Staff recruiting and retention, at least when it comes to general education about the skilled nursing industry, is starting at a much earlier age in part due to the ongoing staffing crisis, along with the “silver tsunami” that is aging baby boomers.

More operators have plans to partner with community school districts to teach kids as young as middle school age about the skilled nursing profession, including Milwaukee, Wis.-based Bedrock Healthcare.

Partnerships with high schools and universities surrounding its facilities have blossomed into a broader education effort, Bedrock COO and co-founder Kenneth Nichols told Skilled Nursing News, to get kids familiar with and interested in senior care.

Digging deeper, fostering interest

While attending the Florida Health Care Association’s annual conference in August, Nichols said operators were urged to “dig deeper” in terms of recruiting.

“[Middle school students are] forming some of their beliefs in what they want to do, and [we’re] trying to develop an opportunity and a pathway to get into that environment for that,” explained Nichols, adding that Bedrock had an internal meeting to implement widespread recruiting efforts within a matter of weeks. “That would be our next step.”

Bedrock’s full-time recruiter will be tasked with determining these next steps, including connecting with the right stakeholders and being able to address community-specific environments, Nichols said.

“Every community is a little bit different. Some are more rural and the approach is a little bit different than maybe, you know, some after-school type of opportunities,” noted Nichols, adding that high school students in some cases could turn their last class of the day into hands-on time at a facility.

Ashley Kohls, chief director of operations for Bedrock’s Wisconsin portfolio, said the move allows existing relationships with school districts to “expand,” especially in rural areas.

“We’re all trying to get the same person,” added Nichols, referring to SNF operators. “We have to be creative and strategic as much as possible.”

A study conducted by PHI anticipates about 10,100 nursing assistant jobs will be cut in the next decade due to falling demand, although there will still be about 561,000 total job openings in skilled nursing through 2029.

“Some states, West Virginia, are even considering [closing], where they can’t take care of the patients; we don’t want to be faced with that. We want to make sure we stay ahead of it as much as possible because we certainly don’t want to close our doors by any means,” said Nichols.

Growing into the environment

Currently, Bedrock connects with area high schools, bringing students into facilities to teach them about becoming dietary aides, certified nursing assistants (CNAs) or help as a hospitality aide.

“We’re just thinking of different strategies to grow people into the environment,” said Cara Harris, chief nursing officer for Bedrock. “You don’t have the type of candidates out there anymore like you used to. You have to hire people more for the right attitude, and then grow the skill set in them, which requires a lot more hand-over-hand education.”

The skilled nursing operator runs nine facilities across Kentucky and Tennessee, in addition to Wisconsin, with plans to grow.

Regional teams with strong ties to education help recruiting and retention, but also moving away from interim, contract-based regional leaders has helped the Bedrock team grow staff too.

“We have administrators who have started off in dietary, through the business office or admissions, and we’ve grown them and trained them to be an administrator, because they have that personality, that work ethic … that’s what we love to do with even our frontline staff,” added Kohls.

She calls it a “legacy plan,” to help cultivate the next leaders, with turnover always front-of-mind.