Picture this: your activities staff spends hours brainstorming, researching, and planning monthly calendars. They do their best to create personalized programming, but don’t have an easy way to access or update resident preference data. After creating the calendar, they also need to promote activities and events to encourage resident and family participation. To juggle all these tasks and maximize the time they spend facilitating the activities, they often end up bringing work home.
If this scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. For 35% of senior living operators—and an even higher 52% at multi-site organizations—creating activity calendars is the most labor-intensive task. With ongoing staffing shortages, finding ways to streamline calendar creation is critical for improving both resident engagement and staff satisfaction.
How can operators promote resident engagement, offering personalized and fresh monthly activity calendars while making sure staff workloads remain manageable? Here, we outline activity planning best practices that senior living communities use to support staff and deliver enriching programming to residents.
Creating community activities that truly resonate with residents requires a deep understanding of their interests and preferences. Traditionally, communities have depended on individual staff members’ knowledge of resident preferences to inform programming. While this approach may work in smaller, stable communities, the reality for many communities is that their staff and resident population shifts frequently. To ensure programming remains personalized and scalable, communities need systems to collect, store, and utilize resident preference data effectively—allowing them to adapt and deliver engaging activities even as their population evolves.
Personalization starts at move-in, with an intake process that captures each resident’s likes, dislikes, and hobbies. Ideally, communities have an activity planning software that can store this information in a digital resident profile, making it accessible and editable to all staff members. Then, activities staff can easily incorporate resident preferences into activity programming, without relying on their memory for details like which residents like bocce ball.
Aside from data on resident likes and dislikes, having an activity calendar solution that tracks attendance can also help staff understand which activities are popular and which they can discontinue. By having easily accessible resident preference data, staff members in all areas of the community can play a role in personalizing life enrichment programming, helping residents feel seen and excited to participate in activities.
Having a centralized place to store resident preference data is just one part of the activity planning equation. Operators can help their staff streamline the calendar creation process even further with tools that harness resident preferences and make it simple to generate activities and create calendars with ease.
One of the most time-consuming aspects of calendar creation is brainstorming activity ideas, making sure to consider factors like available resources, weather, and residents’ varying levels of physical and cognitive ability. An activity planning software can facilitate this process, leveraging AI to make it easy to generate activity ideas that consider all these factors.
For example, staff members can enter a prompt like “outdoor musical activity with indoor backup plan,” and the AI-enhanced calendar solution can generate ideas like “nature sing-along” or “guess the song trivia” complete with a materials list, detailed description, and facilitator notes. This eliminates hours of brainstorming and research while keeping activities creative and diverse.
Anyone who’s worked in a senior living community knows that activities don’t always go as planned. Participation might be low, materials might not be readily available, or external factors like weather or technical issues might require a last-minute pivot.
A clinically-backed content repository empowers staff to adapt seamlessly in these moments. With access to brain games, exercise videos, or virtual museum tours, staff can quickly pivot to engaging alternatives that address residents' cognitive, physical, and social wellness. Combined with AI-assisted tools that suggest backup activities, this ensures programming remains dynamic and engaging—without derailing staff or resident schedules.
Another way to ease the workload on staff is to empower other community members to assist with activity planning. A user-friendly software that includes clear facilitator notes in the activity description can help even non-activities staff to feel empowered to step in, which can be especially helpful during busy periods or staffing gaps.
Resident-led programs are also a win-win: they encourage peer connections while reducing staff involvement. A resident might lead a book club, host a crafting session, or organize a walking group, enriching the community dynamic.
Once calendars are created, communities need to have a way for staff to easily publish and promote them to encourage attendance. An activity planning software with communication capabilities can allow staff members to easily share the monthly calendar in a newsletter or project onto digital displays, keeping residents, family members, and the greater community informed of upcoming events. If the platform also includes a dedicated portal for residents and family members, they can also easily access the calendar, sign up for activities, and get in-app reminders. Widely accessible and visible digital activity calendars help encourage resident and family participation, while reducing staff members’ manual workload.
Creating personalized, enriching activities doesn’t have to overburden your staff. By embracing technology like AI-enhanced planning solutions, clinically-backed content libraries, and automated communication systems, senior living communities can deliver dynamic programs that delight residents and empower staff.
When staff are supported with the right tools and processes, they have more time to focus on meaningful interactions with residents—enhancing the overall community experience. Get in touch with us to learn more about how the right senior living activity planning software can help you show employee appreciation and streamline community operations