Yitzy Weinberger, CEO, Elite Standard Recruitment

Episode Transcript

David Pardo What’s up, Yitzy? Welcome to the show.

Yitzy Thanks for having me.

David Pardo This is exciting for me. I don’t know if you realize you’re like a little bit of celeb in the industry. On LinkedIn for sure.

Yitzy I did not realize.
I have my celebrity book on my shelf “How to be a celebrity for dummies” you know um just following the exactly. By the way, on a separate note I just have this: my [mug] “World’s Best Boss,” you know what I’m saying. It’s in my head, this is my goals

David Pardo Right, right. Keep your head low. I love it. It’s classic.
Look at that. Okay, so we end the talk about labor management, we talk about leadership, leadership principles, aspirational, you keep it there as like a little reminder.

Yitzy I saw it in front of my screen just to be the world’s best boss.

David Pardo Did you buy it or did the people who work for you buy it?

Yitzy I actually bought it for myself. I’m telling you, I bought it for myself. I actually bought it for myself.

David Pardo That’s good. I like it. You’re good. You’re pushing yourself. I respect that. I respect the heck out of it.

Yitzy But someone did buy from me, which is, it’s a different, yeah, but someone bought it.

David Pardo Um, no, but, but joking aside, you have, you have a, you have a great reputation in, in this space and, um, we, we’ve sat down, we’ve like chatted here, there at shows, but never got to like really sit down and I’m excited to learn from you and learn about what you do and learn about your, uh, you know, expertise in the, in the industry.

Yitzy Yeah.

David Pardo It’s a very hot part. I mean, the whole healthcare industry is interesting, but obviously myself at Apploi and most of the listeners are very, very attuned to, constantly aware of the question of labor, labor shortage, labor management, retention.

Yitzy Yeah.
Yeah, it’s a world. It’s literally a world and it’s also like a nice and scary world because at the end of the day there’s 15,000 homes in the country. There’s, you know, again, I don’t have the stats in front of me, but there is an official labor shortage, an inherent labor shortage. So, I mean, in general, yeah, healthcare also, but in general, yeah, I mean, again, the

David Pardo Not specific to healthcare, you just mean in general. Yeah, people don’t wanna work.

Yitzy I did see that the hiring was again – the labor numbers, the unemployment rate – has decreased. But my understanding is that in healthcare, what I’ve seen is that the amount of jobs that are needed to fill every single nursing home, again the reports that I’ve seen, I don’t have it in front of me, but I remember seeing reports of this inherently a deficit of the amount of jobs that are needed.
But that being said, I do believe that every facility has the possibility to become fully staffed. Even if you are located in the middle of nowhere, meaning on top of a mountain, then you take a helicopter, and then you go in the middle of the forest, meaning in the middle of nowhere, I still think it is possible, I do believe that it is possible for facilities like that to become fully staffed. Then you have to get really, really out of the box.
The more your location is closer to an urban area that’s more populated, it’s easier to recruit. Obviously how to stick out, I would say the, if your facility located near a lot of people, it just means you also have a lot of competition. So the strategy that you’re becoming fully staffed in an area that has seven of the nursing homes near 10 mile radius, is gonna be a very different strategy than if your nursing facility located in the middle of nowhere.

David Pardo So I want to hear a lot about strategies. And I like, I love this, but before we, before we jump into how strategies change, uh, based on geographic, I just, for, for the people out there who don’t know you and don’t know your business, um, where, how did you get into this? Like, where did the, I know you’ve been in, I think for 15 years, tell me the story.

Yitzy So.
So my background is, I started off in centers healthcare. Centers healthcare is currently the largest New York based entrepreneur. And on my job over there was, I started off as workforce management, which meant really looking at the staffing levels, making sure we’re not going over staff, identifying, helping them with scheduling, helping them balance their master schedules. Many times in facilities, let’s say their budget.
the amount of people that they needed for let’s say Wednesday to the need of four people. And on this Wednesday they had eight people scheduled. Thursday they had two people scheduled. So you know balancing a lot of the schedules, helping them with looking at their labor costs. So that’s initially how I started. Then I know and obviously the idea was to decrease agency. But it really morphed very quickly into how are we telling somebody to
decrease agency if we’re not involved in the recruitment process. And that’s really what the facilities were telling us, that we’re having a very difficult time recruiting for this reason or that reason. And I never knew that this is something that I would actually be passionate about or good at until I actually started getting involved in recruitment. And then like, Hey, why don’t we do this? Let’s do that. Going down to these areas, you know, speaking to people from the local community and identifying what really makes them tick.
And I really believe every county is different in a different county. So it works in, you know, let’s just say Providence Road and won’t work in Kingston Road, which is a little out. So when I found out is that each area has something.

David Pardo You have like a very sensitive, like granular knowledge of different parts of Rhode Island.

Yitzy A little meaning that that’s just I feel like I grew up with that meaning I feel like I learned fun by spending so many weeks in this in these different areas and learning that we’re doing providence. There’s nothing to do and won’t work for the people living in Kingston right now. It’s a whole different thing that we need to do. So

David Pardo Wait, so tell me, because that’s a very specific example. So I feel like you have specific follow-ups. Like what is the difference between Providence and Poughkeepsie? What was it? King’s sick, yeah, classic.

