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Brad Bushby, Schlegel Villages

On Schlegel's forward-thinking responses to a changing society, seniors' empowerment, and helpful technology

In our Inspiring Leaders Series, we interview visionaries driven by a passion for excellence that’s manifest in Canada’s most innovative retirement communities. 
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Thought leadership at Schlegel Villages

[In a Schlegel Village], you become a citizen of that community. We ask residents, 'What experiences do you want to share?' Our seniors have so much to give! A lot of them still want to work or volunteer or educate people on their past experiences. At Schlegel, we do a really good job of enabling and allowing people to do just that.

In our interview with Brad Bushby, VP of Sales, Marketing and Technology at Schlegel Villages, he shares their company’s response to recent societal changes, and how Schlegel combats ageism and empowers seniors within their villages. Technology has a role to play in both of these former aspects, but it takes a back seat to human-centeredness.

What’s changed in the senior living industry in the last few years?

I think the industry has become a bit more of a care-based industry. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but it's something that's needed.

Our population is getting older in retirement homes. They're coming in with higher levels of acuity, so higher needs and higher care needs, which is also making the product a bit more expensive, as well, with higher levels of care and higher care needs. 

We've also had challenges around finding enough staffing to make sure that we can deliver the care that we need to our residents. I don't know if that was a factor of COVID or that's just a factor of what's been happening over the last few years in health care, where there's just an increased need for more and more people in health care. And not [enough] people want to work in the sector.

But that's become our number one goal, and it's the number one part of our strategic plan in the next five years: to attract enough people that are culturally aligned, who want to work in retirement homes and long term care homes. 

I'm on the board at ORCA. It's one of the things that we talk about quite often: How can we attract more and more people to our sector? It's a wonderful place to work! It's incredibly inspiring and fills your heart every day. The stories that you hear [from] of our communities. But it's a place that's also sometimes challenging and difficult. And it's not easy work either. It's very rewarding, but we need to influence the younger population that this is a career path that more and more of them should be taking a look at. 

How has Schlegel Villages adapted to recent changes, to better serve today’s seniors?

[2:18]
We've been a pretty forward-thinking organization. We have The Research Institute for Aging that we're partnering with in Waterloo. We're partnered with The University of Waterloo. We've got multiple partnerships with colleges and universities and living classrooms throughout our Villages.

So we actually train the next generation of worker right in our village, and they're able to actually study and work in our villages. So colleges like Conestoga and Mohawk, we do a lot of wonderful work with them in our buildings. And that's evolved over the last few years.

What other changes is Schlegel Villages spearheading?

[2:53]
We're investing in building more long term care and retirement communities when it feels like the rest of the market has really slowed down. We've put our foot on the pedal a little bit.

Our villages are full continuums of care. Anything from true independent living with independent living apartments, with fridges and stoves and no meals, to full meal plans, to higher levels of care in memory care on our retirement side. But then we also have long term care as part of every single village.

We start with long term care. It's really the foundation and the corner cornerstone of what we do as an organization. And it really speaks to our mission.

Our mission is to really bring those values in that home environment (that holistic health care home environment) to as many people as we possibly can across the province. One of the things that we're doing right now currently is we've got seven brand new long term care homes basically in the ground this year.

What’s one unique thing Schlegel Villages does?

[3:56]
The one thing that pops into my head is it's Senior's Month. The one thing that we do every Senior's Month is we have a program called The Green Bench. It really is designed to combat ageism.

So what we're doing this month is we're taking the Green Benches out to different libraries, and we've actually taken them to some high schools, too. Our residents sit on these Green Benches and tell stories and talk to different generations. We do it every year. It's a wonderful thing to see.

It's awesome to see just people come and sit down and have conversations with our residents and just hear all of the great wisdom that comes from our resident population. You get it on our podcast, too, but it's even better when it's live in person, where you can just go, sit, and have a conversation. So we've got them going on all over the province right now, in different libraries and different schools. It's pretty awesome to be a part of it.

Ted Hudson (part of our marketing team) is really the guy that sets these things up and gets them going every year. It just shows the values of who we are, how our residents are so important to us and have so much knowledge. The more we can do to combat ageism and the more we can do to change the culture around aging is really important to us. And this is a big deal for us, over the month of June.

Questions that we ask residents when they move in [are]: "What value are you going to add to the community? What hobbies do you do? What experiences do you have that you can share with other people?" And really, you become a citizen of that community. And how can you contribute to that as well?

Our seniors have so much to give! A lot of them still want to work or they want to volunteer, or they want to educate people on their past experiences. At Schlegel, we do a really good job of enabling and allowing people to do that. We've got an awesome podcast that's basically run by our residents, and one of our residents is a host. We've got all kinds of activities. All of the stories we tell about our residents and their experiences [show] just how amazing and wonderful they are as people!

That's what we need to do more of, as an industry: Tell those types of stories and feature our wonderful residents and their ability to add value to the environments they're living in.

What technological innovations are helping you serve seniors in your communities better?

[6:30]
We're always trying to evolve. We [constantly add] technology here and there to help meet the needs of residents. We've got dining room robots in some of our communities that we would never have had before. The robots aren’t there to take somebody's job, but they're actually there to supplement the labor… To allow servers to stay in the dining room and interact with residents more. 

