The SOS Framework: Sourcing, Optimizing, and Sustaining Your Senior Care Workforce

The senior care industry has long grappled with workforce challenges, but recent factors—such as the lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and new staffing requirements—have intensified the strain. To address these pressures, senior care communities can adopt an SOS framework: Source, Optimize, and Sustain.

By effectively sourcing talent, optimizing team performance, and sustaining engagement, communities can attract top professionals, retain dedicated staff, and consistently deliver high-quality care.

Current Workforce Challenges Senior Care Communities Face

Sourcing qualified staff has become increasingly difficult for senior care communities, driven by a combination of persistent workforce shortages, growing competition for skilled caregivers, and evolving expectations among employees.

Brian Buys, Chief Product Officer at Smartlinx

“There’s a staffing deficit,” says Brian Buys, Chief Product Officer at Smartlinx. “There aren’t enough staff to go around to start with.” As the baby boomer population ages, demand for senior care is increasing, and Buys predicts that the staffing deficit will continue.

Staffing is also made difficult by challenges with turnover. “It’s a challenging place to work,” says Buys. “Senior care is emotionally, physically, and mentally challenging.”

He adds that staff scheduling on a day-to-day basis is complicated. Each day, communities must deploy staff while considering and adhering to federal, state, and local mandates addressing staffing mix and coverage based on the community’s census and population acuity, all while also managing labor costs. “It’s a lot even to schedule for a typical community or facility to make sure you have the right mix and the right people who are healthy and coming to work,” he explains.

That said, Buys has noticed a shift in how communities approach workforce management. The senior care industry appears to be shifting from a post-crisis recovery mode to embracing an outlook that is more forward thinking. “I think now we’re looking at the future and are trying to get creative about culture and about retention,” he says. “I think there’s also a lot of focus on creative ways to find flexible staffing, whether it’s an internal agency or float pool or better managing external relationships with supplemental staff suppliers.”

Senior care communities are turning to innovation to address staffing challenges and are embracing new approaches to source, optimize, and sustain staff.

SOS: Source

With today’s technological advancements, senior care communities can find and hire the right staff more efficiently than ever before. “It’s about a lot more than just hiring people and hiring people faster,” Buys says. “I think it’s about hiring people thoughtfully.”

For example, he describes a friend who runs a local senior care campus. The campus uses AI to analyze phone screening conversations, generating data that predicts candidate retention based on their responses during the phone screen.

Communities are also adopting more structured onboarding processes, strengthening both staff recruitment and retention efforts. Many are carefully considering what each employee’s first 90 days look like, including where they’re scheduled and how they’re mentored and brought into a role. Employees who are brand new to healthcare might progress from answering call lights to more advanced and involved responsibilities, creating a gradual introduction that allows them to not only build confidence, but to succeed.

By taking a creative approach to recruiting and implementing effective onboarding strategies, communities can attract the right talent and set them up for long-term success.

SOS: Optimize

Technology also enhances communities’ ability to balance flexibility and predictability in schedule optimization. Flexibility is often not the top priority in scheduling. Communities typically focus on maintaining the right number and mix of staff on site to meet regulatory requirements. To ensure consistent staffing levels, they tend to impose strict scheduling patterns, requiring caregivers to work specific shifts that ensure consistent coverage.

Technology like Smartlinx provides a transparent and predictable scheduling model that allows communities to optimize staffing while giving staff more control and balance. “The scheduling model then lets [communities] work the exceptions, and that allows them to offer some flexibility, because they’re not starting from scratch every time,” explains Buys. “The closer you are to working the exceptions at the margin, the less scrambling you’re doing.”

For example, communities can maintain a core standard schedule while giving staff the option to select desired shifts or swap shifts with each other. Since the core schedule remains the same, the community isn’t left to fill big holes or gaps in the schedule and no longer have to scramble to fill last-minute shifts. By minimizing reactive scheduling demands, communities can focus more on strategic priorities—such as strengthening workplace culture, supporting career development, and creating a seamless onboarding experience for new staff.

Smartlinx will release its first AI Assistant for scheduling this year on a limited basis, and the technology could make flexible scheduling even easier while still leaving decision-making to humans. “We want to elevate the decision in the hands of people, particularly when it comes to trade-offs and finding prioritization,” he says. “I don’t think AI and technology will remove all responsibility from people to make decisions, but it will continue to make it easier to make the right decision and require less action once the decision is made.”

An AI Assistant could help communities quickly fill scheduling gaps when understaffed. The technology could present a list of staff who are eligible and available for a shift, while also identifying those who would go into overtime if they worked the shift. A manager can simply direct the system to contact specific employees, allowing shifts to be filled quickly and strategically, without the need for manual calls or messages.

Smartlinx can also help communities optimize costs and efficiency in other ways. Even small adjustments, such as changing how far in advance employees can clock in, can lead to significant cost savings. “We’ve had a number of customers that didn’t know there was a feature available to do that,” says Buys. “There can be significant savings for your organization if you’re just a little creative around the tools that streamline the entry to work.”

Buys takes pride in uncovering these opportunities for clients, conducting a comprehensive workforce health assessment for each community. “I think it’s actually a treasure hunt, because every organization has some treasure to find somewhere, whether it’s a feature that could be better utilized or something the organization has drifted away from,” he says.

SOS: Sustain

Sustaining happiness in staff starts by making sure they’re paid correctly, Buys explains. But beyond that, there are many ways communities can sustain the staff they’ve worked so hard to source.

Adopting a scheduling platform like Smartlinx enhances shift flexibility, which boosts staff morale and retention while streamlining scheduling operations. It also allows communities to better accommodate employees’ evolving needs—helping them balance work with personal responsibilities, such as adjusting schedules when children return to school in the fall.

Financial support is also invaluable and comes in many forms. Buys describes a customer who is innovating a system to help connect caregivers with public assistance available in their area. Another friend within the industry works at an organization that provides groceries to about five hundred employees. The organization offers employees who make less than $26 per hour with the opportunity to shop at a grocery store the organization stocks. “There are some guidelines,” he says, “but their turnover rate is less than 2 percent among CNAs.”

He points out that offering earned wage access—allowing staff to access their pay before the traditional payday—has become a highly valued employee benefit. Senior care communities can offer this access without staff members having to go through a payday lender, and at a lower cost than they would typically incur. Staff may rely on access to those funds to cover emergencies or for life-sustaining expenses, like paying rent.

Looking Forward

Buys encourages senior care communities to try new things, take feedback, listen to staff, and make changes. Embracing the SOS framework can empower a community and address common workforce challenges.

“Form a group with others in your area who are of a similar role who have tried things,” hesuggests. For example, create a networking group of directors of nursing or payroll managers. “There’s plenty of demand to go around in healthcare and senior care, but that collaboration and those ideas are amazing,” he adds.

Most importantly, always strive to do better, even in the face of challenge. Buys admits that there are no easy answers to many of the challenges in senior care, but it’s also important work. North America faces a rapidly aging population, and the current healthcare system is not adequately equipped to meet their growing needs. Additionally, the costs of caregiving and the deficits faced are also significant challenges that need to be addressed. “We have to tackle those things, or there will be other implications for our economy,” he says. “There are no easy answers. We need each other, and this is worth doing.”

Paige Cerulli

Paige Cerulli is a contributing writer to i Advance Senior Care.