Staffing Solutions: Benchmark Senior Living Says Join, Stay, Grow, Connect to Your Calling
By Jim Nelson | October 18, 2024
“Join, Stay, Grow, Connect to Your Calling.” It’s a call to action at Waltham, Massachusetts-based Benchmark Senior Living. It is also a recruitment- and retention-focused mixed-media campaign to spotlight the human connection present throughout the company’s 60-plus communities.
This ad campaign utilizes the powerful stories of actual Benchmark team members as they talk candidly and genuinely about the joy and meaning they experience connecting with residents and their workmates.
“We have definitely been challenged like everybody else in trying to find the right talent and bring them to Benchmark Senior Living,” Chief Human Resources Officer Kris Martel told Senior Living News. “We’re also in the process of growing into new states, so as we were building up our talent acquisition team and our focus on recruiting, we wanted to build an employer brand that told the story of why people have come here, why people stay here, and why people choose to make their career here.”
To learn more about Benchmark’s “Join. Stay. Grow. Connect to Your Calling” campaign, I spoke with Martel and the company’s Vice President of Marketing, Marla Rappaport.
SENIOR LIVING NEWS: What can you tell us about the “Join. Stay. Grow. Connect to Your Calling” campaign?
MARLA RAPPAPORT: This campaign is really about telling the story of working for Benchmark. When you talk with our associates, they’re so passionate about the work that they do, the connections that they have with our residents and each other, that we really felt like it was important to share our story and help engage other people who are potentially looking for roles or maybe not currently looking for roles. We want to drive brand awareness of the Benchmark company name — consideration for people to potentially think about us as an employer of choice and then conversion into a candidate for a role or an applicant. That’s the primary goal of the campaign. We are telling that story through the words and the thoughts of our associates because they’re the ones who can tell their story the best, our story the best. There are so many heartfelt, amazing stories that we’re telling in a fully integrated marketing mix approach. All of the channels that you would engage with Benchmark should have a consistent message and meet that person, meet the target, where they are in their search or their consideration path, and tell that story of working at Benchmark, which is really about connecting with your calling, and why they would want to consider Benchmark. This campaign will run in a fully integrated way, meaning across traditional print, digital channels, and all of the touch points people would have with Benchmark through 2025, at least.
SLN: What about television?
MR: We’re not doing TV. However, we have TV production-level assets that we’ve created, so we have a lot of high-quality digital video ads in paid media running at all times. You can also go check them out on YouTube, the Benchmark careers website or our Indeed and various social media pages.
SLN: Kris, there’s an industrywide need to attract younger people to work at communities; is your messaging designed to appeal to all ages?
KRIS MARTEL: That’s a really great question because it just naturally occurred as we met with various associates to tell their story. One younger woman who went to work in one of our communities as a server got to know the residents, and the residents encouraged her to go back to school. She ended up getting her Bachelor’s in Gerontology because of their encouragement. When she was interviewed, she talked about how it was the residents and her manager that helped encourage her to go to school. They adjusted her schedule to accommodate her classes. Now, she’s a graduate and has a different role in our community. When we went out to ask for stories, they all naturally evolved into exactly what we hoped for; we couldn’t have scripted it any better.
SLN: What can you tell us about the importance of having a career with purpose and meaning?
KM: Everything that we read about the younger generation indicates that it’s a lot more than a paycheck to them. They want to have connections with other people, they want to understand the impact and value they’re adding to their communities. And that was another theme that we heard; a number of people who were interviewed for their campaign said, “I need you to come here with heart. I can teach you the skills.” So much of the work that we do is personal and involves human connection. Of course, you need to be willing to learn the rudimentary, like: “This is how you would handle a resident in this situation,” or “These are the nutritional needs of this resident.” I think that that, again, just naturally came through all the interviews. People come to work at Benchmark Senior Living because they have a calling for this work; they are not simply focused on a paycheck.
SLN: What does “Called to Care, Better Together and Be the Benchmark” mean to your organization?
