Helen Shaham, Founder, The Palace Senior Living

Invest: spoke with Helen Shaham, founder of The Palace Senior Living, about the company’s origins, its approach to luxury senior living, and the importance of culture fit in serving residents. “The average age of people coming in right now is about 88 to 89 years of age when they move in. That is significantly older than it was 30 years ago,” Shaham said.

What sets The Palace apart from other senior living options in South Florida?
Most of the companies in Miami and South Florida are big corporations that have multiple facilities around America, and maybe even beyond. We are local, only in South Florida. We are private owners, and we’ve been doing this for 46 years.

We are established, and we have generations already coming. People say, ” My grandmother was here.” Helen and Jacob Shaham, along with The Palace, were the pioneers of senior living in South Florida. We pioneered luxury living for seniors, upscale senior living in South Florida.

What inspired you to create The Palace, and what has been the most rewarding part of that journey?
We started in 1980. We came from Israel. In Israel, inflation was high. You couldn’t make it. We were about 30 years old, and either you had rich parents who could help you, or you would stay poor forever. We didn’t like that, so we decided to take a chance on America, the land of opportunities.

We arrived here with $38,000 and tried to buy a business. You know, that doesn’t exist. Even then, many people say that in 1980, the world was not 1880. We found an old building, maybe 100 years old, with 20 people.

My background is in hotels. I’m an accountant, and I used to work in hotels. I loved hotels. With $38,000, you couldn’t buy a hotel. My husband and I were talking, and he said, tell me what you hate about hotels. I said I hated that people come and go, and come and go. Let them stay.

He said, if we are going to do a hotel for old people, senior living, they will come, and they will stay. We would make the hotel as beautiful as we could afford and do everything we wanted to do. The only thing was that we had to add medical care, which was fine. You hire doctors and everything. That was the original idea, and actually, it didn’t change.

One of the things we did was look around at what was in Miami at that time. What we saw was absolutely disgusting and devastating. It was like a horror movie. Coming here, I said, in America? This is how old people have to live? It just didn’t fit with me. This is America. It needs to be grand, it needs to be beautiful, it needs to be different.

From the beginning, we started to paint the building and put up some wallpaper to make it nicer. With time, we started to be known, and we got loans and partners. Through the partners and the loans, we could afford to build nicer.

We only construct one building at a time. With every one that we build, we learn from everything that we did before, and we fix it in the new one. Our newest building is five years old already and is the epitome of luxury. Everybody who comes says, ” You’re different.” Yes, I know.

I like to think that one day I’m going to live there, so I need certain things. I need three side mirrors; I need a den; I need all kinds of things. If I’m going to live there, I need them, so I have to put them there now. The facilities are magnificent.

How do programs and family involvement shape the resident experience?
All the programs that we do are great. For example, we have a connection with the University of Miami, and they come and facilitate lectures for our residents. We also invite the families and friends of our residents for large parties for all the holidays, including Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, Easter, and Passover. They are invited, and there is no charge for these events. That is something nobody else does. It allows the families and the residents to be together in a non-threatening environment. They bring their kids, and they bring their grandkids. The families love it, the residents love it, and it is a win-win for everybody.

How do you see the future of senior living evolving?
The future is going to be a magnitude that is indescribable right now, because we know that people live longer. When we started, people used to come in when they were about 75. Now, they are about 95. We have people who are 105.

People live longer. From the population outside, there will be so many more people just because they are going to live longer. I wish all these people of 110 and 120 and 130 would be in fine shape, but we know that is not going to be the case. Even though medicine is fantastic now, relative to what it was, there will still be people who will need help.

The baby boomer generation is also changing the industry. The beginning of the baby boomers are turning a certain age this year, which is 80. In the next 15 years, the percentage of seniors over the age of 80 will go up significantly, and that presents a lot of opportunities for the senior living industry.

We will have to adapt to the needs of the baby boomers, because they are different from the silent generation. We will have to look at the programming that we do and the amenities that we have in our communities to adapt to this population. The average age of people coming in right now is about 88 to 89 years of age when they move in. That is significantly older than it was 30 years ago, but the number of people in that age group will increase due to the baby boomers.

How are you approaching workforce development and maintaining high-quality care?
Workforce management is not easy. Generation Z is different. What we did for 46 years was work every day, seven days a week, many hours a day. Every time there were people, they made you grow, because you talk to so many people, you see the needs, and you talk to families. I got so involved in this.

We have received a few No. 1 rankings in America. We had the best senior living in America in 2014, and we were the number one senior living workplace in America two years in a row, according to Fortune magazine.

About the workforce, when I interview, I ask, do you have a grandmother? Do you see her a lot? How do you deal with her? What does she want you to do for her? I see if they have any inkling of an older person. Some people have never seen an older person, and some people are actually afraid of older people.

In order to sift through the thousands of applications, we have a program called PI, the Predictive Index. It may take 20 minutes for a person to answer questions, and then it gives you a report. This report is so real and so correct. We have been doing it for maybe 25 years or more for every new person who wants to come work for The Palace.

We are doing it to ourselves, too. My husband did it; my kids did it. I do it for everybody. We must have people who fit the profile personality-wise. We can teach anybody anything, but if you don’t have the right personality, and you’re not empathetic or you don’t care, depending on the role, it doesn’t matter.

The program gives you a graph. Recently, I told my recruiters: first of all, see the name, but don’t spend time reading the paperwork, the resume, or the application. First, look at the graph. If the graph is good, then go and read everything. If the graph is not good, go to the next person.

How do you retain employees and preserve The Palace’s corporate culture?
We do things differently as a company. We reward our people for doing great work. We ask a lot of them, but we reward them. We take our Managers of the Year to exclusive, beautiful resorts across the country with their significant others, along with the upper management of the company, to thank them and reward them for doing an exceptional job.

This is something we have done for almost 30 years, nonstop. In recessions, in good times, and in bad times, we have never stopped doing it. The Shahams are all about taking care of the people who take care of the residents.

Many of our managers have been here for over 30 years. Our average department head, our average salaried employee, has been with The Palace for over 12 years. That includes bringing in people for new projects and new things like that. The core people of our company have all been with us for over 20 years.

We have extremely low turnover, a lot of continuity, and people understand the corporate culture. We need to bring in people who understand that corporate culture, because it is different. We have about 1,600 residents, about 1,600 employees, and an additional 600 subcontractors, so it is a huge number.