From One Client's Challenge to a New Industry Solution: Introducing Labor

Senior living operators are navigating a difficult balancing act. Resident acuity is rising, labor costs are climbing, and caregiver burnout continues to impact communities across the industry.

Making the right staffing decisions has never been more important. Or more challenging.

Despite labor representing more than half of operating expenses, many communities still lack the visibility needed to understand whether staffing levels truly align with resident needs and caregiver workloads.

That's why we're excited to announce the launch of Labor, a new solution designed to help operators align staffing decisions with resident acuity, caregiver workload, and budget goals.

But Labor didn't start as a product roadmap item. It started with a client who reached out for support.

The Problem We Set Out to Solve

Sonida Senior Living came to us with an ask: help us keep labor costs flat while ensuring staffing levels matched the care residents actually needed.

Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution, we partnered closely with Sonida's teams.

For months, we embedded ourselves within Sonida communities, observing shifts, listening to caregivers and leaders, and studying how care was being delivered in real time. We then leveraged the care activity data already flowing through the Sage platform to build a model tailored to their specific goals and operational realities.

The result exceeded the original ask.

We didn't just help keep labor costs flat. We helped drive labor costs down by $110 per resident per month.

Turning a Client Success into an Industry Solution

What began as a collaborative effort with Sonida ultimately revealed something much larger.

The same challenges Sonida was facing were showing up across the industry.

Operators everywhere were struggling to balance three competing priorities:

• Delivering exceptional resident care
• Supporting and retaining caregivers
• Managing labor budgets responsibly

We realized that the missing link, across the board, was visibility.

Senior living leaders needed a way to connect resident acuity, caregiver workload, and labor spend in real time.

We translated these findings and solutions into Labor; a solution now available to all Sage  clients.

Introducing Sage Labor

Labor brings acuity-based staffing intelligence directly into the Sage platform, helping operators understand where staffing levels and resident needs are aligned (and where they aren't).

Because Sage continuously captures real care activity across the community, Labor provides a more complete picture of workload than previously available to operators.

With Labor, operators can:

• Align staffing with resident acuity. As resident needs evolve, Labor identifies when care demands begin to exceed current staffing levels, helping leaders proactively adjust before caregivers become overwhelmed.
• Manage labor budgets with confidence. Labor compares actual staffing against community-specific labor targets, providing real-time visibility into performance and helping leaders make informed decisions.
• Better support caregivers. Labor gives leadership teams a more objective understanding of caregiver workload by incorporating planned care, unplanned care, alerts, and resident needs into a single view. This helps organizations identify opportunities to balance workloads, recognize high-performing team members, and reduce burnout.

“Labor provides senior living leaders more transparency into the bigger picture to help them match the right resources to the right resident needs at the exact moment they are required. With these insights, leaders can staff caregivers exactly where they are needed most to better balance the daily workload.”
–Ellen Johnston, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Sage

Built With Operators, Not Just For Them

At Sage, we always believe the best technology is built alongside the people who use it every day.

Labor is another example of that philosophy in action. It was developed through partnership with operators, caregivers, and community leaders working to solve real-world challenges.

"Labor budget was the number everyone watched, but it was never really about the number, it was about whether our teams had what they needed to give residents the care they deserve. Sage didn’t just analyze our data, they spent time in our communities and learned exactly how our teams work, and that’s what made the difference. We set out to hold our labor budget flat and instead cut costs by $110 per resident per month, while giving our care teams more support than they’ve ever had."
–Tabitha Obenour, Chief Clinical Officer, Sonida Senior Living

Sonida’s feedback, insights, and willingness to innovate helped shape what Labor has become today.

The Future of Staffing Starts With Better Data

The staffing crisis in senior living won't be solved by simply asking caregivers to do more.

It will be solved by giving operators better visibility into resident needs, helping leaders deploy resources more effectively, and ensuring caregivers have the support they need to deliver exceptional care.

That's the future Labor was built to support.

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