Assisted Living Concepts Reviews

Pros

Some flexible work hours and positive, high quality in-house staff.

Cons

High employee turnover and low hourly wages.

Advice to Senior Management

Extreme difficulty getting reimbursed for expenses. Money trumps quality of care.

Pros

Excellent IT department. Easy access to all policy, forms. The Intranet is great.

Cons

The turnover is so high. In fact, the turn over is an advantage to Laurie Bebo for those are positions that while unfilled are saving her gobs of money. Three nurses in a 16 month period. Two RD's in the same time frame.
This job will spill over into your personal time. Beware!
The company requires the nurse and the director to work the floor one shift each month. Again, this saves tons of money.
Several houses within a hundred miles of each other have to share one bus. This bus is used to get residents out and about. ONE bus! Who does business like this?
Regional teams are inconsistently competent. Regional nurse has been fine. Regional managers---three in the past year. Regional sales, so so. I think their job is just aweful and I don't see how many of them manage to stay as long as they do.
Nursing hours are full time only if the house is full. So if you are an RN looking for a very low paying job and part time, then this is the job for you. Nurses and RD's on call 24/7 and often the sales manager is demanded to drop her entire family life if there is possible move in on Friday night during her son's football game. The nurse is also required to make sales calls and occupancy often ranks a higher priority than the RN's license. Be careful of the decisions you make with this company.
Another con is that the amount of time spent on pointless conference calls takes up so much time from our own jobs. The Friday night sales call at 4 p.m. is soley for the purpose to make sure trifecta team members are in the house.
The job is extremely stressful.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider the models of other successful AL companies who have very low turn over and high occupancy rates.

Pros

Facility Size and Layout, focus on cross trained staff, sales emphasis is strong which is helpful in the competitive AL marketplace.

Cons

Company lacks creativity - seems to do the same sales gimmick over and over. Also underestimates the importance of housekeeping and cleanliness to the customer. Pay scales for dietary need review if qualify food service is to be better.

Advice to Senior Management

New senior leadership with 21st Century vision and ideas.

Pros

The residents and their families
Decent benefits for a company this large
Don't have to worry about getting paid on time

Cons

Corporate management is very disrespectful to residents and their families as well as the employees who work so hard to make this company appear successful.
Will not provide adequate tools to perform expected tasks
Expectations are not reasonable, or humanly possible.

Advice to Senior Management

Accept responsibility for not making your facility a place people are happy with, make the necessary changes at the house level and at the same time provide your employees with the tools to perform their jobs with and stop intimidating employees. An easy solution would be for management to imagine themselves performing the jobs and how they would feel to be treated as they currently treat their employees.

Pros

Gave me a start in the industry. I am using my on the job training with ALC for what I am doing today.

Cons

NO support. sales and marking ran my building to the point of being criminal!. Had unlicensed sales person undercut any authority and leadership I had on a continual basis. Sales and marketing reported any activity In my building to regional trifecta who in turn made judgments and corrective actions based on rumors and lies. I worked hard for my Indiana license and I am thankful the nightmare.

Advice to Senior Management

Your business model is what I use in part in the buildings I have ran since my time with ALC. I have had no problem selling my product against your assisted living offerings. The difference between us is I have given the latitude and authority to make value based judgements as the needs arise in my sales situations. Let you ED run the buildings they are in by the Indiana code and not the whims of a few unlicensed individuals. Good luck you will need it against the likes of me.

Pros

My co workers (Guess you need to have a really good sense of humor to stick around for any length of time.)

Cons

1) Micro management. Any one who is not considered "senior" management will not be allowed to make the simplest of decisions. I had more autonomy when I worked at Wendy's in High School! They will tell you all the simplest of things you should be doing to do your job, even after you have been there for years and know it better than your boss.

2) Horrible treatment of employees. They constantly take more and more benefits away. No flex time, no work from home (except for "Senior" Management). Employees with chronic illnesses seem to be treated badly so they quit.

3) When you start you have to wait 6 months before you get a single day off or any kind of benefits.

4) The Most important thing to the company is the bottom dollar. They will always take the cheapest way to do something, even if there are better, albeit, slightly more expensive alternatives.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice is to the Board of Directors. Get a new CEO. When the economy turns around it will be impossible for you to find any kind of qualified employees.

Pros

Some employees good to work with.

Cons

Too many to type.
Budget for expenses is small and you don't get re-embursed if you buy something outside of the company website.
If you go on the company website a lot of the supplies are unavailable/discontinues. Tried to buy my staff a good stethoscope to get accurate blood pressure readings. The site only had a $4.00 stethoscope that was worthless
Salary means you work way more than they pay you
 The caregivers don't care about their job because they are paid so little (a little above min wage)
I have 40 residents and only get paid .75 of an hour for each of them.
Company cares about the dollar and not about residents or employees.
Resident families get upset when there is such a high turn over in management and caregivers.
Three nurses, a regional nurse, resident director and a regional director all quit around the same time I started.

Advice to Senior Management

Increase your wages for all workers and your residents will stay and be well taken care of. You can make more money in the long run if you take care of workers.

Pros

The people I served;
Some of the staff with whom I worked

Cons

No resources
Company greed
Gouging seniors
Poor staffing
Cheating staff out of raises
Demeaning communication from Regional Sales Mgr

Advice to Senior Management

It's doubtful that any advice would be considered so that would be a waste of words.
Get a new CEO

Pros

Residents and the families, local staff, location 9rural)

Cons

Upper management does not care about anything but bottom dollar, staffing is too low to be safe, day to day operations at this facility were loose in handling of familiy concerns, plan of care, medications, etc. Could not imagine having stayed on more than the few weeks I did. Sorry for the residents and families.

Advice to Senior Management

Residents and their families are more than a monthly check for the company, safe, consistent and quality care will improve the reputation of this facility and increase the census. Dismissive attitudes of regional management were...unsettling and disgusting. You would think after the legal issues from early 2011 at this facility lessons would've been learned....

Pros

LOVE the residents! Have made some good friends in my colleagues. Got a good look at how things should and should not be done in these type communities. Met some very talented professionals. Learned how to be a med tech (inadvertantly). I found that I really can work multiple 12 hour days and be asked to do more!

Cons

This is not a company to be salaried with...you'll find you are barely making minimum wage when you do the math. This is a company that is not afraid to let the House level management go quickly, but doesnt seem to notice the regional team is really the problem. HR is truly a joke. I can think of multiple people in house level management who have given notice and noone from HR or the regional trifecta has even called to ask what made them decide to leave.
DO NOT count on any bonuses...even if you have legitimately earned them. I have recieved a few, but should have recieved more. The DVP and VP reserve the right to change the bonus target without telling you or the regional trifecta...and if you ask about it, no one can give you an answer and then proceed to ignore you when you ask about it on multiple occasions. If you are offered a special bonus and actually achieve the target you'll have to fight to actually get it.

Advice to Senior Management

I think there are policies in place that are not being followed...if the policy is walkie-talkies in each House for the med-techs and psa's and the RDO says no when the RD asks for them...where is the safety and where is the real issue? When the same Houses continue to have the same problems, after multiple RDs, WDs and SMs, maybe we should really take a look at why...there are always common denominators...There are some very talented people who could help this company go far if they would actually ask the people who have made it longer than 6 months with the company.