5 Ways to Personalize your Resident Experience

Personalization is key to creating a positive and engaging experience for seniors living in a community. When residents feel like their needs and preferences are being considered, they are more likely to feel connected and satisfied with their living situation and, as an added benefit, stay with their communities longer. Here are five ways that senior living communities can personalize the resident experience:

Leverage technology solutions that capture data and insights to inform decision-making:

There are times when collecting data and advancing technologies can be intimidating, but the benefits are already being felt in senior living communities. By collecting and analyzing data on residents’ interests, needs, and preferences, you can make better, more strategic decisions about programming, events, and other community activities. Tools like TSOLife’s Actionable Resident Insights can help you leverage data to create personalized touchpoints and improve engagement.

Encourage staff to get to know residents on a personal level:

Staff members who take the time to learn about residents’ backgrounds, interests, and needs are better equipped to provide personalized interactions and experiences. Encourage your staff to make an effort to get to know residents and build relationships with them. Some might even find enough of a connection that they develop a friendship. Staff members whom stronger ties and friendship-level connections tend to be happier, more engaged, and have a more positive working environment!

Offer a variety of resident-desired activities and programming options:

By providing a diverse range of activities and programming options, you can cater to residents’ interests and preferences. This might include fitness classes, art workshops, trivia nights, educational interests, movie screenings, and offerings occurring beyond the community walls. TSOLife’s Minerva AI-powered fully integrated programming calendar can take this further. It identifies residents who have declined or expressed little interest in currently scheduled programs. Committing to being inclusive of individual preferences can be a tedious, manual task. Still, our insights push such suggestions to staff to improve the quality of life for all, not just those most vocal.  been engaged or aren’t being offered the activities they are interested in, so you can offer activities that improve all your residents’ quality of life.

Empower residents by including them in the decision-making:

By involving residents in the planning and decision-making process, you can create a greater sense of ownership and community within the living environment. Beyond the monthly resident council meeting, try hosting small groups and regular town hall meetings to solicit input and feedback from both residents and staff.

Personalize the physical environment:

Encourage your residents and their loved ones to use personalized room décor. Use data and insights to identify the organically occurring DNA of your community, which should be a given at this point that you’ll need to provide personalized services. All of which can contribute to residents’ sense of home and belonging. Consider offering options for residents to personalize their living spaces and look for ways to incorporate their interests and preferences into the design and décor of common areas.

By implementing these strategies, you can create a more personalized and engaging experience for residents in your senior living community. Personalization improves satisfaction and well-being but can also help foster a sense of community and connection among residents. It will also make work much more exciting when everyone feels a sense of belonging.

To learn more about how technology can help you personalize the resident experience, visit TSOLife.com.

Evolve 2021 Session Recap: ‘Something in Common’​ Partnership with Benchmark Senior Living

Benchmark Senior Living and TSOLife have been working full force to improve the resident experience in the communities by implementing TSOLife’s resident insight and experience platform. This week at Evolve, we dove into the TSOLife rollout in the 63 Benchmark communities with Barbara Solomon, Vice President of Revenue Operations, and what her overall take has been on the program. Here are the top four takeaways:

The Biggest Takeaways from the ‘Improving the Resident Experience’ panel at SLTS

This was our second year attending the Senior Living Transformation Summit, and we had the pleasure of hosting a panel about adopting and implementing technology in senior living, and how it can improve the resident experience. Some of the brightest minds in the industry were on this panel: Sara Kyle, Founder, and Kelly Stranburg, Principal, with LE3 Solutions, Barbara Solomon, Vice President of Revenue Operations at Benchmark Senior Living, and Aras Erekul, National Director of Integrative Wellbeing at Watermark Retirement Communities. Let’s take a look at some of the key problems and challenges we discussed about improving the resident experience:

Streamlining Your Sales Process with Minerva

We’ve seen how data can be used to connect residents in your communities, but with that same information, sales and marketing teams can secure more move-ins, and more importantly, secure more move-ins of residents who are likely to thrive in their new home. We’ll be taking a look at how resident data can influence sales tactics and strategies as well as helping to locate, entice, and secure more prospects for your sales team. 

Watch a short video to see how Minerva can improve your sales process:

Minerva’s resident matching: data-backed resident connections

So far, we’ve touched on topics before and during new resident move-ins like modernizing resident profiles and using technology to capture personal data points. How can we apply these data points to have a positive impact on residents and staff? Meaningful impacts like making new residents feel at home the moment they move into your community. There are a lot of different ways to apply gathered information to your communities, but the best way to instantly connect newer residents to existing ones is by using our resident matching feature.

Custom Dashboards and Actionable Insights: Personal Resident Experiences without the Guesswork

Keeping in mind data-entry and technology implementation best practices, let’s talk about how a working platform can provide us value. Like we mentioned before, just because technology can consolidate information in one easy place, doesn’t mean staff will access that data or use it effectively. It needs to be implemented into their workflow so that it doesn’t add time and frustration to their already-hectic jobs.

Revolutionizing Data Entry

Technology in senior living has been on an incline for the past decade. Almost weekly, it seems like a new tech solution is introduced to the industry. While new innovative ideas with hyped-up value seem exciting and very promising, operators need to take a hard look at their practicality and whether or not these systems will be operationally viable at the community-level.

Minerva: The innovative Resident Insight Platform

For the past year and a half, TSOLife has been on a mission to change the senior living industry and provide real value to our partners: from preserving legacies of loved ones and creating beautiful life stories as keepsakes, to now housing the first Resident Insight Platform of its kind: Minerva.

Improving Memory Recall in People with Dementia

To continue the month-long conversation for World Alzheimer’s Month, we’ve been taking a look at various topics surrounding Alzheimer’s and Dementia. This week, we’ll be diving into different methods anyone can use to help improve memory recall in people with Dementia.

How to Interview Someone with Dementia

Recording and preserving the life stories, lessons, and memories of our loved ones is what got us started. Safeguarding your family’s legacy is important, but especially so if your loved one’s have started showing signs of dementia. September marks the 8th Annual World Alzheimer’s Month and to help raise awareness, this post will be centered around tips for interviewing someone with Dementia. Whether you’re a family member recording a relative’s stories or a caregiver working with residents, use some of these tips to help facilitate your interviews.