Personalization is more than a buzzword in the senior living industry. When communities truly provide a personalized experience—from person-centered care to engagement programming tailored to residents’ interests—they help foster a sense of well-being, dignity, and satisfaction. Research shows that when residents have opportunities to pursue their interests and connect with others, they experience improved mental, emotional, and physical health.
Personalizing resident experiences can be easier in theory than practice. Whether your operation is one community or dozens across multiple campuses, keeping track of numerous residents with various preferences and needs can be unsustainable or impossible, depending on existing resources.
How can operators provide a personalized resident experience at scale, understanding and incorporating each resident’s unique preferences into their community experience?
The key is implementing systems and processes, supported by technology, that make personalization a seamless part of daily operations. In fact, in our latest Tech Report survey, the majority of senior living operators said they use or plan to use technology that helps staff provide personalized experiences. By embedding personalization into daily workflows, operators enable staff to create meaningful, tailored interactions without adding to their workload.
In this two-part series, we’ll explore practical strategies for scaling personalization in senior living.
In part one, we focus on simplifying the process of capturing and storing resident information to inform engagement programming and social connections. In part two, we’ll explore how to leverage this data to customize each resident’s experience and empower both residents and their families to shape their community experience.
Traditionally, staff provided personalized experiences through direct interactions—remembering details about residents’ families, hobbies, and preferences. While this high-touch approach can work within small communities, it doesn’t scale effectively across a large community or multiple campuses. This approach also relies heavily on staff memory, and critical resident details can be lost when staff members leave.
The key to ensuring resident background information is properly maintained lies in the resident onboarding process. By capturing information on residents’ hobbies, interests, and preferences right when they move in, operators can ensure that they have a holistic picture on their residents in a way that scales, even when staff members move on.
While it’s common practice for staff to interview residents and take notes in real-time or later transcribe from a recording, this process takes hours out of staff’s already busy schedules. It also leaves room for missed information, leaving staff to guess when it comes to capturing the right information in order to tailor experiences.
A streamlined, AI-enhanced resident onboarding process addresses these challenges. An AI-enhanced resident onboarding solution can automatically transcribe recorded resident interviews and even categorize their likes, dislikes, and interests into their dedicated resident profile.
This not only significantly reduces the need for manual transcription and data entry; it also ensures that essential resident information is captured from the start, remains within the community, and is easily accessible to all staff—even as team members change over time.
Capturing resident preferences is just the first step—making this data readily available is equally important. A centralized system should store and categorize resident information, ensuring that any staff member can quickly access details about a resident’s background, career, hobbies, and personal history.
For example, if a new resident was a musician or an avid gardener, having this information readily available allows staff to engage them in relevant activities from day one. When a new staff member or volunteer joins, they can quickly get up to speed on each resident’s interests, making interactions more meaningful.
Once resident data is centralized, it can be used to tailor community activities to residents’ interests. Senior living residents bring a lifetime of experiences, hobbies, and passions with them, and many join communities hoping to continue and expand upon these interests. Engagement programming should reflect their individuality, helping them lead fulfilling lives while fostering social connections
Technology plays a key role in scaling this level of personalization. Tools that integrate resident preference data into engagement programming, like our AI-enhanced calendar management solution, enable staff to create more relevant and engaging activities. By aligning activities with residents’ interests, communities can offer experiences that resonate on a personal level, promoting both individual fulfillment and social connection.
Additionally, a built-in repository of clinically-backed engagement content ensures that staff can quickly pair activities with meaningful, research-supported content, further enhancing the resident experience.
Capturing and organizing resident information is just the beginning of a personalization strategy. In part two, we’ll explore how operators can take personalization to the next level by leveraging data to customize each resident’s daily experience. We’ll also discuss how empowering residents and their families to shape their own community experience can further enhance engagement and satisfaction.