Pegasus Senior Living keeps its mind on the mission by emphasizing the experience of its team members.
Organizations often adopt mission statements that emphasize a high-minded purpose. Sticking to that purpose, though, and keeping the mission in focus through the demands of daily operation can prove to be challenging. For many, the mission simply fades from view when times get tough (or just busy).
Pegasus Senior Living is among those in the senior living field determined to live and operate with its mission forever firmly in focus. The Dallas-based company, which manages dozens of communities, strives to see its work as an opportunity to make a difference in the world – and to help its team members feel the same way.
“Our mission statement is to celebrate and enhance lives with kindness and integrity, and every one of those words is important,” said Chris Hollister, co-founder, CEO and chair of the company.
In order to successfully live up to that mission statement, Hollister and Katheryn “Kat” Pigott, senior vice president of people and culture, said that Pegasus believes the company must emphasize the experience of the company’s team members, working to give them the resources and opportunities to excel while ensuring they can grow as professionals and find their jobs rewarding and fulfilling.
“We all share a very similar philosophy here at Pegasus: when you have happy employees, it creates happy residents – and that will inevitably produce sales for future residents in our communities,” Pigott said. “So we are all about understanding that and making sure that we are being very intentional with what we are providing our employees and making sure that we are giving them the opportunity to tell us what makes them happy.”
Transparency and honesty
The opportunity for team members to share and provide input, in fact, is at the top of the list of priorities for Pegasus. Hollister frequently shares with team members a short Saturday Night Live sketch starring Steve Martin, Jon Lovitz and Phil Hartman called “Permission to Speak Freely,” which depicts characters in the Navy who take the opportunity to be truly open with their feelings by becoming wildly insulting to their superiors. Hollister uses the sketch to underline just how important frankness is to him and the Pegasus executive team.
“When people are never allowed to speak freely, you end up with rumors and innuendo and cliques,” Hollister said. “So, we go around saying this all the time: We’ve got to know the truth out there. If there are serious issues with care or food service or whatever it is, you need to tell us.”
Of course, saying that you are willing to listen and following through on what you hear are two different matters, and Hollister said he wants to make sure Pegasus is never a company that receives input and does nothing about it. For instance, when a health and wellness director recently wrote Hollister an email saying that some new uniforms were scratchy and uncomfortable, Hollister promptly offered her a spot on a committee focused on testing them and seeing how they were working in practice.
“We have to provide employees the avenue to be honest so that they will be very forthcoming about the systems that they use, what they need, what’s working, what’s not working, and I think it takes us at the executive level to say, ‘We have to listen to our teams. Let’s make their days easier. Let’s provide them with the tools to make each day a little bit easier and better for them,’” Hollister said.
Pigott said when she was brought on board at Pegasus she noticed some key details that made the organization feel unique and that made it clear that team members would be in the forefront.
“It’s not very often that the C-suite will look at you and say, ‘Hey, we want you to provide opportunities for growth, to put people first, to be creative and work on our retention strategies,’” Pigott said. “You don’t see that a lot of the time in the C-suite – usually it’s more about cost-cutting, savings, expenses. I think what is beautiful about Pegasus is the understanding that in order to get the right people to take care of our residents, we have to provide for them and differentiate ourselves from our competitors. To have longevity and to retain these individuals is so impactful to our residents. The longer we can retain people and hold true to that, the happier our residents will be.”
Developing, maintaining and enriching a culture that truly emphasizes the experience of workers takes hard work and lots and lots of communication, as well as a commitment to engaging with people.
“Everything we do in senior living is about relationships,” Hollister said.
Pigott said an important part of the Pegasus approach is providing both transparency at the central office and flexibility for the communities. She said frequent visits from the executive team to communities helps strengthen relationships and keep the lines of communication open.
“It’s really about getting to know our people and allowing them an opportunity to tell us how we can better serve them, so they can better serve our residents,” Pigott said. “So we have our PSL culture, but we also respect the local community culture and allow those employees to really drive what that looks like for them in many of our properties.”
