Foundations Health Adds Director of Vibes to Boost Recruitment, Transform Perceptions

At a glance, there’s not much cultural overlap between the nursing home industry and the world of cryptocurrency. Yet Foundations Health Solutions is taking a page from the upper echelons of technology startups to garner hype for the nursing home industry.

The secret ingredient?

Vibes.

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Ohio-based Foundations, which manages over 60 skilled nursing facilities and has over 8,000 employees, has brought on social media influencer and long-time senior care executive Dean Palombaro as the company’s new director of vibes. Akin to roles of the same title at crypto companies, the position is a cross between a marketer and an influencer. Palombaro’s main mediums are TikTok and Instagram, where he posts daily videos about what the senior care means to both residents and staff.

Dean Palombaro interviews Foundations staff and residents.

Palombaro’s most popular videos include residents offering life and relationship advice, and staff members discussing why they enjoy serving older adults.

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His goal is to boost public perception of nursing homes after pandemic-related headline risk.

The nursing home industry has also had a particularly bright spotlight shone upon it over the last year as the Biden administration has set its sights on a lengthy and wide-ranging reform package that covers everything from staffing to value-based purchasing to financial transparency.

“The media already tells the bad story, the bad story of a bad person doing something terrible and an accident that happens. Well, accidents happen everywhere,” he told Skilled Nursing News. “But who gets blamed, the provider gets blamed.”

Palombaro said that although the skilled nursing industry is considerably slower to adapt to new innovations compared to other job sectors, social media is a powerful and relatively inexpensive tool to help with recruiting and retaining staff.

“I think [providers] have to have the humility to buy into TikTok and Instagram. Leverage the opportunity right now. You know, I think there’s so many providers out there that are fine with just saying, ‘Oh, well, staffing is just going to be a problem.’ Well, that’s not the case. We have to go out there and do things differently,” he said.

Robert Speelman, vice president of culture at Foundations, said he feels the new role is also a great fit for the organization’s goals.

“It’s just to tell that story to this new audience, and this new area that we don’t really understand but Dean does, but we’re beyond excited about it,” Speelman said. “We feel good about what we do as a company, and if we can tell that story better and bring in more people that have a passion for this industry. It’s a win the whole way around.”

How it all began

In 2020, Palombaro began posting every Friday on LinkedIn about senior care and gradually increased the frequency of his posts.

Palombaro’s content reached Speelman, who admitted that up until hiring Palombaro the company didn’t have a specific content or social media strategy, though Speelman had begun experimenting with creating blog posts about nursing assistants and staff.

“I started developing relationships [on LinkedIn] with people throughout the country and really here in Ohio too,” Speelman told Skilled Nursing News. “And that’s where me and Dean connected. My content was mostly frontline staff, nursing assistants and people at the facilities. His content was residents and things and it was a beautiful story he was telling. And so then he reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, we got to collaborate some time,’ and I’m like, ‘Actually, that would be great.’”

The meeting went well and the Foundations team decided to bring Palombaro on full-time.

Breaking down strategy and looking to the future

Although Palombaro has only been with the Ohio operator for a month, he said in his previous roles he leveraged his internet celebrity and company content to convert temporary nurse aides into full-time staff and recruit new talent.

“I also think it creates so many more opportunities to capitalize on employees’ personal brands,” he said. “You know, an employee’s personal brand is not a threat to your organization. It is a gigantic opportunity that more companies need to start leveraging more companies to promote these values.”

Allowing staff to engage with company branded social media accounts – and even build their own personal personal brands – helps with retention by creating an environment where employees feel more like stakeholders.

“You’re going to attract talent that’s going to be cohesive with your culture,” he said. “Everyone feels a sense of belonging. They’re valued, appreciated, and they’re recognized for their hard work every single day. And there’s a lot of providers out there, nurses that don’t have that in their current position.”

Currently, Palombaro’s social media strategy includes posting on TikTok and Instagram four to five times a day – although one day, he hopes to pass the microphone to more staff members.

“I eventually want to create positions where there’s STNA content creators, RN content creators, LPN content creators, and you do user generated content, where you pay them X amount of dollars per week for one Instagram post or one TikTok, it doesn’t have to be about patient care, but has to be about their experience there and help promote what we do in aging services,” he said.

But for now, his main goals are to increase brand awareness and establish an authority in the industry in the social media space.

“Foundations enabled me to combine my passion for serving older adults and my passion for creating content around that into a position that can create a bigger impact,” Palombaro said. “Having a company that values that and values what I can bring to the table is definitely something that I’m very, very grateful for.”

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