Peace of Mind, Engaged Employees, and Time Savings With Relias

“Our communities are a cruise ship on land.” This analogy from Amy Park, Director of Learning and Development at Kisco Senior Living, describes the experience that Kisco’s staff aims to provide its residents. The Relias Platform is an important element that Park relies on to keep Kisco’s teams in 22 locations navigating toward success.

Park views her role on the Kisco ship as supporting the “fun parts of HR,” promoting people-based learning and engagement. The automated features of the Relias Platform help Park track compliance for 2,500 users in six states, and that’s not always smooth sailing.

“I THINK RELIAS IS THE EASIEST LMS FROM THE BACK-END ADMINISTRATION AND THE FRONT-END USER EXPERIENCE THAT I’VE EVER WORKED WITH.”
– Amy Park, Director of Learning and Development at Kisco Senior Living

Park worked in the learning and development industry for over 20 years as an instructional designer and project manager, creating and delivering learning management system (LMS) programs. “I think Relias is the easiest LMS from the back-end administration and the front-end user experience that I’ve ever worked with,” she said. “The customer service is amazing, and the products are fantastic.”

For HR tasks and initiatives at Kisco, Park needed a consistent way to track training requirements, as well as training programs which were not online, such as new associate orientations, management leadership development workshops, CPR in-person training, and other position-specific or people-specific requirements. That’s exactly what Relias provides in the Kisco Learning Center (KLC), which is the company’s internal brand for the Relias Platform.

On her end, Park has instituted KLC viewing parties where staff members bring snacks and drinks and complete two to three modules in one sitting together. “It’s always easier to complete trainings as a group. Our staff is not allowed to complete trainings off-site, and we only have so many computers for staff to use. The KLC viewing parties are great.”

Keeping compliance training fresh

Although annual compliance training can be mundane for staff, Relias’ content updates relieve that repetition. At Kisco, one piece of compliance training consists of six annually recurring modules for all staff. Known internally as the “KLC 6,” the training covers bloodborne pathogens, fire safety, resident rights, abuse and neglect, emergencies and natural disasters, and workplace violence. Park is tasked with finding ways to ensure staff members complete these trainings and track completions, whether the content is delivered in-person or online. They must also stay updated on any state compliance changes. Relias makes all this much easier for Park.

Relias regularly updates certain segments of the trainings with fresh content to keep employees engaged. “My associates, especially the ones who have been with us for 15 years, are very happy about the ongoing review and refresh of the content modules, especially the ones we assign annually,” said Park. “I love the fact that Relias does things differently.”

Linking regulations to education modules

Kisco staff members need to be sure to take the right training at the right time. Relias’ Crosswalks match education modules to state-specific regulatory requirements, ensuring that Kisco leaders are alert to compliance needs. As Kisco spans six states, this gives Park and her care teams a welcome peace of mind.

“I don’t need to be the expert for all six of our states,” she said. “The crosswalk helps us benchmark what we’re assigning in training plans to ensure that we’re in compliance with the regulatory requirements of each state and OSHA for senior care.”

Park uses the Relias Platform’s reporting features to quickly determine how much of the training has been completed. This is especially helpful if there’s leadership turnover, so Park and her team can ensure that all employees get their training done.

Training plans: customizable, flexible, automated

Aside from annual compliance modules, Park also assigns customized supplemental training plans to staff.

To date, Park has created 82 automated training plans that assign modules to the more than 2,500 users enrolled in Relias. “I don’t know what I’d do without training plans,” she said. “The ability to auto-assign by community, department, position — that makes it easy.”

For example, all Kisco associates in California are required to have 12 hours of dementia training, regardless of whether their community offers memory care. Kisco leaders encourage associates in all states to watch the Relias course on dementia care called “A Day in the Life of Henry” as a way to gain understanding of the perceptions of seniors with mild-cognitive impairment or dementia. Being able to “see” from someone else’s perspective is critical to provide person-based and hospitality-focused care and support.

Everyone gets filtered into training programs that meet job- or state-specific requirements. For example, Kisco has specific trainings on HIV/AIDS for its community in Florida, state-specific infection control training in North Carolina, and dining and food handler certification requirements in all states.

The Relias Platform gives Park the flexibility to assign modules to different communities. “We use that to manage these trainings rather than a separate Excel sheet that is easily outdated and time consuming to maintain,” she said.

Administrative task: efficient and trackable

Park captures the administrative burden of HR tasks perfectly: “I would probably go crazy if I had to be the main support hub for our 2,500 associates,” she said. To relieve that stress, Kisco uses automated features of the Relias Platform for onboarding and performance reviews, two otherwise labor-intensive HR activities.

In the onboarding process, new employees are paired with a Kisco certified trainer, who helps them log into Relias. As early as the second day of training, employees begin their required learning activities, which can take five to 10 days to complete. That frees up Park to work on other projects. “We’re hoping to see some good improvement in the next few months as this process rolls out to all of our communities and teams,” she said.

“MY PEOPLE ARE SUPER EXCITED THAT THEY CAN COMPLETE THEIR CEUs WITH RELIAS.”
– Amy Park, Director of Learning and Development at Kisco Senior Living

With Relias, Park doesn’t have to track and remind leaders to conduct performance reviews. Kisco uses its own performance review template and process, and HR teams update the Relias dashboard when they complete a review. The dashboard gives managers and executive directors an at-a-glance update on performance reviews that are past due, upcoming, and completed.

Just as Relias helps Park save time on administrative tasks, the system also eases the administrative load on staff seeking continuing education units (CEUs). Team members can find CEUs that apply to their license renewals by searching in Relias rather than scrambling to find appropriate modules through external research.

As Park said, “My people are super excited that they can complete their CEUs with Relias. It’s a win-win when they can fulfill a new-hire training requirement or annual requirement, and it’s also available for CEU credit for their professional license. They love being able to sort all of the trainings they can take for their license rather than pay for it on the outside or take three days out of their week to complete it.”

The future of senior care supported by Relias

To Kisco, senior care means a lot more than just a healthcare facility that houses people — it’s a model of hospitality that prioritizes customer service. In fact, Kisco partnered with Forbes Travel Guide to create and implement the first senior living-specific training and evaluation standards using Forbes’ high-level hospitality benchmarks.

As Kisco opens new communities and acquires new properties, Park looks forward to using the Relias Platform with Kisco’s HR system companywide to continue improving completion rates, regulatory compliance, patient health outcomes, and employee engagement.