Employee High Turnover Issues at Brookdale Senior Living

Employee High Turnover at Turnover at Brookdale Senior Living: An Investigative Research Project

Brookdale Senior Living Solutions is an organization that owns and operates retirement homes across the United States. Established in 1978 and with headquarters housed in Brentwood, Tennessee, the company is the largest operator running 60,000 across 680 locations and over 62,550 employees as of 2017. In the 2010s, the organization faced a significant problem with the high turnover of employees, especially in the three leadership positions of the executive director, head clinician, and sales manager (Smith, 2016). Therefore, the current study aims to research employee high turnover issues at Brookdale Senior living.  

Goals and Objectives

            The goals of the current project are to determine the causes of high turnover, the impact it has had on the organization (if any), and what the organization has done to address the problem. Based on these three goals, the objective of the current study is to establish a clear picture of the turnover situation at Brookdale and, where possible, provide recommendations.

Methodology

            Between 2010 and 214, the organization experienced positive retention of employees, with the number of employees peaking in 2014 at almost 60,000. Between 2016 and 2019, however, the organization experienced negative growth as more employees left than those hired to replace them, indicating a high and unhealthy employee turnover rate. Thus, to better understand the dynamics behind these changes, qualitative research focused on a sample of Brookdale’s former employees who were willing to share their experiences at the organization.

            A qualitative approach was preferred because it provides detailed descriptions of complex phenomena from the point of view of those who experience the phenomena (Ahmad et al., 2019). These points of view include experiences, opinions, insights, and ideas, which form the basis for qualitative data. As a result, there was a need for data collection tools that captured detailed qualitative data with the option of seeking follow-ups and clarification on unclear issues. According to Datko (2015), semi-structured interviews can serve this purpose efficiently because they allow for both defined and open-ended questions (and answers).

            The research involved tracking down several former employees who have left reviews on websites like Glassdoor and Indeed. Purposive sampling was utilized in choosing these participants. In total, three participants and three other current employees participated in semi-structured interviews. The data then underwent thematic analysis in which core themes were established from coded words and phrases within the consolidated participant responses. Thematic analysis, argued by Vaismoradi and Snelgrove (2019), provides an excellent view of qualitative data and is consistent with the tenets of qualitative research and semi-structured interviews. In the process, ethical considerations like informed consent, anonymity, and privacy of participant information were considered.

Results

            The thematic analysis resulted in three core themes; causes of high turnover, the impact of high turnover, and the company’s reaction to high turnover.

Causes of High Turnover

            The established causes of high employee turnover at Brookdale include insufficient pay, overworking of staff, short-staffing, neglect by management and leadership, lack of support from above, and perceived horrible treatment of employees. Participants 1, 2, and 3 are former employees of the organization. According to P1, Brookdale, as a company, is good, but those who run it, especially from the top, are not team players. “They,” argued P1, “neglect conspicuous issues like understaffing, which causes current employees to be overworked and experience work burnout that drives them out eventually.” According to P2, there are only two medical technicians and two residential assistants handling a 4-story resident with over 100 senior clients most of the time. “Other times, it is only the Ras and medical technicians available in the building.” Participant 3, who was rather radical about the company, argued that the understaffing is intended to ensure that people at the top and stakeholders pocket ample salaries and ROIs at the expense of “overworked and exhausted employees” paid meager salaries. Current employees also aired these problems (P4, P5, and P6). However, in the view of P1, the organization is more interested in heads in the bed, which causes high pressure on sales. However, the challenging nature ...