The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you in partnership with PointClickCare. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of senior housing, skilled nursing, home health and hospice care. To see this year’s future leaders, visit Future Leaders online.
Anthony Ormsbee-Hale, Vice President of People Operations at Civitas Senior Living, has been named a 2021 Future Leader by Senior Housing News.
To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40-years-old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors, and the committed professionals who ensure their well-being.
Ormsbee-Hale sat down with Senior Housing News to talk about his career trajectory and the ways the industry is evolving due to market and regulatory forces and the COVID-19 pandemic.
What drew you to senior living?
I was working for a nonprofit at the time, and I met the executive director of a community while I was attending school at Sam Houston State. She told me about the work that she did, and I had never heard of senior living before. She hired me to be her sales director and spent a year and a half training me.
I’ve found a really good combination of being able to work in business, but also having that immediate gratification of working with seniors. I really believe in what we are selling. I was totally planning on leaving the industry after I’d finished school, and couldn’t really find anything else that I care enough about, to do that.
Looking ahead to the future of the industry, if you could change one thing, what would it be?
I used to say that we as an industry weren’t willing to embrace change and adapt. I think I should retract that statement after the past year and a half.
I want people to have a mindset of still being more welcome to change. I think we’ve come a long way in the last year and a half, and I hope we don’t go back to the way that things used to be, in the pre-2020 days. I hear a lot of people talk about getting back on track. And I think it’s a totally different path for us forward now.
What do you foresee as being different about senior living heading into the near future?
The way that we manage our workforce will continue to be completely different. We’re not hiring full time people who are going to work a routine schedule anymore. I think we have a huge opportunity to participate in the gig economy and give people options as they look to have maybe two or three different jobs.
And so, how do we do that? Going back and changing how we staff our communities, what roles do we have and are there more efficient ways of managing that. So, I think that that’s a huge opportunity for us in the next year and a half, to figure out as we look to bring people into the industry.
I think it’s about expanding skillsets. I think it’s a huge differentiator for senior living that we have multiple different pathways that individuals can take as far as career advancement and career development. Instead of just saying, okay, Anthony, you’re a salesperson, you will always only do sales, you can go into operations, resident engagement. It opens up more of those doors, and it’s more fluid, whereas I think in other industries, you have more linear, traditional career paths for folks.
If you could go back in time to your first day in the industry and give your younger self advice, what would you say?
I would say to look at the whole picture, look at the whole board, and try to anticipate, two, three steps ahead. I love change, I love when things are in constant motion, so looking at the long-term strategy behind that, instead of just what’s right in front of me.
How would you describe the future of senior living in one word?
Encouraging.
To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/
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