Activated Insights

When I dug into how people were trying CareAcademy Training, I saw a real opportunity. Plenty of operators were interested enough to start a trial, but too many never got far enough to see what the product can actually do. So we rebuilt the trial experience to get people into the product faster. What changed: • Sign-up went from 6 screens to 3 • The page now makes it clear what you're trying before you start • Pick your state, and your account opens with that state's compliance curriculum already assigned by role, for home care or senior living • A cleaner design that makes the next step obvious at every stage Early results since launch: • 90% more people completing sign-up and landing in the product. Training shapes compliance, retention and the care residents and clients receive. Operators deserve to judge it with their own eyes. Lead training for a home-based care or senior living organization? Take it for a spin. Know someone who leads training in senior care? Share this with them. It’s free for 14 days, and the link is in the comments. Huge appreciation to Dacia R., Ferris Lucas, Brent Leekley and Nicolae Herrera.

Yesterday I had the privilege of presenting at the HCAOA 2026 National Home Care Conference in Orlando, sharing findings from the 2026 Activated Insights Benchmarking Report, now in its 17th year. This years report draws on 1,080 survey respondents. Three findings stood out: 1) Client experience drives revenue. Client satisfaction reached 9.09, its fourth straight year of improvement, and word-of-mouth remains the #1 source of new business. 2) Caregiver turnover is stuck at 75.5%, and benefits alone wont fix it. Benefits adoption hit a multi-year high of 94.1%, yet turnover barely moved. Wages remain the strongest lever, and recognition, the lowest-scoring category we track, is the most overlooked. 3) Measurement separates top performers. Agencies that track their funnel are pulling ahead. Those converting 45%+ of inquiries to admissions report $3.99M in median revenue, vs. $2.38M for those below that mark. Thank you to Home Care Association of America for the opportunity, and to everyone who joined the session and shared how they're earning referrals and retaining caregivers. Get the full 2026 Benchmarking Report: https://lnkd.in/e37b8mWK

I've spent years looking at what senior living operators engage with. Which emails they click through on, what content resonates with them, which webinars they stay on until the end, which questions come up on demo calls. One of our most engaged content concepts this year was The Black Hole. It drove more demo requests to our product than almost anything else we put out. Why did it land? 1. It named the right fear. Given the choice, people prefer a risk they can measure over one they can't, even when the odds are no better. A known turnover problem is something you can plan around. Turnover with no explanation is the version operators dread, because there's nothing to act on. 2. It described something they'd already lived. It lives in your organization. Your employees are getting pulled into it. And most of the time, nobody knows why. Operators recognized it the moment they read it. 3. It showed them the way out. People stay where they feel capable and heard. They leave where they feel thrown in and ignored. If you never ask, you never track the answers. The Black Hole only stays dark if nobody turns the lights on. If you run a community: do you actually know why your last three employees left?

We cut 16 hours and 34 minutes from Minnesota caregiver training this year. Not by skipping anything. By matching the training to the rule. Minnesota lists the topics caregivers must learn. It doesn't set a minimum number of hours. So we built one short course for each required topic. 15 minutes each Mobile-first One skill per course Nothing the state doesn't require We call them Microlearning Compliance Units, and as of right now, there are 67 of them. Comprehensive Home Care Service Provider: 30 hr 9 min → 13 hr 35 min Basic Home Care Service Provider: 20 hr 9 min → 10 hr 5 min Why it works: Short courses get finished (micro-courses see 80–90% completion) One objective at a time is how a new skill actually sticks Caregivers can do it on their phone, between shifts Finished training is what gets someone to a client's door feeling ready Minnesota is the first state, not the last. Our Content and Compliance teams are working through curricula state by state, care setting by care setting. Thank you Andrew Mantuano, Wendie Colvin, MSN, RN, Amber Shilling, Quinn M., Anna Lynch, Lisa Jay, Sindy Chettiath, MATD, Ashleigh Kimble, Grace Miller, Alesha N., and Sydnee Gorham for building purposeful training that fits a caregiver's real day. Agency owners, which curricula should we shorten next? Tell us in the comments!

When senior living workers were asked what would reduce their stress the most, higher pay wasn't the top answer. Better management was. Had a great conversation a couple of weeks ago with Ashante Abubakar, VP of Workforce Development at Argentum, and Tommy Comer, VP of HR at Charter Senior Living, digging into the 2026 Perceptions of Careers in Senior Living report we developed alongside Argentum, and what's actually driving retention in senior living right now. A few numbers that stuck with me: - 94.5% of senior living workers said they'd be likely or very likely to stay in a job where their work makes a difference. Making a difference is the retention advantage good working conditions should protect. - Fair pay (85.4%) and work-life flexibility (82.9%) topped what workers value most. On the flip side, non-competitive pay (62.3%) was the number one reason workers said they'd consider leaving the field. - Supervisors matter more than we give them credit for, too. 71.4% say feeling valued by their supervisor is extremely important to job satisfaction, while 48.2% cite a bad supervisor relationship as a reason they might walk. Ashante made a valuable point: when workers were asked what would reduce their stress most, stronger management support beat higher pay and better staffing. If you want to improve retention, start with how you support and train your supervisors, not just what's in the paycheck. Tommy shared how Charter puts this into practice; they're not waiting for an annual survey to find out something's wrong; they're checking in with employees early and often. The first few months on the job are where most turnover risk lives. That's the piece that stuck with me most: culture isn't a feeling. It's the operating environment where your team experiences pay, supervision, scheduling, and purpose every single day. The organizations getting retention right are the ones who are listening for it in real time, not just once a year. Thanks to Argentum for partnering with us on this research, to Ashante for framing the data in a way the whole industry can act on, and to Tommy for the ground-level perspective on what it actually takes to keep good people. If you're in senior living leadership: how are you checking in with new hires in those critical first few months? Curious what's working out there.

Every agency says they're the best. Independent recognition, earned from your own clients' and caregivers' satisfaction scores, is how you prove it.