Volante Senior Living is taking steps to improve staffing challenges and solidifying operations aiming to increase occupancy and margin on a path towards further stabilization, according to CEO Jeff Fischer.
Fischer took the reins at Volante in July of last year following leadership roles within Sunrise Senior Living, Integral Senior Living and MBK Senior Living. Parent company Inspired Healthcare Capital launched the Volante platform two years ago.
Today, the operator has 24 communities in markets from Oregon to Florida. In 2025, Fischer said the company would continue to look internally to improve operations before seeking growth. The company has two ongoing development projects nearing completion in Oregon.
In the meantime, Volante has installed new leadership positions, developed training programs for frontline workers and separated sales and marketing departments to stay competitive in its markets, while monitoring resident rental rates, Fischer said.
“It’s just making sure we’ve got the appropriate systems in place, making sure our teams are well trained and going through those growing pains that a young company faces. We have to just make sure our staff is consistent in their delivery on a day-to-day basis,” Fischer said during the latest episode of the SHN Transform podcast. “It’s about getting the right talent hired.”
Volante also took steps recently to revamp its care levels to better capture care revenue and to improve resident care coordination and care delivery.
Listen to the full episode below. The following interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
On Fischer joining Volante in July 2024:
It’s been a great transition over the past several months and my experience at Sunrise and MBK and prior companies has positioned me well for my new role here at Volante. I’ve learned a lot in my 28-plus years in this industry, and so I take oversight of this portfolio and trying to drive more consistent operations, as well as growth.
It gives me the opportunity to look at all sides of our business: How do we stabilize our current operations? How do we build out a team working on solidifying a very solid culture and making sure team members feel respected and part of something bigger? And again, then looking at the growth of the business, as well.
On company priorities for Volante in 2025:
2025 is a big year for us. Our portfolio is about two years old at this point and we’ve grown relatively quickly over the last couple of years and we have an opportunity to solidify what we’re doing and really hone our current operations, improve overall performance and stabilize the team.
We will look at growth opportunistically, but we’re really honing our skills this year and then positioning ourselves for future growth, as well.
We’re coming in and assessing the talent that we have and looking at any positions that were open, getting those filled. We’ve had some turnover along the way, some planned, some unplanned, but we’re trying to ramp up the level of talent that we have. With an experienced team, it really helps position us as we go forward and through my short tenure here, our turnover has continued to ramp down little by little so it’s getting better day by day.
We had our first annual leadership conference earlier this year, which was a great opportunity for us to have everybody in front of us, some of our key leaders, and really talk about the future of this company, where we are and where we hope to be over the next 5 to 10 years. Then it’s about the excitement building the culture and building a platform that everyone is involved with right now can really put their DNA on and build something special that we’re excited about.
On 2025 operational priorities and driving occupancy growth:
We’re focused on solidifying our team, driving down turnover and looking at expenses. We had some agency but that’s gone for the most part at this point and we’re trying to stabilize our labor force, get turnover down and overtime down and focus on driving occupancy. Our occupancy lags a little bit behind the industry average, but we are laser-focused on trying to get that where it needs to be so we can solidify our performance.
It comes down to people and having the right people, doing the right things on a daily basis. We’re putting a greater emphasis on relationship building within our markets with our sales directors and operations team, building those relationships with key referral sources, using automated marketing as well as digital ad placement. We’re just trying to make sure that we are positioned right from those aspects. We hired a new VP of marketing a couple of months ago now and she has a lot of experience in this space. This will help us hone our skills and hone where we are positioned and how to better position ourselves as we go forward.
On biggest operating challenges in 2025:
I think staffing still leads the way for us, trying to drive our turnover down. For the most part, wages have stabilized, which was a big factor over the last couple years or so, and we’re still facing challenges there but I think we know where those are now. We’re just trying to keep up with that aspect and continue to ramp up our overall employee base at each location.
Some markets are doing great, some are a little bit more challenged but we’re getting better day-by-day with getting fully staffed and we’ll see some improvements there and then again, the other big challenges are continuing to look at our margins.
There’s still a lot of supply costs that are high especially in the dining world, so food costs are on the rise and supply costs are still high for many different products that we utilize on a daily basis; access to capital and making sure we have capital improvements where needed. The challenges are all the normal things that we face as an industry but we’re working to just do our best with those and continue to hone those margins as we go through the year.
