Get inspired our latest webinar: Elevating Resident Engagement: Strategies for Innovative Program Development!
May 26, 2023
Cogir Senior Living
Canada
Retirement & Assisted Living
Welbi’s resident experience platform digitizes and automates tasks that life enrichment teams perform every day. The platform provides efficient tools that replace manual and outdated processes for attendance-taking, documenting, program planning, and more. With Welbi, life enrichment teams save hundreds of hours on administrative tasks. This means more time to spend engaging with residents and improving their overall experience.
Welbi is part of the daily life of hundreds of life enrichment teams across Canada and the United States. What you may not know about Welbi is that the platform is designed to support life enrichment departments at every level — including regional and executive directors. Let’s go behind the scenes to see how the Welbi platform supports Caroline in her role as Regional Manager of Recreation.
Caroline Proulx is a Regional Manager at Cogir Senior Living with over thirty years of experience in therapeutic recreation.
Caroline Proulx is a Regional Manager at Cogir Senior Living with over thirty years of experience in therapeutic recreation. Cogir is a leading owner, operator, developer, and innovator in the senior living sector. Through its portfolio of partnerships, Cogir now employs 16,000 colleagues in North America and operates 220 seniors’ residences (160 of which are in Canada) with some 40,000 units (32,750 of which are in Canada).
Caroline’s role as Regional Manager is to ensure that each of Cogir’s communities is providing the best possible resident experience. Her duties include auditing sites to determine if they are meeting provincial and corporate standards, developing strategies to improve resident engagement and program attendance, and visiting sites to support life enrichment teams in meeting their goals. Her love of connecting with people and engaging with residents drives her to be creative and innovative in all that she does.
Cogir’s journey with Welbi began in 2018. Before being acquired by Cogir, Revera Retirement embarked on a vigorous search for a digital recreation platform. Before Welbi, Revera’s life enrichment teams were being slowed down by manual processes at both the site level and the executive level. Team members were spending more time filling out paperwork at a desk and less time engaging with residents. Revera’s leadership team knew there was a way to modernize their practices and set out to find a solution that would work with their existing policies and standards.
“It was a rigorous two-year process. We were looking for a company that could understand what we needed and work alongside us,” says Caroline. “We had pilot projects along the way to solidify our decision to move forward. It was so easy to choose because Welbi was a front-runner through the process. They continue to be very evolving as a platform, and we offer suggestions and work together to this day.”
Cogir Senior Living saw the investment made in Welbi and kept the platform active as they easily could see the new reality born from recreation management software. Below are just a few examples of ROI that have since become possible for Cogir with Welbi.
Caroline’s top priority as a Regional Manager is serving Cogir’s residents. She wants to see her life enrichment teams doing what they do best — connecting with residents, planning meaningful programs, and increasing engagement. Digitizing and automating recreation tasks frees life enrichment staff from paperwork so they can do what they love.
“The impact from a time-management perspective has been huge,” says Caroline. “We saw that approximately 25-30 hours were removed from our clerical tasks, so we could spend more time with residents.”
Digitization also allows teams to create programs that match their residents’ needs and interests in a fraction of the time they used to spend.
“When we were doing the pilot project, I wanted to compare how much time the manual practice would take compared to an automated platform,” Caroline says. “I regretted my decision after doing it because it took me two hours to find all the residents in that particular community who may be interested in a mentorship volunteer program. What was frustrating was that there was also missing information and assessments that were incomplete.”
“When I did it in Welbi, in five clicks and less than twenty seconds I was able to find that information. Having that quick availability was unbelievable!”
As Regional Manager, Caroline reviews documentation to determine if a community is meeting Cogir’s strict standards and provides support. Gathering the information she needs to prepare for home visits can be a time-consuming process.
“Before utilizing Welbi, it would take me up to two hours to review the different documentation that we need to compare to our company standards and expectations,” she says. “Because I didn’t have access to everything, we spent a lot of time tracking down information and auditing during the home visit, which was way too time-consuming. We felt that we weren’t able to leverage our resources the best way that we could.”
Tracking down information left little time to tackle what was most important — addressing areas of improvement and how Caroline could help the team achieve their goals. In Caroline’s view, her time is best spent when she can brainstorm ideas with the activity team to improve resident engagement.
“Now, with Welbi, it takes me less than thirty minutes to prepare for my visit. I’m able to get all the information I need quickly in Welbi, so by the time I go to the residence, we can dig into what we need to do to make a bigger and better difference for our residents. Diving into the things that matter has been a game-changer for us in how we’re able to support our teams at the community level.”
Like many senior living providers, Cogir has a robust list of standards and key performance indicators that their communities strive to meet. On top of that, they must also remain in compliance with government regulations. Welbi allows regional directors to view these metrics for their full portfolio of communities all in one place, so they can follow up with teams. The platform also tracks how close teams are to meeting these KPIs.
“In the Welbi platform, we’re able to measure approximately 16 of our standards and KPIs,” Caroline shares. “We’re able to see in the Goals area of Welbi how we are faring. It’s very encouraging for our team members to see themselves succeed over time. If we see that we’re close to meeting a standard this month, we know that next month, we’re going to ge
Having access to this information in one platform enables comparison between sites and facilitates conversations with teams and stakeholders.
“The data that is aggregated in the platform at the local level can also be viewed at the regional and national level so we can see the trends,” Caroline explains. “This allows us to have amazing, targeted conversations with our stakeholders and colleagues so that we can all help each other align with our mission goals at Cogir.”
With its high-level overview of Cogir’s sites, Welbi provides leadership teams with the information they need to make the best decisions for their organization. The platform’s real-time insights and digital tools allow Regional Managers like Caroline to analyze the data collected by their life enrichment teams.
“When we are creating our annual business plans, we use Welbi to inform those decisions. We use it to see what the future can hold, where we want to focus our efforts, where the learning opportunities are for our team, and where we can support the sales process,” says Caroline.
“An example that comes to mind is if we have a residence that would like to purchase a new bus. We’re able to see if the purchase makes sense — that’s a huge financial impact — because we can see in Welbi how many residents have that interest, how many outings we’re actually doing, and how many people are attending them. If there’s low engagement, it just doesn’t make sense.”
With Welbi, Cogir was able to digitize their recreation processes, improve their resident experience, provide better support for their life enrichment teams, and make data-driven decisions about the future of their organization. If you want to hear more about how Caroline leverages the power of Welbi, you can watch the recorded webinar. Would Welbi be a good fit for your life enrichment department? Book a demo with us to discover how Welbi can support your entire team, from recreation staff to regional managers, in improving your resident experience.
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As of 2023, Revera was acquired by Cogir Senior Living. The press release is available here.
