Staff Stories - December 20, 2024

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was published on LoveAndCompany.com here. As co-authors of the article, Goodwin Living is publishing the article on our blog and website.

An Investment in Workforce and the Future: The Longevity + Inclusion Alliance Fellows Program

By Rob Liebreich, President & CEO of Goodwin Living, and Rob Love, President & CEO of Love & Company

What if you could make one relatively small investment that would make a significant impact not only on your workforce today, but also in your ability to serve the senior living field effectively over the coming decade and beyond?

We believe there is just such an investment: The Longevity + Inclusion Alliance Fellows Program, run by Marvell Adams, Jr. and Sarah Moore.

Senior Living Is Evolving in Ways You May Not Know

Here are some interesting insights on the senior living field you may not realize:

• Nationally, about 25% of the senior living workforce comes from other countries. At Goodwin Living, 40% of the organization’s 1,300+ team members represent 65 countries besides the United States.
• Between 2022 and 2040, the number of Americans aged 65 and older will increase from just under 58 million to nearly 81 million, an increase of about 40%, or about 23 million people. Of those 23 million additional people, did you know that more than half of them will be black, indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC)?

The realities of senior living today are that we already serve one highly diverse constituency—our employees—and we need to be prepared to serve another—the more diverse seniors that will be looking for residential and care services in the years ahead.

This is where the Longevity + Inclusion Alliance Fellows Program comes in. It is designed to “ensure leaders, organizations, and business partners within the field of aging services are culturally competent, courageous, and intentional in their journeys of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, accessibility, and justice.”

Stated in other terms, it helps senior living leaders understand and adapt to our rapidly changing field.

Why We Joined the Fellows Program

Rob Liebreich was in the Alpha cohort of the Fellows Program, and Rob Love was in the Beta cohort.

Rob Liebreich: I joined for multiple reasons. Going back to our origins, Goodwin Living was founded on the idea that everyone is sacred and that everyone has importance. It’s always been an important part of our culture. To really meet that objective, though, you must have authenticity. You have to live it. I felt Goodwin Living was already doing well with our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives, but I also knew we could do more. So, this was an opportunity to learn more, get new ideas and begin building alliances with other people doing similar work in the field.

From a more personal perspective, I wanted to learn more myself. I’ve studied a good bit about US history over the years, and honestly, I’ve been shocked at some of the things I’ve learned that are not what they teach in school. I wanted to learn even more so that I could have a better understanding of people that come from different backgrounds than I do. I looked into some executive programs that were offered at universities, and I could have done one of those. The Fellows Program, though, was being run by and for people in senior living, and that made all the difference for me.

Rob Love: I did a webinar with Marvell Adams about a year ago, and that’s when I learned just how high a proportion of seniors that people of color will be in another 10 years or so. Love & Company works mostly with not-for-profit Life Plan Communities, and it’s clear to me that most communities are not prepared to serve people of color appropriately. We need to adapt our service offerings and our programming—not to mention our cultures—to truly become places where people of color feel a genuine sense of belonging.

I personally have been working on diversity initiatives in senior living for about 10 years now, and I feel we need to make a lot more progress a lot more quickly over the next 10 years. I want to be an advocate who can help organizations evolve and thrive in the future.

How Do You See Participation in The Fellows Program Helping Communities?

Rob Liebreich: Earlier we shared that 40% of Goodwin Living’s workforce has international roots. This certainly is, in part, due to our location in Northern Virginia near the nation’s capital. This is a highly diverse part of the country, and if Goodwin Living is going to have a strong workforce, we need to be a place that people want to work.

Goodwin Living offers a US citizenship program for our staff, which is highly supported by our residents. In it, we cover the cost of the application (more than $725 per person), and we connect team members with a resident tutor to help them prepare. The people that go through that program stay with us longer—at least a year. So, it’s a powerful retention tool. If we weren’t intentional and attentive to the differences and needs of these varied groups of team members, I seriously don’t think we’d have the sub-30% turnover that we do.

It’s also helped our recruiting. Our number one source of new team members is referrals from existing team members. When you do right within a community, more people from that community will flock to you.

It has a positive impact on census as well. We celebrate way more holidays now than we used to by recognizing major holidays from several religions. For example, we’ve been celebrating Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, for several years. As the general community began seeing us recognize this holiday, and realizing we were authentic in building inclusion and belonging, we attracted some Indian American residents.

Lastly, spending time as a Fellow helped me better meet the expectations of our board of trustees, who recently shifted a strategic pillar from a focus on economic diversity to a focus on overall diversity.

Do You Feel You Personally Benefitted from Your Participation?

Rob Love: Absolutely. It was quite the experience. Certainly, I learned more about what inclusion and equity really are and how to go about building them. That said, I think increased empathy for other people and their life experiences may be what I gained the most.

This is a rather small example of what I mean by this, but at the beginning of one of the sessions, Marvell and Sarah played a music video by John Legend. The music was beautiful, and the video was bright and positive. As I watched it, though, I was acutely aware that there was no one in that video that “looked like me.” When you realize that that’s exactly how a substantial portion of our population has felt virtually their entire life—not just for a five-minute video—it makes a lasting impression.

Rob Liebreich: I agree with what Rob shared in that I gained a lot more empathy. I also gained a better understanding of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a beloved community. The program created a space where we could see and understand things through other people’s eyes.

What Would You Say to a CEO That Was Considering Participating in a Cohort?

Rob Liebreich: You know, it would depend on the person. Everyone is different. To me, though, there are two things. The self-journey has been very important to me. It’s been very helpful to expand the lens by which I’m able to see the world for a relatively nominal cost.

Beyond that, there are all the business reasons I shared earlier, related to recruitment, retention, census and strategic growth. I see Goodwin Living continuing to be able to benefit from this program. We had two more members in the Beta cohort, and two more are lined up for the Gamma cohort. Our intention is to continue to engage our leadership team in the Fellows program, help us all develop a broader understanding and be able to address challenges from a similar perspective.

Rob Love: To me, I go back to what we shared at the beginning. Over the next 10 to 15 years, Life Plan Communities are going to have an opportunity to serve a much more diverse group of people than we have in the past. However, we have to adapt and evolve if we want to do that. If we don’t, someone else will fill the gap, and we will be left with a much smaller market to serve.

For more information on the Longevity + Inclusion Alliance Fellows Program, visit the W Lawson company website at wlawsoncompany.com. The Gamma cohort program is scheduled to start on January 9, 2025.