As senior living enters a period defined by rising demand, workforce pressure and evolving public expectations, operators are being pushed to think differently about how they deliver care, support employees and communicate the value of the industry.
For Nick Stengle, CEO and Director of Brookdale Senior Living, the path forward starts with the fundamentals: great service, great care and a clear understanding of the supply-demand reality shaping the market.
In this Changemakers interview, Stengle discusses the forces changing senior living, the workforce opportunity ahead, the role of AI and technology, and why older buildings can still deliver an exceptional resident experience when care and service remain at the center.
What economic forces or market trends are currently changing the senior living industry?
It will be no surprise where my answer is going to go here, but it’s truly the supply-demand dynamic that is finally manifesting itself. First things first, on the demand side, it is statistically undeniable and demographically certain that demand will keep rising over the next 15 years.
That is predetermined.
The interesting piece is on the supply side. For at least the next five years, if not the next 10, what is happening right now at this very moment is defining what that supply picture will look like. That is the underpinning of the entire senior living industry. Full stop. It’s not the Iran war or oil prices. Those things affect the industry, but the core issue is supply and demand.
In what ways do senior living operators need to change for the incoming generation of older adults, especially baby boomers?
There has been this rhythm or tone that baby boomers will be looking for something different, and that might be true in independent living. I’m thinking larger suites, maybe more common space and more individualized or customized offerings.
I think that is less important in assisted living and memory care. There may be a little bit of it, but it is definitely attenuated. My fundamental answer is that not much has to change. We just need to lean into the service, lean into great care and lean into quality over quantity.
I think any person, whether they are a baby boomer, Gen Xer or anyone else who wants the service and care that the senior living industry provides, will be very well served.
How can senior living companies effectively change the public’s perception of the industry?
First things first: provide great care, provide great service and provide a great product. Step one is to do something really well. Then you have to make sure you broadcast it widely and loudly through all the different channels.
I think AI is an exciting opportunity there. Not that we can manage or control it, but if you have great content, great service, great Google reviews and great information feeding AI, that can matter. When someone searches something as simple as, “My mom just broke her hip. What are my options?” that is a very generic question, but it would be amazing to have assisted living, or memory care if there is a cognitive angle, be part of that answer.
I think it comes down to being bold and being loud with the content we generate, while really differentiating the product and service. But I’ll repeat this: it starts with great service and great care to begin with.
Tell us about some of your recent efforts to change the senior living industry for the better.
First, as the largest senior living operator and the third-largest senior living real estate holder, many people look to us, especially as they are being introduced to senior living. I’m thinking about all the different stakeholders. Investors who are interested in the space are sometimes introduced to it through us, especially since we’re publicly traded and all our numbers are out there.
The same is true for vendors around AI, technology and all the different ancillary services, as well as some of our suppliers. In many ways, we are helping embrace people from all the different adjacencies that come into senior living and giving them an entry point into the space.
What staffing changes does the larger senior living industry need to make to meet the staggering level of demand ahead from new residents?
We, as an industry, and specifically Brookdale, are a people industry that cares for people. Fundamentally, that is what we do. That’s the service we provide and that’s the care we provide, especially on the assisted living and memory care side of the equation, but even in independent living.
The demand will be real. I think we have to fully embrace all the different channels that can get people to come and contemplate working in senior living. I think it is a very ill-informed workforce in some ways. We often hear from residents who say, “I wish I would have come earlier, six months earlier or a year earlier, if only I knew what it was.” I think we have the exact same dynamic with the workforce.
There are people who come to senior living not even realizing what they are getting into. They almost fall into it inadvertently, then they love it and they stay for life because they fall in love with it. The question is how we open that up even wider, through education, getting the word out, training, onboarding or whatever the case may be. I think that is a very big part of it.
The flip side, in addition to that, is productivity. I think there is going to be a real workforce mismatch between demand and supply from a workforce perspective. We need to make people more productive and more able to do what is truly needed for the human touch while removing the things that do not require that human touch. That means taking the more administrative and ancillary aspects of the job out of the way, so we can focus more on the resident and less on the business that goes around the resident.
Is the senior living industry moving quickly enough to change in the ways that it needs to?
I’m going to be maybe a bit provocative and say I think we’re on the right pace. Where we maybe have some shortcomings is on the workforce development side. Could we do that better and more effectively?
Yes, I think so.
Some other industries and companies have beat us to it. People join those companies because of the brand and because of the industry. It would be great if we had a similar kind of connection with the burgeoning workforce. That is where I think there is still some work to do.
