A senior living organization’s leadership compensation model must reflect its unique financial capacity, organizational maturity, leadership philosophy, and culture. This session will help you choose a model that meets these requirements. Presenters will describe three compensation models that provider organizations have used effectively: a mission-driven model for service-oriented team members; a performance-driven model that uses goal-setting and market data to determine compensation levels; and a retention-focused model that supports leadership stability during expansions or retirements. You’ll receive the guidance you need to build or enhance your current compensation practices, using the model that works best for your organization.

Looking to lead your team from low performance and instability to high performance and sustained retention? This session is for you. Presenters will blend reassurance with disruption to teach you how to stabilize a struggling team. They’ll show you how to encourage team members to speak up, take risks, and grow; how to hold employees to clear performance and behavioral expectations without creating fear, resentment, or disengagement; and how to shift from reacting to problems to consistently and clearly addressing patterns. You’ll return home prepared to create the conditions that enable employees to stay, grow, and perform at their best.

Senior living organizations are navigating a workforce environment marked by staffing shortages, rapid onboarding, rising recruitment costs, and shifting expectations among new and seasoned team members. This session will explore how thoughtful experience design and strategic technology use can reshape the employee experience and foster lasting commitment. Presenters will share workforce-strengthening strategies that adapt customer-experience methods to the aging services workplace. They’ll outline the advantages of treating employees as “internal customers” by offering internships, mentoring programs, community-building initiatives, data-driven coaching tools, and streamlined career pathways. You’ll learn practical steps to reduce turnover and make workforce investments more predictable and measurable, even with resource constraints.

Young people pursue various pathways to launch careers in aging services. Which of these pathways work well, and where are the gaps? This session will offer evidence-based answers to those questions. Presenters will share findings from new national research on academic programs, internships, mentorships, and Administrator-in-Training (AIT) programs that have helped students pursue careers in aging services and gerontology. They’ll also share strategies and case studies to help you create similar programs. You’ll hear success stories about how organizations with modest budgets have attracted new talent. You’ll also take home a clear, customizable framework to reduce vacancies, strengthen career pathways, and develop the next generation of aging services leaders.

Looking for a housing option that meets older adults’ needs while attracting young workers to help them live independently? This session will introduce an intergenerational housing model that addresses the aging services workforce crisis, the affordable housing shortage, and the loneliness epidemic affecting young and old alike. Presenters will describe a unique intergenerational community model that provides affordable housing to older adults and hires young people who have “aged out” of the foster care system to work in the community. They’ll review market trends driving the growth of intergenerational living, its potential to strengthen your workforce, and architectural guidelines to help you bring this housing option to your campus.

Frontline caregivers are the heart of every aging services organization, yet most have limited opportunities to develop their leadership skills. During this session, a panel of human resources and leadership development professionals from LeadingAge member organizations will highlight promising programs that harness the leadership potential of the frontline workforce, enhance organizational culture, increase retention, and help caregivers contribute more effectively to their organizations. Presenters will share learning modules that have resonated with frontline learners and offer tips for adapting them to diverse learning needs and day-to-day operational challenges. You’ll gain practical strategies for launching or strengthening a frontline leadership program that benefits all levels of your organization.

As a nonprofit aging services provider, you aim to use your budget to serve older adults. You may be surprised to learn that operational expenses, including unemployment costs, can drain valuable funds and impede your mission-driven work. During this session, representatives from UST Workforce Solutions, a LeadingAge Gold Partner, will explore cost-effective workforce strategies to streamline your human resources processes, ensure regulatory compliance, and improve operational efficiency. You’ll learn how nonprofit organizations are leveraging artificial intelligence to boost productivity without reducing staff, and how certain unemployment funding options, including a little-known federal exemption, can reduce unemployment costs for 501(c)(3) organizations while helping them build a valuable long-term financial asset.

Senior living communities seeking to strengthen their workforce must take deliberate steps to reach younger workers who may not yet view aging services as an attractive career path. This session will highlight a program that can help. The Rotational Operations and Development (ROAD) talent development model invites young interns to explore the full range of career opportunities in aging services through internship rotations across various departments such as operations, dining, marketing, resident services, and more. LeadingAge members who are using the ROAD model, along with interns who’ve participated in it, will share their experiences. You’ll gain the tools you need to attract Gen Z team members to your organization and to our field.