Yitzy Yeah.
Yeah, Kingston’s. I would say what was interesting is that I would say in Providence, a lot of the homes had a very strong union, and the employees believed a lot in the union, and they were real union people. They loved the union. They believed in them. So what I found, exactly, and they love it. So what I find is that many companies, they look at the union as, you know, I wouldn’t say the word the enemy, but like,

David Pardo My dad was a union member, my granddad was a union member. All right, it’s in the blood, okay?

Yitzy We’re trying to do things, they’re not able to accomplish it. And what I learned, I’m really blessed in bank centers a lot because they gave me the exposure to let’s say really great labor attorneys or very smart operators within the system. And I learned unions also need certain things, but they weren’t, for example, they want recognition from the employees if they’re the savior, right? And as an operator, if you’re treating the union as like an adversary or you’re going against them, you won’t be able to accomplish anything.
For example, what I found in Providence is if we made the, we got whatever we wanted, we, so to speak, masked it and said it was like the unions win. Meaning instead of trying to, so to speak, have the operators have the win, let’s give it to the union, but let’s get what we want. So the employees felt like the unions, the one that really got them this raid or got them this, you know.

David Pardo Right.

Yitzy or if they’re traveling more than 20 miles, we’ll give X amount reimbursement. They felt the union came up with this. I’m like, we love the union, right? You guys are great. It really had to do with us. And this way we could recruit better. So understanding how to play the game, so to speak, with the union, that’s what I found in Providence. It’s more of a urban thing. It was more of a tactic. Kingston was totally different. The people living there were very, you know, they loved the residents. They liked the city.

David Pardo That’s Providence. And then Kingston, no Union.

Yitzy They liked the rural nature. They weren’t looking for the busyness. They wanted that peace. And to them, you know, more of like a, it was a different tactic, meaning we were, we offered free transportation, which is common, but obviously there’s a way to do it that it works. So we brought people in from Providence. But I think really like selling peace of mind for the other, because there are other facilities in Kingston, that’s really what got more people like, hey, you know, it was a much smaller facility.
So small facilities are a blessing and a curse. Meaning it’s a blessing because you just need to hire two people and you’re fully staffed. At the same time, if two people call out, you’re done. You know? So it’s very like how do you deal and we’re in healthcare, right? We’re not, you know, in the food industry, if somebody doesn’t show up for, you know, to make their, you know, let’s say Burger King, right? Or anywhere. If they don’t show up for that shift, there is technically someone else that could catch them. In healthcare, if a nurse doesn’t show up, you can’t just have like…
the maintenance director or the food service are going to step in. Like it doesn’t work like that, you know? So, exactly, the training, the licensing, all of that. So, yeah, so that was a little bit of a different strategy in Kingston.

David Pardo training is too specific.
compliance. You like the Benes, you like negotiating with benefits over the rate competition. Is that like a fair?

Yitzy Um, I’ll tell you the truth rates. I don’t believe again, if an operator is the bottom of the barrel, like it’s very hard to sell facility. I believe everything has to do with sales to be honest with you. I think if you sell your Yeah, if you’re selling your facility, what

David Pardo Everything is sales. You ever read that book? Pinker?
It’s the name Pinker. There’s a guy who wrote a book called Selling is Human and his fundamental contention is that even though the salesman, like the door-to-door salesman that doesn’t exist anymore, every job, 90% of jobs are sales.

Yitzy Yeah, yeah. I mean, like I look at recruiting, like all of my recruiters, like we have a daily meeting, we rev them up. They are salespeople. I look for a salesperson, I look for a person that has personality because that’s who’s selling your facility. Again, who’s reaching out to these candidates? Do they sound like they just want to retire or they’re so stressed out because they have to process payroll and six people are in their office? Or do they sound excited? Hey, what’s going on? Got your resume.
We have maybe one spot left. We can get you in today if you come now or something like that. This is a beautiful facility. We care about our nurse to patient ratio. If you sound like that, if that’s how your message looks, your recruitment is gonna be better. I don’t believe, I find that people like using rates as a punching bag, or rates are terrible, or rates aren’t competitive. When in reality, if you do wage analysis, they’re super competitive. Actually the best rates in the area.

David Pardo Yeah, so people do, people treat rates as a punching bag and they like to, they like to poo poo rates, but really the rates are competitive and it’s the, you’re saying it’s the everything else. It could be the benefits, it could be the presentation, it could be the, like you said, recruiters or salespeople, whether they recognize it or not.

Yitzy Yeah.
Yeah, I also believe if facilities act like the best facilities in the country, that means: the best facilities in the country, you know, are going after each candidate quickly. Right. They are following up with them a few times. They are treating their staff well. They’re doing staff appreciation on a consistent basis. They meet their staff one on one consistently. Right. They’re constantly getting a survey from the staff. What do they want to hear? What do they want to see?
They’re engaged with their staff. They treat them nicely. They’re a good leadership team. There’s a homogenous leadership team. I think if you act like the best facilities in the country and you still can’t hire or you can’t keep your employees, then automatically things start being highlighted. Not so bad if you’re acting like the best facility, things start getting better.

