Watercrest Names New COO With Plans to Launch Leadership Development Effort

Watercrest Senior Living Group has a new operations leader, and plans to further deepen its leadership bench through a new career development effort launching this year.

The Vero Beach, Florida-based senior living operator on Tuesday promoted Whitney Lane to the role of COO. Lane originally joined Watercrest in 2018 as vice president of clinical operations. One year later, she ascended to the senior vice president of operations role. Before coming aboard at Watercrest, she also previously worked with senior living operators that include Senior Lifestyle and Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD).

With the change in title, many of Lane’s responsibilities surrounding the company’s operations won’t change. But she is taking a greater focus on the company’s performance, outcomes and initiatives.

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She comes aboard during a time of growth for Watercrest. The company’s operations under Lane’s leadership have more than doubled in size amid an expansion throughout the Southeast. Since the beginning of 2021, the operator has opened three communities and taken over management of two others. Today, Watercrest has 14 open communities, plus three others in the works.

Among her first big efforts is launching a career development effort dubbed Leadership Watercrest. In the initiative’s first phase, the operator plans to further develop and hone the skills of directors who have worked in the role for at least one year. Capping off the leadership course is a year-long service project of the employee’s choosing.

“People are worn out, tired and leaving the industry in droves,” Lane told Senior Housing News. “We want to … get them back to being passionate about why they’re here in senior living.”

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The new effort is also aimed at helping Watercrest refocus on staffing after two long years spent recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic. While the company is still seeing fewer inquiries than in pre-pandemic times, Lane said move-ins have risen steadily since December, and that “Covid is not quite the barrier it was before” for prospective residents.

“It’s just now the right time to focus on an initiative like this,” she added. “It’s long overdue to … focus on growing our leaders and our people.”

The effort is also set against the backdrop of a historic labor challenge. While it’s no secret that hiring frontline associates has gotten much harder in the age of Covid-19, Lane said she is seeing the so-called “great resignation” playing out among leadership elsewhere in the industry, as well.

“This year is going to be the year of director-level resignation,” Lane said. “We think this Leadership Watercrest initiative … will help with that.”

Looking into the future, Lane sees more growth ahead for Watercrest, although she added that the company doesn’t have a specific target in mind for expansion.

“It’s time … to make Covid take a back seat and start to refocus on the things that we all were focused on before Covid started,” Lane said.

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