Change is hard. Can you talk about a time when you tried to execute a change and things didn’t go according to plan? How did you pivot, and what did you learn as a leader?
Change is definitely hard. I was CEO of the largest home health company, and we implemented a bonus program for our nurses to increase our admission rates, especially during off hours. It was truly a supplemental bonus program. They already got paid a certain amount, and we were giving them more money.
There was a massive backlash to the entire program because we did not communicate it well. We did not explain it well. There was a belief that we were taking something away, when in fact, we were giving an additional opportunity. Nothing was being taken away.
That was the moment that taught me you have to communicate. When you think someone hears you, they really don’t always hear you. You have to provide examples and be specific.
Also, sometimes when you cascade things down, you lose the message.
Now, if we have a big change, I want everyone to hear it from me first. Then we can cascade it out and do the implementation. Quite often, there is a loss in the message at every layer, and the spirit of what you are trying to drive can start getting broken apart very rapidly.
I learned that change, even if it is 100% positive, can very quickly go sideways if you do not manage it well.
What’s the biggest change you’ve ever made in your career life, and what did you learn?
I was a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and now I’m the CEO of Brookdale Senior Living. I was in the Air Force, and I taught at the Air Force’s Top Gun School as an instructor pilot. I left the Air Force in 2008 or 2009, right in the middle of the Great Financial Crisis, and jumped into the commercial business world.
That was the biggest change in my life. I went from being a military fighter pilot through and through, which is all I ever wanted to do, to joining BCG and starting a career that ultimately led me to where I am today.
I think it went well. Here I am today.
What I learned through that change is that even though most people might say, “fighter pilot, shooting missiles, dropping bombs, how does that connect?” it actually connects very quickly.
You lead people, you have a mission and it is people who achieve the mission. All those dots connect very rapidly in a company like Brookdale and in the senior living industry.
What senior living technology do you find most promising or interesting right now?
What’s really fascinating is the merger of camera systems, optical systems and AI, and the knowledge you can distill by capturing what is happening. That applies from a resident perspective, especially when you think about falls, fall prevention and residents who are not moving or are not as mobile or ambulatory as they once were.
I think you can pick up changes in condition and other issues, both from an emergent perspective and from a more chronic perspective. There are some cool technology platforms there. There is also interesting work happening on the associate side. It can feel a little bit like Big Brother, but it is really about whether the person is doing the right thing for the right resident at the right time. Are we capturing all this and being as good as we can be as providers of care and service?
To me, it is this merger of camera systems with AI and being able to monitor what happens when we do not always have our eyes on the resident. If you think about a typical day, we may only see what is actually happening 1% or 2% of the time. With these systems, we can see 24 hours a day.
We have to figure out the privacy side of it. The Big Brother piece is a little scary, and we need to work through that. But I think this technology could be very valuable because it can help us understand things we would never figure out from the limited snapshots we get today.
What advice do you have for other senior living companies implementing their own change making efforts?
Be very clear in prioritizing and balancing the needs of residents, your employees and your investors. Find the right balance in any change so everyone can win concurrently, while keeping the resident at the center of it all.
What is the one thing people get wrong about senior living?
I think they conflate all the different product types, whether it is long-term care, nursing homes or retirement homes. That is the age-old problem, and I think it still exists.
People often know they have a need for a loved one, but they do not know how to answer that need. They do not even know what the options are. That is what people still get wrong. They conflate everything.
What are you sick of hearing about in senior living?
I’m sick of hearing that older buildings cannot be amazingly beautiful, great products with great service. Coming from Brookdale, maybe I feel this even more, but I will tell you, we were at a big investor conference in Las Vegas in a 20-year-old building, the Encore, and it was beautiful.
Our buildings are 20 years old too. We were also in a 100-year-old building for another conference in New York, the Barclay, and that was an amazing building as well. With the right care and the right service, it works. That is what I’m tired of hearing: that older buildings cannot be amazing.
Are you a coffee person, a tea person or something else?
Mostly coffee, but I will tell you, when you merge them, I think it’s called a dirty chai. You take chai, which is tea, and put in coffee, and it is next level. I’m a big fan of caffeinated beverages.
What book are you reading right now?
I’m a podcast guy. I gave up on books a while ago, and I think I was a pretty early adopter of podcasts and series. So no books right now, just podcasts.
Acquired is my favorite right now. It is long-form, four-hour episodes, and it is epic. They tell really cool stories about companies like Rolex, Ferrari and Renaissance Technologies, and it is quite fascinating.