David Pardo Right.
So, an issue that I think about a lot because you’re helping clients win the game and we’re helping our customers hopefully win the game. You know the old joke about how fast you have to run to outrun a bear? Faster than your friends.

Yitzy No, let’s hear some of you send in the notes.

David Pardo Faster than the other guy, right? You don’t actually have to run faster than the other guy. So staffing is really a systemic issue, meaning today, across the country, there are more open jobs in healthcare than there are people who are qualified. And we know that there’s pipeline issues, we know that the schools aren’t actually producing enough nurses to keep up with the growing needs. By 2030, you know the stat, everyone knows it. By 2030, there’s gonna be more Americans, I think, over 65 than under 18.

Yitzy Right.

David Pardo Um, so it’s only, it’s only getting worse. And my question is, are you just helping, are we just helping people outrun the other guy or are there ways to fix the problem? Are there things that you’re seeing or things that you’re doing, participating in to actually raise all the boats.

Yitzy I never like I mean you have you obviously have to deal with this that you know the status is that and obviously it’s coming from a place of knowledge at the same time I

David Pardo That’s a stat. You never fired a client.

Yitzy No, meaning I have told clients that, hey, you know, we’re trying this, we’re trying that, it’s not working out. Again, there’s different reasons, right? Sometimes whether it’s, you know, the leadership team is just chasing people away and that’s the only licensed nursing home person in the 30 mile, 50, 80 mile radius. If they don’t, their hands are tied, you have to keep this guy or girl. So that does happen. I mean, it’s just, it is what it is. This person is going to be the administrator. We need someone to be licensed. But

David Pardo Right.

Yitzy I want to just multiply the statin for a second. I believe that if each person looks at their own home as this is it, right? We don’t have to become fully staffed. Now, what could we do? So now, if you have that mindset, you don’t really care about the stat, but you’re gonna bring nurses in from somewhere else, whether it’s from the Philippines or from a different part of the country, you’re gonna buy a house, you’re gonna…
give them a barbecue grill outside and give them meat parties every Wednesday. You’re going to do stuff. If you need to become fully staffed in your facility, no matter where you’re located, you’re going to get it done. That’s what I believe. That’s really what I try to do. If a client signs up with us, something we always like, my team has the same mindset as me, and that is that we are going to go above and beyond and
push the limits to 120% of our grant to help this facility become fully staffed. Now, whether it’s getting involved in schools, getting involved in local churches, having the local church meet at the facility once a month and this way, you know, because they’re splitting more of a religious area and exposing the current people to what it’s like being in the nursing home, what a great place it is.
you know, last two years, new ownership there, they’re really treating the residents nicely. That opens up the job market to these people that have never thought of going into healthcare. They’re like, it’s not so bad, you know?

David Pardo Okay, hold on. That’s wild. You’ve gone, you said schools and churches. You’ve actually gone into local, what kind of schools? Like grad schools or high schools?

Yitzy Yeah.
We, meaning, so meaning we’re obviously the CNA school, but also the LPN schools really introducing the local nursing school. Because we’re the nurses of me. I don’t have to go to college. We can just do it online. I mean, maybe you could, but you have to go to, whether it’s a BOCEDE, whether it’s a, you know, whatever program they’re in. Many of them are just getting their nursing degree. They want to become RNs. Some of them want to, you know, just want to be an LPN. Some of them want to, want to.
transition to other areas in healthcare and the nursing license is just part of that. You know, some of them want to become an MDS coordinator and they just need that RN license. So everybody has different avenues, but at the end of the day, all the nurses are in the schools, are in these colleges. And the more you can get in front of those colleges, create partnerships with those colleges and make your facility the preferred place to work, you’re gonna expose yourself to a consistent flow of nurses.

David Pardo Okay, so some of the nurses are in nursing school. Some of the nurses aren’t in nursing school yet. So you mentioned like going to the churches and going to places that are not work or like what, without giving away all the secrets, what are your like out of the box? I know. Yeah.

Yitzy I’m living with everything now. I have nothing left. I’m saying this video of everything. Nothing left.

David Pardo What are some of your crazier moves? Crazier partnerships that you’re proud of?

Yitzy One, one, one. I’d say one thing we did, which I think was pretty creative is, there’s one facility located in the middle of nowhere. Their facility probably has a very, very strong union in the sense they don’t let you touch the rates. No matter what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do, they don’t let us touch the rates. And that sense in their rates are the worst.
I don’t know if they’re trying to get other things out of the operator, but, you know, maneuvering around with the rates is not really that possible. So we basically partnered with a fake agency. There’s a lot of these, you know, fake agencies, so to speak. And no, it’s an, it’s a staffing agency, meaning it’s a staffing agency. That’s pretty well priced. Meaning it’s, it’s affordable for the operator to bring in, let’s say this agency over other agencies.

David Pardo A fake recruitment agency or staffing agency? Okay.

Yitzy Because this agency doesn’t have a recruitment department, it doesn’t have an onboarding department. That’s something my team would assist with, because we are a recruitment company, and we were able to recruit people from different parts of the country through this staffing agency to this facility. I’d say that’s one of the most creative stuff we’ve done, and that has been able to bring down, let’s say the agency costs 150 to 100.

