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David Bird, Verve Senior Living

On building thoughtful residences from the ground up with seniors' wants and needs top-of-mind

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 in action at Verve Senior Living

Each time we build a new home, we go through a process we call 'lessons learned.' We talk about what we've learned from a construction standpoint but also what we've learned [in] operations: What are our residents enjoying? What do they think we should have done differently? Then we incorporate that into the next building design.

David Bird, President and CEO of Verve Senior Living, shares Verve’s evolving vision, focused on resident-centric service and diverse life enrichment opportunities. Verve's thoughtfully built residences incorporate responses to our evolving technology and culture from the ground up. Learn more in the interview transcribed below.

How would you describe changes in the industry since the pandemic?

One of the things that, maybe culturally, we didn't understand but understand better now is the importance of being together with others and spending time with others. [We know] that impacts both your mental health and physical health. I think we all know that if you're sitting by yourself having dinner because maybe your family's away (or whatever), you're less inclined to make a full, proper, balanced meal. You're more inclined to say, "I'll just make something, or maybe I'll grab takeout," or that kind of thing. But if you're having a meal with family and sitting down with somebody, there's a much different feeling to that.

By nature, I think we're social beings, and we like to spend time with each other and with other people who have similar interests to us, in many cases. During the COVID years, there was a lot of worry and trepidation about what might happen and what was around the corner. As we've come out of that, people [now] understand the level of experience and knowledge that we have—particularly in senior care and senior living, with the professionals working for us and the policies and procedures in place to make sure we can look after people and care for them in a safe environment.

I think there was a lot of confusion over what retirement living was prior to COVID, and there's still some of that now. But I think that's changing, and people understand it a little better.

What does Verve Senior Living do differently, when creating retirement communities?

[2:08]
We’re really focused on building thoughtful residences. What I mean by that is we typically build new residences; we don't usually acquire somebody else's property, nor do we do conversions. So, we typically build from scratch, from the ground up. Some of the things that we've learned over time—we've been around for about 45 years now—are what seniors want and what residents want. Each time we build a new home, we go through a process we call “lessons learned.” We discuss both what we learned from a construction standpoint and what we learned from an operations standpoint: What are our residents enjoying? What do they think we should have done differently? We then incorporate that feedback into the next design.

How is your company responding to seniors’ changing needs?

[3:08]
We have definitely seen a change [in that] when we built a new residence, it would be independent living. Now, when we build properties, we're building a continuum of care.

So we're [including] memory care and assisted living options [and] we have households for that. And now, most recently, we're building senior-focused apartments. So there's an opportunity to, as needs progress, to stay in the same location and be able to access the services when you need them, as you need them, with the various levels of care. So we've definitely seen that change.

What recent improvements have you made in how you serve people?

[3:45]
So we've definitely expanded. I'll just talk about life enrichment. There's many things that we've done. We'll talk about life enrichment and what that means. And when people used to think about resident activities, they used to think, ‘Oh, well, maybe it's a bus trip somewhere, or maybe it's Bingo.’ It's far beyond that, these days. We have a “Meet Me at the MoMA” program, which is all about understanding art from the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, in New York. [This program]  allows residents to study and understand a piece of artwork and then have an opportunity to paint their interpretation of that piece of artwork. In some cases, they're painting something like “Starry Night,” and they are painting it and trying to replicate what they have seen, what would they do [with that subject matter]. And in other cases, they are painting their version of “Starry Night.” But that's an example of life-enrichment activities. 

Obviously, things that help promote brain health, help promote physical health, that are really important to us. We are constantly looking at exercise programs, and that help our residents live healthier, longer, and incorporating those into it. 

Food and beverage is another great example. There was a time in our industry when we thought that our responsibility was to decide what [were] the healthiest options for our residents to eat. And we had dietitians running the Food and Beverage program. [They’re] great individuals and have provided a great service. 

But when you are a resident at 80 years old or 85 years old, you get to choose what you want. So for example, if you want to have, on Friday, you want to have a battered deep fried piece of fish with French fries, because that's what you always did—you know, Friday nights were always [your] fish and chips night— then we're going to make that available to you. Now, we're also going to have a healthy option that says we have a baked piece of salmon with sweet potato fries, which is a healthier option for you to choose.  But if you want to have deep-fried fish and chips on Friday night, we're going to make that accommodation for you, because it, again, goes back to being resident-centric and allowing the resident to make the choices for themselves, which they've done all their lives. 

