain their sense of community.

They have also run a Better Together campaign where residents are able to request or identify other residents in the community that may benefit from some help or just a kind thought.  

It really showcases the benefits of living in small communities where neighbours still help neighbours.

See the picture – a resident had been away nine weeks having medical treatment and upon return, one of their amazingly talented residents created the beautiful Welcome Home card, taking it around to be signed by sanitised hands across the village and delivered to her door along with these cheery balloons.  

This time in suburban Queensland, the team at Wesley Missions’ Wheller on the Park have been putting in place many activities to keep their community engaged.

Balcony exercises, pavement line dancing, a roaming poet, ladies’ choir sing-a-long, a musical duo – these all perform at various locations around the village. They also had a special appearance from Brisbane Jazz Club and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.  Watch the video here.

The effort and creativity that is being displayed around the country is absolutely heart-warming – there is certainly no shortage of ideas. 

Much time is spent during the annual budget review period on the physical assets of the village – quantity surveyor reports, valuations, building inspections – are all actioned diligently in accordance with legislation or company policy.

However so often the very important PERSON ASSETS of the village – the people who make up your team – get overlooked. 

This budget review phase is a great time to conduct Performance appraisals with Village team members.

You can be looking at any increase provisions, training or professional development actions, and that team entitlements are allocated effectively. 

A common mistake when conducting performance appraisals is to make the review one-way, top down, which sees the leader as the judge, jury and decision maker of the employee’s behaviours and achievements.

It is really important to ensure that the process is two-way, and if you really want to look at effective reviews then consider using the 360-degree system. It allows for a peer and stakeholder review as well as self-review.

There are many online solutions to conduct this review – SurveyMonkey even has a template you can use.

Another common mistake when conducting performance appraisals is that there is no investigation of what might be causing an employee not to reach their performance targets.

In my experience, people don’t under-perform for no reason.

Sometimes it can be a case of a simple misunderstanding, a lack of upfront or ongoing training, boredom, lack of support or regular two-way dialogue. Sound familiar?  

So often employees come away from performance appraisals going “so what?” “What a waste of time…” as there is no follow-up action put in place, no ‘What’s Next’! for the employee. 

It is vital if we want to keep people engaged in our sector and communities that we formalise the support we are prepared to provide and invest in their future careers.

For me keeping it simple is important – a simple action plan outlining 2-3 actions for the next quarter/half year, (a special project, a learning activity, increased responsibility) with a commitment of a regular follow up and support meetings is imperative to keep our team engaged and energised.

Recently I had the good fortune to catch up with my good comrade Michael Jones, Chair, Resident’s Finance Committee.

I was keen to talk to him, as an accountant, about what does good financial management look like for residents? And thankfully Michael was obliging to share with me his thoughts from a resident’s perspective….

There was no surprise that the top of his list was regular and transparent consultation with residents DURING the budgeting review process, including them as part of the journey in the development of the new budget.

Don’t just preach the outcome and expect it to be accepted.

He suggested that the Village Manager can play a vital role in supporting the Finance Committee to identify those people in the village with relevant experience or past financial acumen that could benefit the Committee. 

He also offered the following tips:

1. That operators and Village Managers, together, should undertake sound consideration for both the long and short term requirements of the village and share this review with the Finance Committee so as to provide long-term peace of mind about future financial provisions.
2. The operator should establish sound financial management systems – not just to meet compliance matters but to also work towards best practice finance processes and systems.
3. The operator as part of their financial management system should consider regular update meetings with their Finance Committee, this could be a short monthly meeting (catch up on recent changes, raise issues as they arise etc) and then a more comprehensive meeting quarterly to go through the financial statements together.
4. Providing transparent financial statements on a regular basis helps to build trust between residents and the operator and reduce the unproductive time that it can take to locate answers to questions the Village Manager is not aware of.  
5. Finally, the operator, particularly those where decisions are mostly made remotely, must include the Village Manager in all decisions that may impact a resident’s finances or the assets of the village. It is also a great idea that from time to time the remote accounting support team are invited to attend a meeting with the Finance Committee to ensure that an open dialogue and mutual understanding is maintained.

Whilst these may seem logical tips and actions, the resident association representatives and regulators continue to share with me that the majority of concerns raised with them relate directly to inadequate financial transparency or poor financial management systems. 

With time on your side, start the process early and consider reviewing your current process to include some of Michael’s suggestions. 

We are pleased to confirm the dates and locations of our Village Management PD days for 2020.

Check your city above.

Listening to the positive feedback across 2019, we have increased the number PD days from three a year to four a year (with no increase in membership fees)

The increasing number of DCMI members – now 320 village and HO management – has also led us to book bigger venues. For instance, in Sydney we are moving from the Novotel Darling Harbour to the Hilton Sydney.

