Have you ever thought about what the job specifications are for a retirement village manager?
It’s a far more challenging job than you might at first think.
You can compare it to managing a hotel where the guests never leave. On top of that, each of your village residents has their own life journey that they are travelling, and you inevitably will be involved in some positive ways.
Here are just some of the things the Village Manager must think about:
- customer (resident) relations and satisfaction
- property maintenance
- gardens, roads, outdoor lighting
- safety and security
- all things around food preparation
- emergencies and procedures – fire, storms etc
- regulations, policies
- staff, outside contractors
- home care and aged care support
- sales and marketing
- budgets and profitability
- and more
To help village operators (and village resident committees) identify what the skills are they should be looking for or helping to develop, the Retirement Living Council has developed a ‘Capability Framework’ – see the diagram above.
At the centre is a resident experience.
There are approximately 1,500 retirement village managers across the country, looking after 2,000 villages and 190,000 residents.
Here at DCM this year we developed the DCM Institute Village Management Professional Development Program, and now have 300 village managers engaged in new learning materials every month.
If you are thinking of joining a village you can have confidence that the manager is investing in your resident experience – which is good news.