In today’s labor-constrained environment, senior living organizations need more than hindsight. They need actionable foresight. This session will showcase a tool that LCS built that can help. You’ll hear about Retention Radar, a predictive workforce intelligence solution that identifies departments with employees most at risk of leaving their jobs and recommends targeted, practical interventions to support engagement and stability. By analyzing indicators such as benefits participation, scheduling alignment, supervisor stability, and PTO utilization, this innovative tool helps community leaders focus their efforts where they can have the greatest impact. Presenters will explain how Retention Radar equips Executive Directors, Administrations, Human Resources teams, and other operations leaders to interpret workforce trends and make data-informed decisions. Users of the tool will share strategies for translating predictive analytics into targeted retention interventions and explain how Retention Radar is helping to reduce turnover while enhancing the resident experience.

Educators, providers, policymakers, and workforce leaders nationwide are rethinking how aging services providers recruit, train, support, and retain frontline caregivers. This session will highlight this collaborative effort. Presenters will describe a recent national meeting that examined the potential for multi-state collaboration to standardize certified nursing assistant (CNA) career pathways through state-based Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Programs. They’ll share lessons learned from convening stakeholders across education, workforce development, aging services, finance, policy, and care delivery systems to discuss workforce solutions. You’ll discover how stakeholder collaboration can drive system-wide changes in policy, practice, and workforce development.

A centralized talent acquisition framework consolidates hiring operations under a single Human Resources (HR) team and helps your organization transform recruitment into a proactive, data-driven strategy. This session will show you how centralized recruitment models enable HR teams to conduct higher-quality candidate assessments and enhance the candidate experience through consistent communication, streamlined touchpoints, and clear expectations. Presenters will share strategies to help you assess and redesign your current recruitment operations, streamline workflows, and leverage technology to drive higher returns on investment. You’ll see how a centralized approach can lower vacancy rates, improve outcomes, strengthen workforce stability, and reduce your organization’s compliance and legal risk.

Accessing quality and consistent primary care is increasingly difficult for older adults in rural areas, largely due to challenges associated with contracting, credentialing, workforce shortages, and sustaining geriatric-focused primary care. This session will explore how a life plan community addressed these challenges by establishing an on-site primary care clinic that integrates care across all its service levels. Presenters will outline the clinic’s development and explain how it addresses provider shortages and payer complexities, and enhances resident wellness. You’ll take away practical strategies for designing sustainable, resident-centered healthcare models that strengthen and improve access, continuity, and satisfaction. You’ll also appreciate the critical role partnerships play in supporting sustainable, resident-centered healthcare.

When team members see a future for themselves at your organization, they will stay, grow, and thrive. This session will show you how in-house career coaching makes that possible by establishing clear career pathways, building trust-based coaching relationships, and supporting skill development. Presenters will outline a scalable career-coaching model used by a life plan community to foster workforce engagement, increase retention, and improve organizational culture. You’ll gain tools to build your own coaching program, including strategies for identifying champions, defining success metrics, and embedding coaching into everyday workflows. Don’t miss this opportunity to create a future where every team member thrives.

Direct care professionals face persistent challenges, including high turnover, low wages, and limited opportunities for career advancement. This session will showcase a promising solution: the Universal Direct Care Workforce Initiative. This career advancement model features immersive training for new hires, specialty training in dementia and behavioral health, and a “Care Integration Senior Aide” who documents and reports clients’ clinical conditions to the care team. A representative from PHI, a national workforce organization, will share data from the initiative’s first year, and a home care partner will describe evidence-based practices implemented through the program. You’ll learn how this model improves the quality of care and boosts workforce satisfaction and retention.

As the older population becomes more diverse, resident services teams in affordable senior housing must adapt to meet a wide range of needs. This session will focus on a housing-based services model that provides care coordination, referrals, and on-site programming across 17 diverse housing communities. Presenters will outline the program’s features, discuss the team’s challenges and strategies for supporting culturally and linguistically diverse residents, and share lessons learned. A multilingual wellness coordinator will explain how cultural norms, religious practices, and communication preferences shape her daily interactions with residents. You’ll gain strategies to strengthen trust, communication, and quality of life across diverse senior housing populations.

Nearly half of U.S. veterans are 65 or older. Yet most aging services professionals lack training to address this population’s unique needs, and aging-focused resources rarely address them. This session aims to fill those gaps. Presenters will explain how military culture, trauma, service-related injuries, and the complexity of benefit eligibility shape veterans’ needs as they age. They will also discuss cultural and trauma-informed approaches to supporting veterans across housing, health, and social-service settings, including a pilot program that helps high-acuity veterans with low incomes age in place. You’ll gain insights into the program’s implementation and early outcomes and take home lessons you can adapt to your care and service settings.

Smart technology systems can improve your organization’s efficiency and outcomes, but they can’t replace human interaction or the need for empathy in care settings. That’s why senior living and healthcare leaders must work relentlessly to preserve meaningful human connections, even as they expand their use of artificial intelligence, automation, and digital systems. This session will use storytelling, case studies, and audience exercises to show how empathy strengthens communication, restores residents’ dignity, improves perceptions of care, and reduces readmissions. You’ll take home strategies for integrating empathy into workflows, onboarding, leadership practices, and technology-driven environments. Don’t miss this opportunity to help your organization preserve the human experience even as it pursues innovation.

