Creating Culture: How 6 Senior Living Operators Bring People Together

Most senior living operators believe that having a good company culture can mean the difference between success and failure. But what exactly is culture and how does one build it?

Building culture is a difficult and often nebulous task, but providers are taking steps to improve their companies’ cultures one hire at a time. Turnover hurts culture, which many operatorsview as a necessity for improving occupancy and net operating income (NOI). 

Houston-based senior living provider The Aspenwood Company views building and sustaining a strong culture across its communities as a revenue strategy, even if human resources “is not revenue-producing,” according to Senior Vice President of Human Resources Kimberly Varley.

“Culture creates stability, and combined with strong operations, it drives revenue,” Varley said. “Stable teams and happy teams that excel with resident satisfaction create full, thriving buildings, so I see culture as a revenue-producing entity.”

To build a strong culture within communities, Aspenwood’s leaders put new hires through an onboarding process that instills culture, while showcasing executive directors and department leaders as “culture leaders,” Varley said.

Building a strong workplace culture is the hardest during periods of disruption caused by turnover or a lack of training. To identify issues, Aspenwood corporate leadership works directly with community leaders to identify where new training can improve disruptive patterns.

Providers including Aspenwood, Anthem Memory Care, Sonida Senior Living (NYSE: SNDA), Health Dimensions Group (HDG), HumanGood and Pegasus Senior Living are taking steps to address, improve and sustain strong organizational culture during this period of strong demand.

Culture ‘happens when no one is watching’ 

Senior living company culture must be consistent without “corporate hovering over every shift,” Sonida COO Anton Nikodemus.

“Culture is what happens when no one’s watching, and we can throw words and values on a wall, but it’s really about how you’re treating one another,” said Pegasus Senior Living Senior Vice President of People and Culture Katheryn Pigott.

Building a strong culture starts by being “intentional, inclusive, engaged and consistent” across communities, according to Anthem Memory Care President Lewis McCoy. After fielding employee feedback, Anthem created a code of conduct that defines its mission in serving older adults living with dementia and cognitive change. It now serves as a “shared language” for evaluating future hires and guiding community operations, McCoy added.

“Our culture ties directly to our purpose, and that purpose is to protect, engage, and love people living with memory loss,” McCoy said. “So it’s a culture that ties directly to that purpose.”

Leaders with Dallas-based provider Sonida Senior Living structure the company’s culture around its Communication, Accountability, Responsiveness, Empathy and Service (CARES) framework, which expects staff at all levels to act and be recognized when they deliver on one of those five principles, according to Nikodemus. Some of these efforts are paying off as Sonida grows following its acquisition of CNL Healthcare. Since 2024, the company has reduced turnover 15%, and reduced executive director by more than 10%.

“[Senior living] is an experience business, and a strong culture is what makes that experience consistent across all communities without corporate hovering over every shift,” Nikodemus said.

Culture across an organization plays out the most between frontline staff and their direct leadership, not corporate executives, making this a critical part of building a strong culture, Pigott said.

“For our employees, their direct manager is the culture and where it starts,” Pigott added. “From a corporate perspective, we need to be showing up for those supervisors, middle managers and directors to make a difference and support them as they work closely with team members at the community.”

Offering executive coaching for middle management leaders helps reinforce the expectation that supervisors get to know the staff at their communities by name, while also recognizing good work and explaining why operational decisions are made before culture diminishes, Pigott added.

The executive director carries the “ultimate responsibility” for creating culture in a community, Varley said. If an executive director does not believe in an operational change or directive from the corporate office, culture is at risk.

By giving leaders the responsibility to create and sustain a community’s culture, a “trickle out effect” occurs, according to Senior Vice President of Experience Lisa Holland. At the same time, employees must be trained and feel part of a bigger mission that can fuel them to respond to resident and family needs beyond their job descriptions during difficult moments.

Starting culture-building at hiring 

The hiring process inside a community is where culture building starts, and operators are seeking to boost their culture by hiring people who are mission-driven and motivated to help older adults.

Pegasus, which relies on a data-based hiring model for its executive directors, is now taking a more artistic approach to hiring by determining if a candidate will be a “culture fit” for the Dallas-based provider, Pegasus uses behavioral assessments from The Predictive Index to qualify how potential candidates lead, collaborate and respond during stressful situations before sending an offer letter.

Aspenwood s investing in building out a recruitment and talent pipeline, using platforms like LinkedIn to recruit, with partnerships including Indeed Smart Sourcing and AI recruiting platform Juicebox to identify quality prospective candidates, Varley said.

If a community is experiencing high turnover within a specific department, leaders work with executive directors to make sure onboarding practices are being followed and find ways training can help create stability for new employees.

“It’s tempting to fill a seat with anyone during periods where you have challenges, but that’s exactly where culture is most at risk,” Varley said.

Small touches like celebrating the birthdays or important life events of employees are an easy way to build culture, Varley said, and the company’s employment perception online reflects that through a 5-star rating on Glassdoor and a 4.5-star rating on Indeed. That achievement did not happen quickly and was an “intentional effort” to create a strong culture.

Minneapolis-based HDG builds its culture around five values: hospitality, stewardship, integrity, respect and humor. The company builds its values into behavioral interview questions for new candidates to help gauge whether they practice those values. The provider sustains its culture through new hire orientation followed by on-the-job training, according to Vice President of People and Culture Jennifer Martell.

HDG focuses on finding people who have a high capacity for empathy and understanding to bring into its organizational culture, Martell noted, since “a caring orientation is harder to instill than a skill.”

Career development, culture under pressure

All providers highlighted the importance of having leadership and career advancement opportunities outlined in detail to help staff see what is possible if they stay with the organization. This helps build and sustain culture, Holland said.

Through its “Good to Grow Elevate” program, HumanGood expanded its leadership development effort for hourly staff to show community-level workers that future career advancement is tangible and attainable, Holland said.

“It gives people the sense that we’re investing in them, and that helps build culture,” Holland added.

HDG uses a “values ambassador” program to allow leaders, staff, residents and families to nominate team members for actions that demonstrate the company’s culture in practice. Winners are recognized and receive compensation bonuses on a quarterly basis, Martell said. New this year, HDG launched its “Leadership Beyond Expectations” program that offers eight leadership trainings annually.

Employees want to see examples of “moving up the ladder,” and the company highlights top performers while also cultivating new leaders through its Centers of Excellence mentoring program, Pigott said.

Senior living workloads are difficult for frontline staff to manage without adequate support and training from both community and corporate leaders. A strong culture helps connect purpose to daily tasks, and corporate leaders must “be responsive and not reactive” to feedback and adjust staffing plans accordingly.

Building culture is most difficult when expanding a portfolio or taking on a new community under management. Sonida’s CNL Healthcare acquisition and Pegasus’ portfolio growth both proved to be challenging instances for the respective operators in bringing culture and standards into new buildings.

“You can’t parachute culture in,” Nikodemus said. “You earn it the same way you did with existing teams: through consistent leadership and follow-through, and that takes longer than any integration timeline wants.”

It is important to “tread lightly” and understand staffing concerns when taking on new growth, which offers a great opportunity to instill a culture of trust and accountability from the beginning, Pigott said.

When Pegasus found that its paid time off (PTO) plan capped longer-tenured incoming employees at a lower level than they were accustomed to, the provider adjusted the policy companywide rather than asking new staff to accept less PTO.

“We just have to be fluid, collect the feedback, look at the data and continue to evolve,” Pigott said.