David Pardo Wait, did that, was that copasetic with the staffing agency? They were okay with you hiring?

Yitzy So yeah, so they were glad because all they really do is they let the employees work under them. So the employee works in essence for the staffing agency, the paycheck comes from the staffing agency. They just don’t have a recruitment department. They don’t have someone onboarding people. So what we basically did was we saw that the agency cost was let’s say $300,000 a month. Working with this staffing agency, we were able to…
circumvent, I would say, the more expensive agencies that had a really strong, a very strong stronghold on the facility. These other staffing agencies, they were, you know, they were being very tough. They were charging exorbitant prices per hour. Let’s say, let’s say they were charging around $70 to $80 an hour when the industry standard was around $40 or $30. And using this way, we were able to circumvent that.
So step one was really just to get staff instability in the building and make it profitable. Because this operator, I’d say, would have lost this facility if it wouldn’t have brought the agency costs down to a more manageable number. Once we brought up to that number, we were actually able to work with the union and show that we don’t really need the union because we can become fully staffed with agency. And that really brought the union to the table. Meaning up until now, the union and the agency were a little bit.
they all knew each other, but now all of a sudden there’s new kids on the block bringing in tons of people. So everybody started getting uneasy. The union didn’t have their power anymore because like, you know, we’ll just fill this whole facility with agency and it’s done. Now the agencies were out. The agency cost actually went down, like by, I think it was, I think it was, by the time we finished this project with the agency, I think it was down to 100,000. But again, it was fake because at the same time it’s labor cost, right? If you hire
And then I’ll ask employees, those are going to cost you money. It’s not free. But the margins that those other agencies were charging this operator were exuberant. And once we did that, yeah.

David Pardo So.
No, okay, I keep going.

Yitzy And then once we did that, then once we were able to touch the rate and actually bring it to a more, I think again, I don’t know if the union wanted to include acupuncture or something, just doesn’t even make sense for all their, like they were just trying to get the operator to cover other things that weren’t really, I think they just wanted to have a win. Like, like that’s what I was saying earlier, like the operator wanted to raise the rates. And if it’s coming from the operator, the union didn’t really bring a win for the staff. So it’s like, it’s like almost like, what do you, what do we need you for if you’re not bringing us the win?
Hiring rates, the operator wants to hire us higher rates. So what benefit is the union bringing us? Well, again, once we were able to bring… I’m sorry?

David Pardo You got that question answered? Were they able to walk away with an answer to that question, what the union does?

Yitzy It’s always, again, I find it to be more of a mindset. Like, you know, there are union people and non-union people. Like, I find there’s people that believe in the union, they’re doing great and stuff like that. And then there’s, you know, I find that the younger or the newer staff don’t really see the value of the union. I think more seasoned staff members believe in it and think that it’s really the best thing.

David Pardo You think it’s an older, younger thing or you think it’s a generational thing?

Yitzy I don’t know, because I think the generational, I think people, I think the younger people on social media, they just, they hear what other people are saying on a much larger volume. And I think they see that, you know, that’s why I think staffing agencies at one point was very strong. I think there’s this video someone showed me that how like, this nurse was saying how the staffing agency of the new union, that’s what she was saying. She was basically saying how the union is not really doing anything for me, like they’re going to have union negotiations once a year, then they’re going to
have it again in three years from now, as opposed to, if I want to raise my rate, I can just go to an agency today. If I don’t like it, I go to a different one. Like she was basically saying how the new union is going to agency. And she has a very good point. Again, in that concept. On the flip side, I mean, obviously, yeah.

David Pardo Meaning anyone can just go somewhere else, but with an agency, you’re gonna have a staff of people who are negotiating your new improved exorbitant rates on your behalf. So do people see you walk into Rhode Island, they say, there’s Yitsi, he’s the union boss of union bosses, he’s the mega. Do you consider yourself a mega union boss?

Yitzy Yeah. Exactly.
Nobody knows me, no, nobody knows me. I’m not a celebrity. No, not yet, not yet. Maybe if I get another mug of Mega Union Boss then I’ll start, you know?

David Pardo We’ll see how the downloads on this pod goes. So how often do you work with staffing agencies?

Yitzy So, I mean, our biggest sell, I’ll tell you right now, the clients that use us, I’d say primarily like the two biggest ones. Again, we work with small groups, work with very large groups, but the one common denominator is these are facilities that need staff. Now, biggest client, I would say, the ones that really come to us are the ones that rely heavily on agency. They wanna eliminate agency and…
That’s helped me with eliminate agency in so many facilities consistently, like really, really well. I have a portfolio in, um, in St. Louis area where we were able to take around, let’s say nine buildings agency free, they were on averaging around 130 to $180,000 a building. Um, we’ve done that numerous times all across the country. So I’ll say the biggest is a, is a agency, but many.
Many of our clients are new acquisition facilities where the operator is good, but if you buy a group of three, a group of six facilities, and to synchronize the recruitment of attention off the bat is so impactful. Because when there’s a new acquisition, usually what happens is there’s a ton of uncertainty and people don’t know what’s gonna happen. Are they gonna leave or they’re gonna fire people? The rumors start spreading.