Remember, if you are in NSW, membership of the DCM Institute professional development program substantially covers training requirements under the new State government rules of conduct that commenced 1 January.

For all states, membership delivers the training requirements for the retirement village Code of Conduct, which also commenced 1 January.

There has been so much discussion around the country about “leadership” through these disasters, from people calling out the Prime Minister, politicians being on holidays when their own portfolios are going up in smoke, and ‘too late’ questions on who is responsible for fires and when to call in the armed services.

The fact is that real people in each community are stepping forward in the vacuum and just ‘leading’ and leading well – because they hear and understand the local issues.

We are seeing hundreds – if not thousands – of ordinary Australians taking the needs of their communities into their own hands – making decisions, people providing meals, creating ‘GoFundMe’ pages, organising donations, volunteering to cook, mending fences, carting fodder, etc.

This level of community engagement is very thought-provoking!

Becky Hirst, The Community Engagement specialist, says: “the silent majority is now in action”.

Are our residents of our retirement villages members the ‘silent majority’? Can we draw a retirement village comparison?

Becky provides an alternative model of decision making “flipping from the government always being the decision maker, even deciding to what level the community will be “allowed” to influence decisions, to a time where the community may become “the decision makers”?

Perhaps an example from the bushfires would be: does the local community know better deciding when to reduce local forest fuel loads compared to committees and bureaucrats in Canberra who fix one rule for the whole state or country?

Can the same be said for retirement villages and decisions being made at head office?

Using Becky’s chart on community leadership, let’s look at the first three points and our role as Village Managers:

Empowered:

We will identify what is important for our community and take action to implement change where necessary.

Collaborate:

We will look to work together with Government as providers of advice, support and resources where necessary.

Involve:

We will work with Government to ensure that its concerns and issues are directly reflected in any alternative solutions developed.

Replacing ‘government’ with operators/head office.

Is this the future or is this today?

We, as strong, flexible, agile “leaders”, will be delivering a model like this to empower our communities to be more engaged with decisions that are likely to impact village communities and residents.

This is leadership from the centre. It is not always easy, and it requires skills. But it generates great results for your village ‘silent majority’, as we have seen with the fires, and great satisfaction for us as a leader.

Love to know your thoughts?

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the early adopters of the Village Management professional development program which launched in April 2019.  

The program has seen Village professionals of 25+ years, regional managers, executive directors and CEO’s  come together to learn, share experiences, advance their careers and importantly the forming of a community of village professionals striving for the industry and themselves to be the best it can be.  

To me seeing the multiple teams attend the workshop days with their leaders reinforces the many amazing organisations that are committed not only to the sector but the people at the heart of the sector.

A special thank you to our industry partners MinterEllison, Russell Kennedy, O’Loughlins Lawyers and Jackson McDonald, and Culturise for their support and unwavering commitment during 2019.

I would also like to make a particular thank you to Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) who have supported the program and worked side by side with us in 2019 to ensure that members of the program are able, if they choose to do so, to work towards a Diploma of Leadership and Management.  

Over the summer break, the DCM Institute team will be continuing to work to improve this program with a new learning portal due for release in April 2020.

The 2020 program will respond to the feedback of current participants and will focus on increasing the flexible learning options, adding further valuable industry partnerships and tailoring content to enhance participant learning requirements.   

It will also offer four professional development workshop days to allow participants to engage in more face-to-face learning opportunities.

Most digital marketing in retirement is like my first cellphone. It was great but it wasn’t smart.

Nowadays, we have the opportunity to make our phones dumb or run a company from them as the advances over the last decade are tremendous. But it comes down to the necessities of the user.

With your digital marketing, are you maximising the present-day opportunity for your future residents?

Their journey to retirement includes a multi-touch approach that desires a genuine, authentic display of your community.

From digital to open days, are you presenting an aligned approach to marketing?

Consider the three V’s of branding, visual, verbal and value.

When these are unaligned, our marketing efforts get lost in the noise of confusion creating longer customer journeys amongst shorter mandatory buyback timeframes.

Our brand values are unaligned when we advertise our communities like products.

Consider what your organisation represents, the words you use and your positioning amongst competitors the next time you draft a piece of content or advertisement, and please don’t advertise discounts.

When we differentiate ourselves on price, we position ourselves as a commodity rather than the unique communities we are. 

Perhaps the last significant purchase our residents will make in their lives, I believe they are looking for a place to belong to, invest in and travel from.

Think about this as you create your next campaign.

Joshua Hanchett
Director 
My Heart Studio | Your Digital Partner​