Ascent Living Communities Success Story
Overview
Ascent Living Communities is a senior living management company with five properties throughout Colorado that encompass the entire spectrum of the continuum of senior living, including Independent Living, Assisted Living, and Memory Care.
Like many other businesses and communities in their industry, Ascent works with a wide range of associates in departments that tend to see a high amount of turnover and burnout. With a desire to scale their business and achieve real growth, they knew that culture and employee satisfaction needed to be addressed in a real way.
The Challenge
Associates, leadership, and HR alike were all used to traditional employee engagement surveys which were administered once a year, had minimal participation, and didn’t make real change that drove business growth. These surveys did not provide the results and drive change in the way the Ascent team needed.
Cultivating a feeling of community and belonging was, and remains, a priority for the Ascent team. The Ascent team was finding it hard to gather honest and transparent feedback from their employees in a way that also showed their people action would subsequently be taken in accordance with the results. Employees didn't feel they had the space to provide feedback without being identified or singled out for their opinions.
In turn, Ascent's culture was lacking in transparent and honest feedback, retention rates were less than ideal, and overall associate feelings regarding their work and experience wasn't as positive as it could be.
The Solution
Ascent Living Communities chose to partner with TalenTrust for Employee Engagement surveys because they were ready to scale their business in a thoughtful way but knew that their associates were crucial to that business success. Cassy Nicholl, Director of People & Culture of Ascent, knew that when Ascent founders Tom and Susie Finley invested in TalenTrust they were concerned with investing in culture in the right way.
Ascent's partnership with TalenTrust has allowed for them to gather feedback from their employees in an anonymous way, providing the space their employees desired to share their honesty and transparency regarding the way they're experiencing Ascent's culture. For over 3 years, Ascent and TalenTrust have grown a partnership of immense trust, allowing for cultural growth and greater employee satisfaction.
As an objective third party, TalenTrust is able to not only administer a quarterly anonymous survey, but our un-biased data analysis and presentation of results allows for Ascent's leaders to receive the delivered findings from an impartial perspective.
The Results
As a result of this partnership with TalenTrust, Ascent has seen numerous benefits to their business. They are better with not only data transparency, but also acting on that data. They have a good pulse year-round on how their communities, teams, and individual asscoiates are feeling rather than just a snapshot once a year. This has led to better knowledge of why individuals are leaving, and the opportunity to increase the longevity of tenure throughout their communities.
A strong pulse on their people's experience of culture has also allowed Ascent to empower their associates to embrace their core values in a more tangible way on a day-to-day basis and encourage new hires and current team members to do the same. This cultural alignment has resulted in greater employee satisfaction; higher performance; and more employee involvement cross-functionally.