New Search Announcement: Program Director, Cooperative Elder Services (Arlington, MA and Burlington, MA)

Pillar Search and HR Consulting is honored to partner with Cooperative Elder Services, Inc. (CESI) on their search for their next Program Director. This role is split between the CESI locations in Arlington, MA and Burlington, MA.

Mission Statement:

The mission of Cooperative Elder Services, Inc. (CESI) is to empower seniors and adults with medical or cognitive challenges to age-in-place by serving their health and socialization needs and providing support for families.

About Cooperative Elder Services, Inc.: CESI takes a holistic approach to supporting the health of seniors and adults with medical or cognitive challenges. At each of our four adult day health centers, CESI staff works toward a common goal: to empower participants to age-in-place by serving their health and socialization needs and providing support for families. Founded in 1978, CESI currently operates private, nonprofit adult day health programs in Arlington, Burlington, Concord, and Groton. We serve 500 caregivers and seniors and adults with medical or cognitive challenges, who reside in more than 50 cities and towns in the greater Boston area. CESI participants make 42,000 daily visits to CESI’s centers each year.

CESI provides participants with an environment that supports their whole health; one in which they can:

  • Socialize with peers,
  • Participate in meaningful activities,
  • Exercise their minds and bodies,
  • Learn to manage their chronic diseases, and
  • Maintain compliance with physician’s orders.

CESI programming provides participants’ family caregivers with the services and support they need to care for their families; physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing.

CESI’s adult day health centers are staffed by licensed nurses, geriatric care and Alzheimer’s specialists, service coordinators, and program aides, with regular consultation by an Occupational Therapist and Registered Dietician.

Learn more at http://www.elderdayservices.org.

Job Overview:

The Program Director is responsible for oversight of program operations; providing leadership to and management of all staff in assigned sites to ensure that services required by participants are provided and documented as regulated. This includes Program Coordinators, Program Aides, Services Coordinators, and Nurses. The Program Director is also responsible for agency-wide initiatives and projects, including quality assurance and process improvement.

Essential functions of the position:

  • Responsible for oversight and management of all program operations in the Arlington and Burlington sites, including implementing CESI policies and procedures; ensuring compliance with all applicable regulatory requirements.
  • Leadership and management of staff, including hiring, training, and performance evaluations.
  • Ensure coverage levels and performance excellence through recruiting of new staff for both sites.
  • Oversight of program safety and emergency evacuation plans.
  • Adherence to monthly/annual operating budgets, including preparation and monitoring of monthly income statements and program expenditures. Work with staff to respond to revenue deficits and over-expenditures.
  • Responsible for growing attendance and revenue by increasing community/brand awareness and maximizing programming, in order to reach/exceed census benchmarks; review monthly census data by site.
  • Develop and maintain working relationships with existing, past and potential funders.
  • Develop and maintain working relationships with monitoring agencies, other community agencies, and vendors.
  • Responsible for leading agency-wide initiatives and projects, responding to changes within the healthcare industry while also driving targeted efforts related to strategic business partnerships, and keeping abreast of inventive service models and innovative research.
  • Represent the agency at outreach, education, marketing, and community events.
  • Collaborate with administration to access grants and scholarships.
  • Oversight of regulated documentation; key participant in the Quality Assessment and Process Improvement (QAPI) program.
  • Ensure that the multi-disciplinary teams, led by the program directors, are developing care plan objectives for each participant.
  • Other duties as assigned by Director of Services, Executive Director, or their designee.

Equipment:

  • Ensure proper use of medical and participant care equipment to meet the needs of Adult Day Health Center’s participants.

Working Conditions:

  • Extensive participant contact.
  • Possible exposure to infection, blood and blood borne pathogens.
  • May work with hazardous/infectious waste.

Physical Requirements:

( ) Sedentary Work – Lifting 10 lbs. maximum and occasionally lifting and/or carrying such articles as dockets, ledgers and small tools.

( ) Light Work – Lifting 20 lbs. maximum with frequent lifting and/or carrying of objects weighing up to 10 lbs.

(X) Medium Work – Lifting 50 lbs. maximum with frequent lifting and/or carrying of objects weighing up to 25 lbs.

( ) Heavy Work – Lifting 100 lbs. maximum with frequent lifting and/or carrying of objects weighing up to 50 lbs.

( ) Very Heavy Work – Lifting objects in excess of 100 lbs. with frequent lifting and/or carrying of objects weighing 50 lbs. or more.