A thriving workplace culture begins with an engaged and supported staff. But how does that culture evolve, and how can C-Suite leaders foster it? This session will explore how C-Suite leadership behaviors and organizational practices directly affect workforce satisfaction and retention. A nurse leader in the post-acute care sector will share strategies to help C-Suite executives support staff well-being and professional growth by aligning operational priorities and strategic planning with a people-first culture that drives performance, quality of care, and financial stability. You’ll leave with the tools to build a sustainable, high-performance environment that reflects your organization’s mission, vision, and values.

Do Medicaid payment levels affect quality and influence racial and ethnic disparities in individual nursing homes? This session will present findings from recent research on this previously unexplored question. Presenters will describe their analysis of a new national database containing facility- and resident-level data for nearly 9,500 nursing homes across 44 states. They’ll share findings on racial and ethnic disparities in nursing home quality and outcomes and examine whether these disparities are associated with Medicaid payment levels. Discover how Medicaid reimbursement shapes the association between a nursing home’s racial and ethnic composition, 5-star quality ratings, staffing levels, and resident-level quality outcomes.

Aging services providers recognize the benefits and challenges of enabling residents with varying cognitive abilities to live together, rather than segregating residents with dementia in memory care areas. Yet few studies have examined the care delivered in inclusive residential settings. This session will help fill that gap. Presenters will share their research on how residents and team members perceive inclusive living environments; residents’ perceptions of their well-being and experiences of care; and the extent to which professional caregivers feel supported in problem-solving and collaboration. Join this session to see inclusive long-term care settings through the eyes of those who live and work there.

By empowering residents to serve others, life plan communities can strengthen their organizational culture, enhance engagement, and support leadership development. That’s the lesson one community learned when it established a resident-directed Community Connections Team to plan, promote, and evaluate outreach initiatives. This session will explore the community’s service model, which inspires residents and team members to contribute more than 1,000 hours of service each year to hunger initiatives, intergenerational reading partnerships, and other outreach efforts. Presenters will share practical strategies for generating outreach ideas, evaluating service projects, collaborating across campus, and involving the Foundation as a vital partner in funding initiatives and growing a culture of community partnership. Learn how to deepen resident engagement within your community and across your region.

Most organizational leaders unknowingly sabotage their teams by treating accountability as punishment. This fear-based approach to managing teams carries hidden costs, including stifled innovation, talent exodus, and decision-making paralysis. This session will introduce you to a growth-oriented alternative called “Supportive Accountability,” which encourages team members to make voluntary commitments to an organization based on intrinsic satisfaction, curiosity, or enjoyment—rather than fear of punishment. Presenters will examine why traditional accountability approaches fail and explore the science behind what truly drives responsibility. You’ll return home with a 10-step guide to implementing a supportive accountability system that builds trust, accelerates growth, and creates thriving teams.

Christian Living Communities in Englewood, CO, has spent 15 years developing its Citizenship Model® to encourage residents to see themselves not only as consumers of housing and services but as active, empowered citizens of their senior living community. This session will present research on developing and validating a practical framework that measures this model across four key domains: purpose, inclusion, empowerment, and interpersonal connection. Presenters will offer guidance on implementing the model, discuss the development of assessment tools, share research findings, and demonstrate how organizations can use the results to advance meaningful, measurable culture change.

Partnering with academic health institutions can help your senior living organization unlock resources, foster innovation, and improve older adults’ quality of life. During this session, representatives from a university and a life plan community will describe their collaboration and explain how it created opportunities for both partners. Presenters will outline how the community gained access to cutting-edge medical research and health screenings, while university researchers collaborated with community team members and residents to co-create solutions to pressing challenges. You’ll learn how to identify and approach potential partners, bridge cultural gaps, navigate challenges, and sustain momentum. Get ready to connect aging and academia to deliver measurable benefits to all stakeholders.

A dementia diagnosis can heighten stigma and withdrawal, leading older adults to experience social isolation and a loss of purpose. This session will explore how a life plan community developed an innovative adult day program that encourages residents living with dementia to plan twice-weekly volunteer initiatives that draw on their strengths. You’ll learn how the program fosters belonging by integrating support from other residents and offering adult day participants meaningful service opportunities, such as creating artwork for Alzheimer’s research, preparing meals for unhoused people, and arranging flowers for hospice patients. Discover how inclusion initiatives can transform campus culture and how residents can empower one another to build connection and campus-wide unity.