What adjustments is Verve making in service?

[6:20]
The resident of the future is going to require us to be even more bespoke, more tailored to what they want, when they want it, how they want it, more so than the prior generations. I think they will expect and demand a higher level of service.

How are you meeting Canada’s changing cultural mosaic?

[6:51]
[In the past], I think retirement residents would say, ‘Well, we need to have a chapel.’ Well, that fits one group of people's needs, maybe. But [we need] to recognize that there are religious and cultural differences that require you to have more adaptive spaces that cater to each individual residents’ need. Certainly, food is a huge part of that. And being able to adapt and flex to dietary needs, we're certainly seeing many more requests from dietary preferences, as well as different ethnic cuisines, and being able to offer those to future residents.

And then also being able to provide connections or provide family settings where family members can come in and feel just as comfortable there, as they did when they went to visit their parents or their loved one at home. So making sure that we're adapting in that regard as well. 

What challenges does the industry face with respect to personnel?

[8:00]
Making sure that the people that we’re hiring and bringing into the company fundamentally have the empathy piece. [It should be] a fundamental part of their DNA, that they have a genuine desire to serve seniors, and find it very fulfilling to do that. We can't teach that. We teach most other skills. We can't teach empathy for seniors. So that's why we focus on that when we hire and make sure we're getting that individual coming on board with our company. And then we'll train skills and help them develop those. 

I think we're becoming a better understood industry for prospective employees as well. I think, particularly care staff, if I recognize what we're doing, what we're providing. So, we’re a great alternative for somebody who is a health care worker and is potentially raising a young family. We're a great alternative to working in a hospital setting where you're often working shift work, and overnight shifts. It's an alternative and a little bit easier on people's personal lives.

What will be the economic challenges of the next five to ten years?

[9:18]
The challenge will be to provide retirement residences to a larger group of people. Right now, there is a significant cost to finding a site, acquiring it, building it, and staffing. So the raw product costs or raw building costs, is just to build a residence. 

But then the operating costs are high. They're high for a number of reasons. [1] Property taxes.  [2] Labor is our single biggest component, and the wage rates have been rising in that area. [3] We have a fairly high [ratio] of staffing-to-residents. 

So from an economic standpoint, we are located in neighborhoods or city center locations or close to city center locations. It's expensive to be in those neighborhoods. If we were out in a rural setting, the cost of land would certainly be much lower, the development charges would be lower, and property taxes would be lower. So that's part of it. 

And then to broaden or make it more available to a broader group of people [would include] a voucher system, where... it's an opportunity for people at a slightly lower position economically to be able to access retirement care or to access home care or other forms of care that they need to. But again, it's flexibility. So I think a key part of things going forward is going to be affordability. 

What innovations will we see in technology?

[11:10]
Technology will be really important. I think AI, as it gets refined and as it relates to people's health, that I think will be really important. So there's certainly lots of wearable devices right now that we all know that provide feedback on your health, and what you're doing that's healthy, or what you should be doing to improve your health. But I think that will evolve. 

Right now, obviously, you can go out and get a device that provides cardio rhythms to you within minutes. And it's a little handheld device that you can use at any time and provide that information to your doctor or to a healthcare provider. That's just one example. I think we will find that there are more advances in that area of predictive technology that will help us care for residents. 

What’s the biggest ongoing challenge in providing care for Canadian seniors

[12:10]
There’ll be continuing demand for memory care services, I think we will see that there is, despite all the great work that's being done in terms of research around dementia, Alzheimer's being type of dementia, there's a lot of great work being done there, but there hasn't been a lot of breakthroughs in terms of being able to assist people living with dementia.

So I think that will continue to be a demand that we see in the industry, where just by virtue of the number of people that are aging in the baby boom population, I think that we'll just see a greater demand to the industry for memory care.

More about Verve Senior Living

Verve Senior Living communities are found in Canadian cities from Ontario to the west coast of Canada, where seniors can be vibrant. Learn more about Verve Senior Living.