David Pardo No, can you hear me? Oh, man.
Okay, there we go. Yeah, the last thing, rumors start spreading.

Yitzy I don’t know, I just didn’t keep it on the… Yeah, rumors start spreading. Rumors start spreading that the new operators are gonna take away all their PTO or just randomness. And then usually what happens is there’s mass exodus from the new acquisition. Something we pride ourselves, we feel like we’re like, we have a specialty in new acquisition facilities. We know how to transition from the old ownership to the new ownership.
We have our, I’ll give you an example on secret sauce, something that we focus on heavily that we learned, not the hard way, but we learned that is that the longer the facilities and the members of the facilities are using the words new ownership or, oh, I’m not sure about the new owners. Those words, the new owners are like watering a plant of doubt. It’s just consistent doubt and, and anxiousness and something we do.
Off the bat when we come in as we help the operator like streamline things and we ask them consistently like what’s everybody nervous about? Oh, we’re nervous that we’re not going to have our PTO rollover like the other company, you know, whatever his name is.
Right, right. So yeah. So one of the things we do with new ownership is we, like we have it boiled down to a science of first three weeks, this is what we’re doing. And then week three, we introduced this week forward to that. Something I find is we have like after week three, we like having like a little bit of a town hall meeting.
And with the ownership. Everybody asked their questions. What are they nervous about? And they asked them, like, hey, what’s your plan?
What do you plan on doing? And to hear from the owners or from the operators to say, well, I’ll tell you the truth. We’ve been in this footprint or we, you know, my goal is to make this the best facility, the nicest facility. We want to start renovations. Which room should we start with? Or even include them in the design, so to speak. And something like that, it just puts everybody at ease. Like they think, oh, are you guys gonna do this or cut staff? And what I find is most people that are buying facilities, it’s not a cutting staff play ever.
And if it’s a census play, you never want to cut staff. So for the staff to hear that, that we would never cut staff because it’s such a hard market to find staff, we would never get rid of you. We love you guys. Like what we want to do is A, take care of you like you’ve never been taken care of before. We want to make this the best place to work. And by that, we’re going to increase our census. You guys are part of that vision. For them, for the staff to hear that, not just…
the administrator to hear that and then the administrator again with a family member that just came in and is venting to them about something like and there goes the whole motivational speech as opposed to if it’s done to the whole facility, everybody hears that everybody’s bought into the vision.

David Pardo I love that. I hear a lot, by the way, that like just different things. The answer is transparency. Like, and, and there’s like walking towards a barking dog and saying, what are you afraid of? I’ll tell you whether it’s a valid fear or not directly. It’s very powerful.

Yitzy Yeah.
Yeah. At the same time, there are always in the facility certain people that identify and take it upon themselves to be the employee advocate or they make the most noise when in reality the new people that came in are looking to make this a great place. And what I find is that when, you know, we’ve never scheduled shifts to also include the weekends. That’s something we’ve never done before.
Right, okay, that’s why you don’t have any staff on the weekend. So we’re going to start incorporating, you know, a regular schedule of working, you know, every other weekend. And then usually those people, there is many times a time period of the butting heads and they do end up leaving. But, but then that’s usually like beautiful for the facility. Like it’s just calmer. People are nicer. They’re able to recruit people that left start coming back. You know, it’s very, it’s very interesting.

David Pardo Is this what you meant? This is something you posted on LinkedIn recently. It was a cute post, the secret to being fully staffed. And it was three steps. It was increase your hiring, hire someone every week, don’t lose any of them, and that’s it. And then someone in the comments said something about, I find, you said, I find most facilities overcomplicate the process. And then they feel like it’s impossible. What would you mean by that? Is this what you’re talking about?

Yitzy Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Because I found something very interesting. Some, a client once told me this and I did it inadvertently. Ever since then, I realized how sensitive you have to be to other people. But I mean, again, in a good way, not a bad way. But these were new operators and they’ve never operated in this state. And they were nervous and they had a lot of agency and the banks were asking a lot of questions. And at one point, they’re like, you see what am I doing? The bank is calling me, what are we doing about staffing? I’m like.
I told him, I’m like, I just want to say something. I’m like, I’ve been through this a thousand times. I see your applicant flow. I see your team. You guys are going to be agency free. Like, it’s not a question. I see what’s going on and you have it and it’s going to happen. I met him at a conference like six months later, which by the way, they both went agency free in those buildings. He’s like, you don’t even realize what you did for us in that meeting by telling us that like.
You’ve been there, like just trust the process. Like we’re making hires every single week. We’re not losing anybody. Or if we lose someone, it’s minimal, or it’s for a reason. But I said, the numbers are in your favor. So he said, just hearing that it’s possible is huge. And what I believe is that, I think so many facilities are stuck for such a long time. Having staffing issues.
never being fully staffed, rampant in agency, the quality of care, it’s the same yo-yo. We get a few more people, we hire someone, we lose someone, it’s just the same. And I think A, believing that it’s possible, because it is, and B, yeah, it’s simple, meaning just hire. What I meant by that post was like, some facilities that we work with, we come in, all right, one queue, interview well.
Which position? The nurse applicants, the DLN reaches out to them because she wants to make sure they are qualified and up to her standard. CNA is the HR or the unit manager, but the unit manager is working per diem because she’s trying out a different facility. Everything is in either disarray, there’s no organization, there’s no, you know, also synchronization. Their interview times are terrible. We’re, you know, we’re open to interviewing on Tuesdays because that’s when we don’t do payroll.
Tuesdays between 11 and 12, only if it’s not a payroll week, there are so many barriers to entry. You have to have two reference letters. We have to get in touch with those references and they actually have to call us back. So what I find is really looking at your, A, your hiring process. Are you hiring every week? If not, why? Why are you not hiring every week?
Something I just want to say out there also is that you never, you don’t always need to be in a hiring frenzy. I mean, there is going to come a time in life. Like we have current, we have some clients now, but they’re just accepting resumes. They’re not even, they’re not hiring anybody. They’re full. Every shift is full. Their per diem pool is full. They are, they are just accepting resumes that so that, I mean overtime is below 3%. It’s like unheard of. This facility was at.

