Pros
Working with seniors can be fun and/or rewarding Gain healthcare experience Relaxed dress code Don’t have to pay for the Sunrise “uniform” (T-shirts) Wage co-workers are generally friendly
Cons
Short shifting, and to make matters worse the neighborhood coordinators do not fill in gaps themselves. Low wage Care managers=grunts that do a lot of housekeeping, care for the residents, depending on the Sunrise the dishwashing, laundry and supposed to make real connections with residents Stretching the wage by adding additional duties or residents beyond the ratios or duties quoted at the time of hire Lead, LEM, Med Care positions are a trap. There are usually no on-call or extra people for these positions. Coordinators are too cheap to train extra. Many coordinators are unprofessional. Some hide from conflict. Others tell employees they will do something and then do not. Lack tact. Condescending to care managers. At my location, one of the neighborhood coordinators is an atrocious speller, but she is too lazy and/or careless to fix her mistakes. As a result, itinerary sheets for meetings, communication logs and even PUBLIC displays that families see have spelling errors. THAT is poor presentation. "Do as I say not as I do" attitude of senior management. Example, care managers are scolded for not making Sunrise clean and presentable, but when something major breaks on a weekend or in the afternoon the maintenance staff including the Maintenance Coordinator is nowhere to be found. Working at Sunrise hurts those with a sensitive moral conscience. When you consider the fact that residents and their families pay more than $5,000 a month, but the services are nowhere near that threshold due to Sunrise Corporate and individual Sunrise policies. This is mainly due to the census. If the population of a floor drops positions, hours, even staff can be dropped. The result is personal time with residents drops, care managers are forced to stop letting residents that are able to do some of their own cares themselves participate in ADLs due to time. The care managers end up doing all the cares leading to a use or it lose dilemma. With the reduced staff residents cannot be cared for in a timely manner. Changes in hours are not given in advance. Assisted Living focused Sunrises neglect Reminiscence. They take an absurd amount of time to complete repairs. They do not have a nurse dedicated to the floor. If Assisted Living is short, and Reminiscence is fully staffed for a shift, Reminiscence staff will be sent to Assisted Living to fill the gap. Reminiscence food is usually subpar. The activities are boring and overly repetitive Sunrise accepts and keep dangerous residents on Reminiscence putting staff and other residents at risk. Physical violence and sexual harassment are acceptable behaviors by residents because despite the mantra money comes first. Floor coordinators live in a bubble. They are too far removed from the work, requirements, and expectations of working on the floor with residents. They don’t understand that simply adding a resident is no big deal, or adding more duties “should be fine.” If they ever did work the floor I think they would be completely lost. A neighborhood coordinator at my location does not know much about her staff or residents. The result is she makes poor promotion decisions, does not know enough about residents to prevent or help explain health issues to nursing before they become major issues. It is usually safe to voice issues to management, but don’t expect action or sympathy. Case in point, The Voice was a corporate national initiative for the employees to complete a survey. The national results were to be summarized in August (they weren’t) and the specific results of each Sunrise were to be summarized in September (they weren’t). No policy changes noted. Career advancement is up to the discretion of your neighborhood coordinator. The result is that career advancement can be blocked if your coordinator believes you are too valuable to let go The open kitchen in Reminiscence is unsanitary (residents are free to walk through and open fridges etc) and unsafe (residents can gain access to cutlery, turn on ovens or put silverware in microwaves) Too many meetings. Depending on your position there may be up to 3 meetings for an employee to attend. Town Halls are longer than necessary because coordinators insist on cutting up and making comments they intend to be funny (they are not). Town halls include time wasted on “fun” contests. Late night Town Hall is the most concise because coordinators want to go home. On call employees are expected to attend all these meetings, thus the reason there are very few on-call employees. Salaried coordinators play fast and loose with their hours. Coming and leaving as they please making it difficult for families and employees to speak with them.
