Membership News

We Hear You! – Results from the Mass-ALA Membership Surveys

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Thank you to everyone who contributed last fall to Mass-ALA’s Assisted Living Provider Member Survey and our Business Partner Member Survey. Your responses provide valuable feedback that not only helps us understand your satisfaction with Mass-ALA’s programs and services, but also provides opportunities for us to implement changes to better meet your needs.

We were happy to see high levels of satisfaction from our assisted living providers, who make up most of the members in our network. We pledge to continue to provide and look for ways to improve your most valued benefits, including regulatory and EOEA compliance assistance, advocacy and public policy, and educational training and webinars. And we pledge to work on the areas you’ve identified as needing improvement, such as broadening the reach of our regulatory compliance Helpline to aide more members and adjusting our Nurses and Clinical Coordinators annual training to be a more valuable benefit to communities.

Already in 2024, we’ve hosted our first Assisted Living Advocacy Day since 2016, and the first part of our refreshed 3-part Nurses and Clinical Coordinators training series. We are looking for opportunities, such as through our Member Connections meetings, to better connect members to important benefits that could impact the success of their communities. And we’re actively collaborating with our Committees and other stakeholders on some of the biggest issues you reported that impact assisted living communities today: staffing vacancies, recruitment, and maintaining compliance with EOEA.

Sometimes, membership surveys serve more purposes than just getting general feedback on membership satisfaction. They also provide an opportunity to gain valuable data on growing needs and trends across our sector. In this membership survey, we posed two questions to providers related to workforce development, asking (1) what types of educational benefits they provide to their workforce, and (2) what types of educational benefits they would find most valuable in Mass-ALA providing to members. We are pleased to share our findings with you and look forward to using them in the planning of future initiatives:

• Many communities that responded to our survey currently provide tuition reimbursement, online education through a learning management platform, or in-house training (training provided by the company/community’s staff due to their expertise in the subject matter) as educational benefits to their employees.
• Some communities also provide educational scholarships, classes on professional/career growth, identify career pathways for staff, offer leadership development reimbursement, or offer specialized degree/certification reimbursement.

For our business partners, we were pleased to see your satisfaction in membership overall and high satisfaction with certain benefits.  We’ll continue to optimize and improve these key benefits, such as the online searchable directory of business partners, our print Business Partner Directory, our networking events, and assisted living news and alerts, so you can continue to receive high-value benefits as part of your annual membership fee.

The survey did identify areas where we can improve the programs and services provided to business partner members. We hear your concerns about being able to reach the clients you want to meet without there being an additional cost. Getting the time and attention of communities that would benefit from your products and services can be difficult and often costly. We know this is the biggest concern for our business partners, and we’re working on solutions that would benefit both businesses and potential consumers.

To that end, last year we started our Assisted Living Networking Nights (which are free for members) with the dual purpose of bringing together professionals for a fun night of networking, and helping communities connect with our business partners that would provide value to them. As we continue to expand our Networking Nights with more events planned in 2024, we’ll also consider new opportunities to provide additional networking and marketing opportunities for our business partner members.

Again, we’re so thankful to those of you who provided valuable data through our membership surveys. We are excited to keep using this information throughout the year to continually enhance your membership and add more value to your benefits.

If you were not able to participate in your membership survey last year, there will be an opportunity to participate soon. We will relaunch both surveys in the fall of 2024 via email, so keep an eye out for more details around that time. For any questions about our 2023 membership surveys or your benefits, please contact me at cbroughton@mass-ala.org or 781.622.5999 x110.

Decatur House celebrated Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day in style, and enjoyed a wonderful dinner provided by the hard-working students of a local technical high school. And they would like to share their new blog posting, “Tips for Visiting Elderly Relatives” here.

The Village at Willows Crossings celebrated Black History Month by learning about Harriet Tubman. They also celebrated Mardi Gras, and threw a staff member a baby shower!