MR: Those are our three core values that are foundational to our company. You will see them on our website, you will see them on the walls of our communities, you’ll see them at our home office. A very, very distinctive element of working at Benchmark is that these values are lived every day. They are truly interwoven into the jobs that we all do, the roles that we all play and how we think about our work and our connections with the residents and with our fellow associates. Those values are actually brought to life through people who work here. They’re truly felt and lived here.
SLN: What kind of response have you received to the campaign?
MR: We’ve seen incredible engagement. We’ve got digital videos, and two-thirds of the people who have engaged with them have watched our 30-second videos all the way through. There aren’t very many marketing campaigns where you see two-thirds of your target watch your videos for the full 30 seconds.
SLN: When a viewer is able to skip an online ad after five seconds you need to get your message across immediately.
MR: Consumer behavior has changed so much. All the technology and everything has trained consumers to have a very, very short attention span. I think it feels really, really good to know that people value our message enough to watch all the way through. And that speaks to the authenticity and how genuine the messages are because consumers can spot something that’s fake pretty fast these days. I think it really speaks highly of our associates and our company.
SLN: Kris, the word Stay is in the name of the campaign; what are some of the ways that Benchmark strives to retain its employees?
KM: One of the key goals for us with this campaign was continuing to share that message with our existing associates. We’re trying to do a number of things on the retention side. We have reinvigorated our cultural ambassador campaign; every one of our communities has a cultural ambassador and their job is to do meaningful, fun stuff in the communities, but also educational things. That program has continued to evolve. We offer different programs for development so that people have opportunities for advancement. We’ve done a lot more face-to-face programming that we had to put on hold during COVID, which involves bringing either folks to the home office or into one of our larger communities in Connecticut, where we’re running managerial effectiveness programs and leadership development programs.
SLN: Benchmark has been recognized as A Great Place To Work six times, you’ve been on Fortune magazine’s Best Workplaces in Aging Services list, and The Boston Globe recognized Benchmark on its employee-surveyed Top Places to Work list in every one of the 16 years that the award has been given out. Clearly, you’re doing some things right with regard to employee satisfaction.
MR: I think the true focus on the resident is ultimately what I feel like drives all of us. Even in marketing, you could say you’re not connected to the resident on a day-to-day basis, but we know that we provide amazing care, that we do the right things. We think of the residents first. All of those things feel very, very good and right as an employer and associate at this company. So, the focus on the resident and doing right by them is paramount. I also say the culture is a lot about connecting to each other and having good relationships with each other and being a team and thinking about how we can do a great job as a team. So, it’s a very collaborative environment. I’ve worked in different industries; it’s exceptionally collaborative here. It just feels very good. We’re doing the right thing and we’re doing it together, and we’re pushing ourselves to continue to improve. We’re not ever settling for status quo.
KM: I love that Marla just said, “And do the right thing.” There are so many different decision points in the workday. The communities face challenges every day, taking care of humans that, at times, have very sensitive conditions, but it’s always, “Do the right thing in the eyes of the resident.”
SLN: Kris, from a human resources point of view, can you give me any specifics of things that have been implemented to foster a culture where somebody might want to stay working at Benchmark?
KM: The developmental programs we have to give people progression: lead aide training, training on med management, sending people to school to become an LPN or an RN. It’s great to be able to show them those pathways, to show that a server can become an executive director someday if they continue to focus on their own development. One of the other areas that we’ve focused on more recently is DEIB. We’re having productive and sometimes difficult conversations with our associates and bringing them together from all different places. That has been very meaningful work, and I think it has been very impactful on our frontline workers. Not only is this the place they want to come to work, but it’s a place where they can bring their authentic selves and be included.
SLN: Can you elaborate on sending people to school to become an LPN or RN?
KM: We have internal resources as well as local community schools that we partner with to help people attain their certificate to be an RCA and then develop them into other programs. We offer tuition reimbursement, for example, for that person who went back to get her Gerontology degree. We assist people to continue to grow in any way they can, to continue to advance their career.