On opportunities as a relatively new senior living operator:
Being a young company, I think that’s where our biggest opportunity lies. It’s just making sure we’ve got the appropriate systems in place, making sure our teams are well trained and going through those growing pains that a young company faces. We have to just make sure our staff is consistent in their delivery on a day-to-day basis.
It’s about getting the right talent hired. We’re thankful to have a very supportive parent company that’s provided us a lot of resources and from that perspective. I tell our teams all the time that we are very well-resourced. We have some positions that many other companies do not have, even larger companies I’ve been with in the past, and so we need to take advantage of making sure that, again, our systems are solid and we have good practices in place and that we take advantage of the resources that we have at our request to go out and make an impact.
We’re focused with our regional or national teams on a high-touch perspective, and really being in and out of our communities on a very frequent basis, really looking at the systems we have employed and making sure that they are tweaking where we need to. So, taking each individual community and really customizing our approach to make the impact of each location.
On benefits of having a larger parent company:
We put an emphasis on separating out sales and marketing, but making sure we have a well-established sales team as well as [an] established marketing team and focusing on those different aspects of the business and how to drive results from each, and we’ve added a pricing position so that we have somebody that’s out there constantly looking at pricing.
It’s not like setting your rates one and done for the year, but [we are] more fluid with rates as we go so that we can try to keep up with things going on in the individual markets. We’ve invested heavily in learning and development to bring on some talent within that area of our HR team, so that we can focus on building out internal programs so that we can build up our own bench strength.
It’s tough when you’re in a small company and you’re competing against the big players out there in the industry, and so we want to be able to keep up with that by building up the bench strength and building up our own talent so that when we have an opening somewhere, we can plug and play much more quickly. We’re not there yet, but we are investing in it up front so that we can get ahead of that as we go.
On future growth for Volante:
I think a lot of times growth is a little bit opportunistic so you have to take it as it comes. But our approach is looking at acquisitions and also looking at our parent company just recently reinvested in building out our development team.
We’re looking at both aspects from that perspective of how we solidify an acquisitions process so that when an opportunity is presented, we can pursue that. The two projects we have going on in Oregon were legacy projects, they were well-underway before I got started. They’re both tracking well and slated to open hopefully in mid-second quarter, and so they’re both a little bit smaller communities in small markets within Oregon. We’re excited about how they’ll be positioned again as a brand new product to the space. They’re identical buildings, and they’re both 48 units, 24 assisted living, 24 memory care at each.
We just reengaged our development team and our leader of that division is working on building his team and working on going out and identifying sites, so we have a couple of things that are already in the works that we’re looking at early stages.
We’re excited for what that brings and hopefully as that solidifies over the next couple of years, we’ll get into a rhythm where we can go, bring on a couple of sites per year once you really hone that process.
So that means a huge need in our industry and a huge need for quality providers and that’s why, I think timing-wise, Volante is positioned well because we’re working and honing our skills to become a best in class operator and we’ll be right there alongside the growth that’s to come.
On investing CapEx on older communities:
You have to continue to invest in your existing assets to keep up with the new product as it does start to get delivered to the space so we want to keep up along the way. There’s always a wishlist in every community of everything they’d like to have and sometimes it’s harder to retrofit amenities when people are looking for new stuff, whether it’s a bigger fitness space or indoor yoga studio and those types of things.
Volante is building out our plan for the next one, two, three and five years and prioritizing those needs to where we need to put the dollars in to make the most impact.
On changing care levels to generate revenue, care improvement:
The team has been working on adjusting care levels and unpacking some of the markets where we were maybe all inclusive and put some care levels in place to try and make it a little bit more palatable for residents and families. It’s an ongoing process.
We’re also looking at updating some of our technology from a care platform standpoint to make sure that we have the right systems in place to be able to capture the care that’s needed and help us better deliver on care globally from a system standpoint.
Outlook for the rest of 2025:
We’re really focused on high touch, honing our skills of what we’re doing right now and really improving our existing results and we may find some growth opportunities yet this year. So we’re really just trying to position ourselves well throughout this year so that next year really becomes a higher growth focus for us as well.