David Pardo Oh.

Yitzy I’d say $100,000 in agency. So what I believe is that, well, monthly, yeah. Yeah, insane.

David Pardo Monthly.
And now they’re not even being overtime. You have a lot of clients who listen to your best advice. Curious, what is the worst thing you’ve ever seen a client do?

Yitzy Ugh.
I mean, the worst thing I’ve ever seen a client do is just, it was just like the perfect storm. Like, yeah, what I meant to say is like, you know, facilities have, every facility has their own way of going around things, meaning like…

David Pardo We love Star, we love her ex-arms.

Yitzy One facility, let’s say the administrator is great and he’s really friendly and getting people, and let’s say the director of nursing really cares about the quality of care, which is good, but she also is not so good with people, right? She doesn’t take mediocrity as a possibility. So sometimes that’s like a dynamic that doesn’t always work out, right? Let’s say maybe the director of nursing isn’t as good with the people. Let’s say his unit manager is not as good with people.
The perfect storm is when everybody’s bad. We’re like, the administrator doesn’t leave the office. The director of nursing only wants candidates that have at least seven years of experience and has been in long-term care. The rates were on the bottom of the barrel. They were in a rural area. HR was waiting to retire. Like she told that to us. I’m waiting till next year where I can get my retirement. There was nobody in the facility that was actually invested.
It was just an interesting, I’d say that’s the worst, the worst case scenario. Sorry, one second.

David Pardo of this. Go down the side of the bathroom.

Yitzy I’m with you.
Okay, great, I’m with you. Next. Sorry.

David Pardo That’s good. Perfect storm is like a word that was only invented, like in 1999 I think, actually about like a real story. In our lifetimes, yeah, like an actual storm happened one year they decided they described because it was like, like a mile from this direction miles from this direction and anyway. That’s up.

Yitzy Really.
Wow.
Like, we’re sending them candidates, they want us, you know, like as it is, they’re just like, every person we’re sending them is like, we either know them or they don’t have experience. And then even if they do hire them, it takes like four weeks to get back to the candidate. Like everything was broken. You know?

David Pardo Everything.
Okay, so you mentioned overtime. You actually posted recently on LinkedIn on overtime. Good engagement on the post. And it was, you know, you just had like a range of reactions from administrators, everything from like, why aren’t we paying more overtime to oh my God, why are we paying so much overtime? And all perfectly relatable. It’s a funny issue where you have like a range of reactions, each of which are perfectly defendable.

Yitzy Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

David Pardo What are other hot button issues that we haven’t yet arrived at the obviously correct position we just don’t know?

Yitzy The other obvious issues, I mean, I think staff retention these days, everybody knows about it, everybody sees how important staff retention is.

David Pardo Right, it’s an obvious issue, but you have an obvious, an issue where you don’t, it’s not an obvious answer. And you have a multiple…

Yitzy So I think, again, the way I look at it is, the word retention or culture is a very fluffy, foggy, you can’t put your finger on it. You know, you can’t, like how do you say if someone at a facility has a great culture or doesn’t? You know, it’s very tough, it’s hard to pin it down. At the same time, right, if you’re doing nothing for your staff, nothing.
All you’re doing is maybe once in a while, doing a tiny little thing. And then you’re just wondering why people are not leaving. That’s also, the onus is on you. Just do something for your staff. See what they like. Just make a raffle for a $25 gift card, or just go to Walmart, buy a $200 TV, and raffle it off once a month. Just do something for your staff. So what I find is, I’ve been blessed to be able to work with the most successful facilities in the country.
And even during COVID, these facilities had staff. And what I found was that they weren’t any more special than your go-to facility in Montana and in Minnesota. They weren’t.
What they were was a team that they crossed their teeth and dot their eyes, meaning recruitment was done well and retention was done well, no matter what. Meaning if your rates are terrible, what does that have to do with you showing your staff some love? If your rates are terrible, you can’t get applicants, what does that have to do with having a kudos program or employee spotlight? So I find that, you know.

David Pardo Bill laws are essentially, there’s war on one side, so it’s forcing them to murder. I’m a senior, I’m a senior. I know that. It’s forcing them to do one.