There's one at Tansley Woods right now, which has been really successful. The residents took to it. [It's] funny because it's a robot, but it'll sing you “Happy Birthday,” and you almost treat it like a person. Eventually, you get used to the robot milling around the dining room.

But it's really there only to do the grunt work. It's really there to bring the food out and bring the plates back to the kitchen. The way it works is it uses WiFi, and it's got a predetermined path that it takes through the dining room. It knows which tables to stop at. It knows when to stop at them. It knows when to go back and pick them up.

But it allows our servers to not have to run back and forth into the dining room. They actually spend more time with residents, which residents have commented on. "I get to see Sarah or Jane more often," because now they're not running back and forth, and they're not so tired from carrying those heavy plates up from the dining room. 

Technology is going to enable better connection with residents by supplementing some of the menial tasks that are out there.

I also think AI is going to do the same thing. I think it's going to enable us to focus more on residents. Actually, AI is great when it comes to data. And we've got tons of data in our industry. To be able to interpret the data quickly, to use AI to actually tell us what's going on, both clinically and operationally in our villages is important. And we've really started down the road on AI and data at Schlegel Villages.

What technological innovations are coming to market soon?

[8:41]
One of the challenges we have is clinical time at the bedside, and clinical time [or] nursing time is really important. Nurses are hard to find. Good nurses are really hard to find…  We spend a lot of time care-planning and updating documentation in both retirement and long-term care. 

Imagine you have an AI listening device, even your phone, and you're having a care conference with a family and a resident. You're talking about that resident's care needs. Well [with AI], your phone is actually doing the care planning for you. So when you're done, you get AI-generated care plans that come out.

The nurses review them, make sure that they're correct. Then the nurse doesn't have to spend half an hour [for] every care plan, sitting in front of a computer, inputting all the data and building these care plans. So it frees up a ton of time for nursing and clinical staff to spend more time with residents [and] with families, interact more frequently, and provide a better care experience.

What technology is going to be important in the near future?

[9:51]
I think the next generation is really where we're going to need to step up. Everyone has a smartphone. Everyone interacts with technology. We've got smart houses and devices that we talk to. So 5, 10 years from now is where this is really going to come to a head. The advice that we've given a lot of operators in retirement, and we did in we see a couple of weeks ago when we presented was you're going to need to make sure that your WiFi systems, your cybersecurity, those types of fundamentals are robust to get ready for this. Because if you don't have that and you don't have it down pat and figured out how to expand it as these needs grow, you're going to be so far behind once that happens. So we as an industry need to get on that now.

How will Schlegel Villages’ model evolve in the near future?

[10:44]
You're going to see some bigger villages. That's the one way that it's evolving. As an example, our Oakville project has 640 long-term care beds. And there'll be a number of retirement homes that will go on that property as well. So we call it the City of Schlegel Villages... because it's going to be a fairly significant building on that property.

But what hasn't changed is our neighborhood model. As big as the building gets, it still consists of neighborhoods. Our neighborhoods have the same team members that work in those neighborhoods. It feels like a sense of a community within a community. So you're part of this bigger Schlegel Village, but you're still living in a neighborhood with people that you know.

You get that warm and fuzzy feeling. You feel secure and safe because people surrounding you care for you [and] care about you. It doesn't matter that the buildings have gotten bigger on those properties.

Our philosophy of having large main streets with amenities along them will continue, as much as building costs go up and that space is valuable. It's valuable to our residents. It's valuable to who we are as an organization, to make sure that we've got those big open spaces [with] amenities on Main Street, like hair salons and libraries. We've got a pet shop in most of our villages, now, where it has pets [along with] our stores and our hobby shops. All those things are going to continue to be on Main Street.

Main Street is who we are. It's what we're about. So you'll see that in every single village as we continue to grow and continue to expand.

What’s the biggest trend shaping the future of retirement living in Canada?

[12:40]
Consolidation of the industry is a significant trend. It's an interesting business right now because there's a lot of investment going into senior housing. And then you'll have a third-party company that's operating on behalf of an investment trust or operating on behalf of a real estate investment trust or a pension fund that has huge ownerships across the industry in Canada. And a lot of these businesses are consolidating.

Of course, Schlegel Villages is very, very different from that. It's awesome to be part of a private business owned by a family [whose] entire mission is to bring more of what we do to more seniors. So, as much as we need to keep doing that, keep doing a good job of it, keep having good occupancy, and making sure that we keep having good returns to be able to support that growth, it's not as challenging a situation when you've got outside organizations, a lot of big American companies looking for investments and return on investments in the space.

So you're seeing the consolidation of the industry that's impacting that a little bit. It commoditizes the products a little bit more instead of a lot of the single-ownership mom-and-pop retirement communities being bought up by a lot of the bigger organizations, too. Again, it provides scale and efficiencies in purchasing and things like that. So it may enable the price to stay down a little bit in some of those instances. But it's just one of the things that's happening across the industry right now.

More about Schlegel Villages

Schlegel Villages are found in cities across the province of Ontario. Witness the vibrancy of Main Street in a Schlegel Village near you, beginning by researching them and contacting them from our page on Schlegel Villages.

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