Rewarding and recognizing
Retention is a critical KPI for Pegasus, and reward and recognition is a point of emphasis for that KPI. Pigott said Pegasus makes sure that it shares and celebrates team member success stories at the community level so that colleagues can celebrate each other and understand the opportunities that they all have to advance their careers.
Regional leaders have operational plans, and they meet with their executive directors every month. A major topic of conversation each meeting is what is on the calendar for employees that month.
“We’re very intentional about saying, what are you doing this month for your teams to celebrate and reward them?” Hollister said.
Pegasus has a number of programs that extend through all its communities and that are meant to make team members’ lives and experiences better.
“We’re always looking for opportunities to improve their experience, whether it’s through technology or through listening to our employees because their boots on the ground and they have a better perspective at times than we do,” Pigott said. “You also have to look at the different generations that are coming through our workforce and what’s the most important thing to them? It used to be title and pay. Now it’s how much PTO and how much work-life balance they can have.”
Among the efforts dedicated to supporting team leaders is the Pegasus Care program, which was launched soon after an employee suffered a life-altering tragedy. The program provides financial aid during times of hardship.
“We want them to know that we understand that you have a life outside of here, and we understand that sometimes your life can interrupt your work, so let us help you get through tough times when they come up since you’ve been helping us and serving our residents,” Hollister said.
Pegasus also features a spot bonus program that involves team members being awarded gift cards – texted to their phones – “when we catch them doing wonderful things,” Hollister said.
Among the most attractive opportunities for employees is the chance to be a mentor. Pigott said providing mentors for new hires not only leads to a marked increase in retention for the new hires but it also strengthens the relationship of the mentor with the organization and gives them opportunities to grow as leaders and professionals (as well as giving them access to additional pay).
“We identify key leaders for the mentor program, and it’s a great way of providing them with an opportunity to be a leader and putting them on a career path to be leaders in our organization one day,” Pigott said. “We want them to see those possibilities.”
The senior living labor market can be intensely competitive, making it important to differentiate yourself among your peers. Hollister said that starts with wages and showing with pay that your company values the work that its team members do – Pegasus revamped its benefits package to provide better health insurance for team members – but it also extends to the time and resources that are devoted to training and helping workers understand and excel in their roles so that they can take pride in their work.
Embracing the responsibility
Hollister believes Pegasus is enjoying some “buzz” from those who work in the industry and the applications the company receives for key job positions reflects that.
Hollister said working in senior living ultimately is “a breathtaking responsibility.” Pigott said Pegasus wants its workers to feel a bond with both residents and their colleagues and to feel enriched by the work that they do and pride in that responsibility.
Annual surveys by Pegasus show that an overwhelming number of frontline workers say that the residents are the favorite part of their job, she said.
“They’re feeling the connection and that’s so important,” Pigott said. “We want to find people in the recruiting stages who have a servant’s heart. This business isn’t for everyone, and so understanding in the recruiting process that someone can be a dedicated servant leader is very important. And we try to be as honest as possible about what that role is going to look like, because not every day is going to be filled with activities and fun. Some days it’s going to be hard, and I think they appreciate that transparency.”
Hollister said Pegasus leaders understand that they are not perfect and striving for continuous improvement is not just important but necessary.
“There’s always room for improvement, especially when you listen to people,” Hollister said.
The most thoughtful efforts can prove to be the most meaningful. For instance, Pegasus residents have access to feedback cards where they can share examples of how a certain community team member has helped make their experience better. Pigott said the residents are eager to provide the feedback and to thank those who have helped them. One community executive director took all the cards for a year and posted them together on a board in an employee area where workers come to clock in, so that all the team members could see the impact they were having on the residents in one compelling collage. Pigott said the team members expressed gratitude for the display, finding it powerful and a reminder of why they work in the field that they chose.
“Everybody likes to be thanked and told that they’re doing a good job,” Pigott said. “It’s simple gestures of appreciation, and that really ties back to the integrity of who we are in our mission statement – it’s kindness and we try to live by that every day.”
