Testimonials Employee Survey testimonial from Holiday Retirement Senior Living

Holiday Retirement is the largest independent living provider in the U.S. With over 250 communities across over 30 states, their mission is to help older people live better. CEO Lilly Donohue, CHRO Karen Sheean, and CFO Tyler Helson partner to help their people reach their full potential.

Challenge: Holiday is undergoing a rapid evolution
Founded in 1971, Holiday has been on a journey of transformation. With a new leadership team in place, Holiday moved from a model of resident-on-site caretakers to professional managers for each community. This meant a huge amount of change. In 2017, Holiday was seeking a way to collect its employee voices. In the past, Holiday had experience with IBM’s Kenexa survey as well as internal surveys.

Solution: Holiday actively seeks feedback from its associates and leaders closely listen to the insights
In less than two years, Holiday has run six employee experience surveys with the Activated Insights platform. The insights have been used to inform strategies across the company. A few examples include:

• Recruiting with the Great Place to Work certification has driven more and better candidates for Holiday
• Using the employee engagement data at a line role level to find the best properties for piloting new dining initiatives
• Creating communication strategies for integrating newly acquired communities into the Holiday portfolio

Results: Holiday has achieved major performance milestones
Holiday's leadership team has set aggressive goals and achieved many to most of them. They often receive associate comments that remark "This is a great place to work. They really are listening to us and care about what we say." In addition and as a result, employee turnover has decreased from 2017-2019.