Yitzy Most facilities are like, they’re not doing the right thing to be responsible because they’re blaming the rate or they’re blaming other things. Like there are so many things that have nothing to do with the rate. There are so many things that have nothing to do with, if you have applicants, you have agency, like who cares? Like show your, like yes, I hear we have all that, but be responsible.
And it’s always a question, like what came first, the chicken or the egg? Like I need staff to do appreciation, but then if I don’t, it’s like vice versa. What I always believe is you have to do what’s in your hand right now. Right now you have staff, I don’t care if you have seven staff members and the other 13 or 30 are agency. Start with those seven.
Show them the love, see why it’s great to have them. And then the next thing I like doing is identifying a shift you can go agency free. So most operators go after the hardest shift, three to 11, the weekends. Like don’t go after the hardest one because nobody’s gonna stick, right? The second you hire somebody, you bring them to the 3-11 shift, there’s only agency, the agency there, the supervisor is an agency employee, you know, and then you wonder why the person’s not staying.
as opposed to put them on day shift, put them on night shift. Eliminate agency from one shift fully and go after your easiest agency shift, not your hardest. And once there’s a win, once you lock in a win, I find that the others start following suit.
Well, I love it.

David Pardo You know what that means? That sound means we’re up to fun questions. Okay, yeah. We’ve gotten the meat, we’ve gotten the juice, and the rest of this is fun. This is dessert, yeah. It’s Roche tomorrow. Well, bad opinions. What’s the worst opinion and or recommendation that you’ve heard about staffing?

Yitzy Whoa! I thought all these were fun.
This is like the dessert. You know, maybe I’ll order another appetizer, you know? Yeah.
I hate to say it, the worst opinion that I think is if you say you need, like when I hear someone say, we only hire good staff, that those words are I would say the worst because I think, and my response always is like, you make good staff. That’s the answer. I always say the same thing. You want to have a good staffer? Make them a good staff. Make them. How do you make them? Train them.

David Pardo Ho ho ho!

Yitzy You know, give them stuff. What don’t they know? Like, not give, again, people confuse giving themselves meaning, oh, well I’m on the cart six days a week. Being on the cart isn’t doing nothing. Meaning you’re providing the quality of care that’s nothing for your staff. You know, train them, treat them. If someone’s not happy, have a one-on-one. Just like you treat the residents, right? Just like the residents’ families. Like, treat your staff like they’re gold and they’ll stay.
So that’s the worst opinion, number one. We only hire good staff members. I believe you have to hire people that are.

David Pardo I love that. Okay. I love that.
That’s wait, that’s number one. You have, you have, you have multiple. We’re getting one free. All right. Well, perco.

Yitzy I don’t know. I mean, we can keep on. Also, the other worst opinion that I think goes like I keep on saying is to blame certain things and not be responsible and not do the things that you could do. Meaning if you’re saying, you know, if you’re saying staffing is a mess, or let’s say you’re saying that we don’t, again, our rates are terrible, right? If you got 13 applicants, why didn’t you reach out to them?
Our rates are terrible? Okay, but you still have people that apply to your job. Whether you like it or not, so, and let’s document that. Let’s see how many people actually show up to the interview and let’s see how many people reject your rate. And when we have 15 or 10 people that are rejecting the rate outright, then we can go to ownership, we can have a conversation. But if your opinion is that our rates are terrible, but you’re getting applicants like it’s going out of style, all of a sudden…
when another person, so sometimes what I do in that case is I say, okay, you know, Debbie, for Debbie Downer, you know, why don’t you focus on payroll? Because that’s really what your strength is, okay? Which by the way, shouldn’t be a very long payroll. You know, people spend weeks on payroll, that means you don’t have such a good person, really. Shouldn’t take weeks. If you have any competent software, any of anything these days, it should be.
a day, two days, you fix the punches every day, you know? That being said, but I actually do the opposite. I usually tell them, okay, Debbie, please focus on payroll and we’re gonna identify someone else that’s gonna do the hiring and the onboarding. And all of a sudden we’re hiring five, six, seven people a week. Now, Debbie, usually around week two, we have this mapped out, starts getting very frustrated with all these new…

David Pardo That’s how you know. That’s how you fess them out.

Yitzy people that are there and the punches and this is not we hire, we’re not used to this climate or they don’t know the way we work and then usually Debbie ends up becoming either staying in HR in the payroll part and that’s it and someone else gets promoted. Whatever it is but yeah I thought the second worst opinion is blaming things when you can do things today that will help you.

David Pardo That was a very meaningful bad opinion. I was looking for funny ones and I got much more than I bargained for. Fun question number two, most life-changing purchase under $150.

Yitzy BLEH
Whoa, big question. Honestly, I know it’s funny. I never believed I would, two things actually. Two life-changing purchases, both in my office. Ready? American flag, I have it in my office. I love it. I love the country. I have so much of what they’ve done for everything. And the second thing is a whiteboard.

David Pardo What’s your thing? What’s changed your life for not too much money?
I believed it.
I’m ready, I’m sitting down.
Interesting.

Yitzy Ugh.

David Pardo I love that so much. You a daily whiteboard user?

