A dynamic partnership exists between LeadingAge, our state partners, and members around the country. Consider, for example, the ways in which we are each responding to our field’s workforce crisis:
LeadingAge members are determined to tackle workforce challenges head-on in their local communities, where they know the players, the competition, and the market levers better than anyone. With grit and ingenuity, they are testing out myriad small-scale strategies to address staffing shortages—like rebooting HR with new job functions and organizational positioning; creating their own staffing agencies; involving residents in staff recruitment, onboarding, and mentoring; hiring recruitment navigators to walk candidates through the hiring process; providing access to training that leads to new career paths; and investing in technology to create hiring efficiencies. And that’s just a sampling.
Our state partners are dogged in pursuing state workforce solutions relating to funding, regulatory support, and other measures.
And LeadingAge is persistent and emphatic in advocating for bigger, long-term, systemwide workforce solutions that can only be implemented at the federal level. We’re fighting hard for immigration reform, regulatory relief and sensemaking, increased federal funding, and other large-scale interventions. We’re also researching and disseminating information about new approaches to recruitment and retention.
There’s an important lesson here. It takes all of us, working together, to successfully address workforce challenges. This lesson can easily be applied to how we go about addressing many other challenges facing our field in these volatile times.
The bottom line: All of us—members, state partners, and LeadingAge—are focusing on the same issues. We may carry out our work in different ways, in different arenas, and through a different lens, but that work is in perfect alignment. I find this synchronicity to be very reassuring and a cause for optimism. I hope you do too.
The good news? We don’t have to choose between implementing national solutions and implementing local solutions to address our shared challenges. Quite the contrary. We’re much more likely to succeed if we work locally and nationally and if we take both small-scale and large-scale approaches to that work.
I’ll keep you informed about our work at the national level. I hope you’ll keep me informed about your work at home.
I’m confident that our complementary work will move us closer to reaching our shared goal: ensuring that older adults will always have access to the high-quality services and supports they deserve.
