By Jenna Kellerman and Robyn Stone
Enabling team members to pursue their happiness might be the key to solving our workforce crisis, write Jenna Kellerman and Robyn Stone.
LeadingAge’s Annual Meeting 2023 was full of incredible, inspirational speakers from start to finish. That’s not unusual for our yearly gatherings of aging services providers, which typically feature scores of presentations on a variety of topics.
But this year, three presentations stood out. They took place on different days and were delivered by very different presenters. But they all sent a powerful and surprisingly unified message about how the pursuit of happiness might actually be the key to solving our workforce crisis.
During a profoundly personal keynote address on Monday, Nov. 6, social scientist Arthur C. Brooks presented fascinating research about strategies that have the potential to get us all on the path to exponential happiness. Brooks recommended obvious behaviors to ensure a happy second half of life: stop smoking, minimize alcohol, eat healthy, and exercise. He then added three more socially complex ingredients to his happiness recipe:
Establish healthy coping mechanisms.
Pursue continuous learning opportunities.
Build stable, healthy relationships.
Surrounded by thousands of high-level leaders and executives in our field, it was easy to imagine the collective impact we could have if we applied that recipe to every team member in our organizations. Consider how far our field would progress if we helped each team member develop healthy coping mechanisms to combat stress and burnout at work, offered continuous learning and growth so all could progress in meaningful careers, or laid the groundwork for healthy workplace relationships between supervisors and direct reports.
These opportunities for enhanced learning, career growth, and meaningful relationships are precisely what our field needs right now. Brooks was not alone in underscoring that need.
One day earlier, during a similarly inspiring conference session, two speakers illustrated how Brooks’ strategies could change care settings and caregivers nationwide.
Amanda Gruber, director of life enrichment at Three Links Care Center in Northfield, MN, described how her career journey—from nursing assistant to health support specialist to household coordinator to life enrichment director—was accelerated by a dedicated director of nursing who served as Gruber’s mentor and helped her tap into the right mix of support, encouragement, and investment in continuous learning opportunities.
Gruber’s story was inspiring. Sadly, such stories often happen only by chance. One strong leader sees something extraordinary in one strong caregiver. A mentor offers their time, energy, and emotional support, but usually can only manage to invest in one person at a time.
We need more mentors like the one who supported Gruber. But we also need systems designed to elevate all team members to a high level of confidence, professionalism, and drive. Those systems give us our best chance of ensuring that all team members begin their careers with a cohort of peers who take a structured, continuous learning and growth journey, complete with personal and professional mentorship and support.
Anyone who doubts the feasibility of achieving such a lofty goal would have been reassured by Christy Brinkman, senior administrative leader at Essentia Health Oak Crossing in Detroit Lakes, MN. Brinkman described how her organization used grant funds to hire five workforce development coordinators whose sole mission is to help team members develop vital skills, a strong sense of self, and strong relationships.
Programs like this can provide enormous payoffs—including high retention, productivity, and quality outcomes. However, their ongoing success requires that organizations invest their own resources to ensure long-term sustainability after grant funds are depleted.
Making this kind of investment in our teams is essential work. In a Tuesday morning speech, LeadingAge’s incoming Board President, Roberto Muñiz, made it clear that this work can have a profound impact.
Muñiz, who recently celebrated 25 years as the president & CEO of Parker Health Group in Piscataway, NJ, shared his own story of growing up as a “welfare kid” who felt he had no future—until he met three “special and caring individuals” who believed in him, taught him to believe in himself, and supported him in very concrete ways along his career journey. Muñiz urged all LeadingAge members to take the same approach to helping others find their calling.
“Extend an invitation, open a door, and help someone take their first steps to a brighter future,” he urged.
Muñiz, Brooks, Gruber, and Brinkman touched on a theme that should resonate with all of us. We can no longer leave caregivers alone to fight for a better life and quality work. Instead, we must commit ourselves to elevating our team members, investing in systems that promote their exponential happiness, and showing gratitude for our own success through continued investment in a high-quality workforce.
Let this essential and profound work begin.
Robyn I. Stone, DrPH, is senior vice president of research at LeadingAge, and co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston. Jenna Kellerman is director of workforce strategy & development in the LTSS Center’s Washington, DC office.