Yitzy I’m an avid wiper. I have one that’s like my consistent that I’m working on. And then I have like my game plan one where like, it’s like war room. Like what’s the attack? What’s the strategy? What are we doing? Like let’s put everything on the table. Let’s revisit everything. That’s my two life changing things under $150.

David Pardo That’s so good. Great recommendations. All right, number three, you had a billboard that you knew a million people were gonna see. What would you slap on that billboard?

Yitzy Wow.
What I say on that billboard, it’s a very good question. I don’t know. I think it would be great for people to know that healthcare is a great industry, I mean as an employee, like healthcare is a great industry to be in. You know, like it’s a very meaningful thing. It’s not like I tell my recruiters on my team all the time. Like what we’re doing, forget monetarily, we’re saving agency and all of that. Like we are affecting.
thousands of people’s lives. I said like, I always say like, if I had a grandparent nursing home, I would hope that they use Elite or they have a ploy. I would hope this home is doing everything they can to become fully staffed so that the quality care is at the highest level, you know? So
And like we’re doing real things. There are people that like, you know, I actually saw this client video, we made like a recruitment video, and like we’re looking at the staff there, and like it really hit home. Like we recruited those people. Like there’s another two CNAs and three LPNs in this facility, like taking care of these residents, like they smell better, it’s cleaner, the quality care is better. Like I’ve heard this from clients, all because there’s more staff in the building. Like, you know.
Healthcare is thought of this like industry and healthcare. It’s like, it’s a people industry. It’s, you know, to be a CNA is a real thing. You know, they’re compassionate. They’re taking care of real people and people, you know, this is so, everybody only has two parents. That’s it. There’s no way to get three parents. Or I mean, maybe, you know, obviously it is, but biologically, you know, you have two parents and many times, like these are the most important people to you in your life.
and if they’re being taken care of well, and we’re, meaning we’re impacting that, we’re changing that, we are the reason for that. So motivational speech of the 1045. Okay.

David Pardo Good billboard. We’re gonna have to cut it down. We’re gonna add some visuals. I like it though. And last question is selfish for me. Where do you get your healthcare news the latest and greatest?

Yitzy So I get it from two places. I get it from these online forums, but at the same time, like I, no, like either these McKnight’s or, not forums, these email things, like I like reading it, newsletters, at the same time, I really get it from just boots on the ground. Like A, just being in a lot of facilities or in touch with a lot of operators, I feel like,

David Pardo What’s an online, like a Dan’s deals? Like what kind of form? Okay.
Newsletters, yeah.

Yitzy You also hear, whether we service them or not, like what’s interesting is that once someone’s a client, or let’s say they move on, they’re fully staffed. They can go to the maintenance program, or they even like they graduate, they can bring us into other facilities, but we’re always connected. So I have a lot of operators that still speak to me regularly, asking me questions, different strategies, different things, like what would I do? And I’m more than glad to help people out.
And I feel like that’s really like where the information lies. Like to put together that stat, if things are getting better or worse, is looking at data that was a few months old and things like that, or certain data, as opposed to like, boots on the ground in this county, like things are just getting better, is real. But I just wanted to answer another question you had that you said if inherently, right, like 2030, is there enough people, like I don’t-

David Pardo systemic issues.

Yitzy I don’t believe in that, I’ll tell you why. Because they’re looking at this with the current way things are. Now the fact is, the more, the more stronger operators that are out there, they’re gonna want fully staffed buildings, the fact that they are gonna touch the rate. So that…
I feel like that report makes sense if a CNA was making, let’s say, $9.75. But if the average CNA, since that report, is making close to $20 an hour, meaning almost on par with the agency, so then, yes, someone does want to become a CNA again, right? They could get the minimum wage of $13 an hour, but rates in the industry has gone up. Meaning, if the rates in the industry for a nurse, for a CNA, does go up, then people are going to want to…
come back to this industry, right? They’re gonna start flying back here because it’s a great career, it’s meaningful. You know, you come in, it’s clear, you know, you’re getting trained, you could have a career growth. So that’s why I don’t like looking at these things because you’re not encompassing A, the wage increase. And if there isn’t a wage increase, all these millennials, everybody’s complaining, they don’t like to work, and it’s not the same. At the same time, they only need to eat, right? They only need to work, and they do work. So I feel like you can’t look at a report.

David Pardo reports to fatalistic and static and doesn’t account for change in the industry.

Yitzy If you haven’t seen how high the rates have gone, you know, yeah, the RNs were making, let’s say, I would say, I know RNs are we’re making 70 or 60,000 now many RNs are making 90 to 100,000. So why wouldn’t someone want to be an RN? Like
Just the opposite, like people are gonna run to be an RN. RNs are compassionate by nature. It’s something that you can do forever. Especially now the CMS star rating really looks at your RN coverage. RNs are in demand. The way I look at it is, if you want a great career, becoming an RN is the right way to go. A lot, so much.

David Pardo Final mic drop from Yitzy Weinberger. I really appreciate you taking the time to hang out with us. I’ll catch you on the other side.

Yitzy So amazing, amazing. Thank you, David, really great schmoozing. Really enjoyed. Have a great.