Qualifications & Skills:

  • Bachelor’s degree in human services or a related field required, Master’s degree strongly preferred, LICSW ideal
  • Minimum 10 years’ experience in a senior management/leadership role
  • Proven experience leading and managing teams, including a strong track record of identifying, hiring and training strong performers
  • Experience growing a program or organization
  • Experience working with seniors strongly preferred
  • Project management experience preferred
  • Valid driver’s license and reliable transportation required
  • Computer proficiency required

Personal Characteristics:

  • Ability to lead as a change agent
  • Comfortable pitching in as needed directly with program participants
  • Proven ability to work autonomously
  • Ability to work collaboratively as a member of multidisciplinary and cross-functional teams.
  • Demonstrated ability to work effectively and collaboratively with a culturally diverse population of clients, other care providers, family and community members.
  • Able to meet and manage to specific benchmarks around fiscal health, program quality measures, and service levels
  • Ability to function under pressure in a fast-paced human service environment.
  • Ability to negotiate and resolve differences.
  • Ability to be flexible, open and responsive to ongoing industry changes.
  • Effective communicator who can articulate and clearly communicate CESI’s mission and strategic direction in a consistent and enthusiastic manner to departmental staff.
  • Ability to identify opportunities and obstacles, and develop effective, creative solutions to pursue opportunities.
  • Results-oriented.

Cooperative Elder Services has partnered with Pillar Search on the hiring of our new Program Director. Please submit your resume and cover letter (required) to Cindy Joyce at cindy@pillarsearch.com. No calls please. Our apologies in advance, but due to the high volume of resumes received we will only respond to those candidates selected for an interview.

CESI and Pillar Search & HR Consulting believe that diversity in all dimensions of the organization supports and bolsters the innovative thinking essential to its success. CESI and Pillar Search & HR Consulting do not make hiring decisions on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic background, age, disability, religion, political affiliation, or ideology.

About Pillar Search & HR Consulting:

A woman-owned business founded in Boston in 2015, Pillar Search & HR Consulting provides executive search/recruiting and human resources consulting expertise to nonprofit and mission-driven organizations, working with senior leaders and boards of directors to hire and develop the very best talent across all functional areas of the organization. To learn more, please contact Cindy Joyce at cindy@pillarsearch.com.

Pillar’s Article, 10 Things Nobody Ever Tells You about Working from Home, Appears on Thrive Global!

This article was posted on Thrive Global on April 30, 2018.  To read the article on Thrive Global, click here!

When I started Pillar Search & HR Consulting, I went from working in the office 5 days a week to working from home 3-4 days a week. I have loved every minute of working from home. It has been a total game changer. There have been some surprises, though. If you are considering a role that allows you to work from home almost exclusively, here were a few of my “aha” moments:

  • I miss coworkers. Sometimes. Granted, I no longer have to listen to Ned from Accounting complain about the quality of coffee or Mabel from Client Services go on and on about her cats, but I miss the comradery and the ability to bounce ideas off of people. I try to do client or candidate lunches once or twice a week. Some days I will sneak out to the gym just to see another person during the day, because once in a while it feels isolating.
  • Be prepared to redecorate. Believe me, this was on of my biggest surprises. Spending hours on end in your abode will make you realize that cannot stand the paint color in your immediate work area. It started to feel too dark, so I painted it. And then the bedroom looked too dark. And then the guestroom. If the dog stands still long enough, he may get a coat of paint.
  • My dry cleaner misses me. We used to be on a first-name basis. Now I am just some person who brings in her “fancy” clothes every few weeks since the days of suits and dresses are few and far between. Now I work in yoga pants. You know it’s bad when I justify that they are my “dressy” ones, though on the plus side I am saving a considerable amount of money.
  • I now regret the money spent on shoes (okay, not really…) It’s just a wee bit challenging to justify what I spent on my shoe obsession when I now spend most days in gym socks. Same for the suits and dresses that now collect dust. If you believe that working from home will be your reality for the foreseeable future, consider paying it forward by donating some of your former work wardrobe to an organization like Dress For Success.
  • Maintain a Network: If you work remotely, you can still have a relationship with colleagues, albeit virtually. However, having people you see live and in person can be crucial to your sanity. Join a networking or professional group to ensure that you maintain much-needed, real, live contact with others in your profession or industry.
  • Those appointments that I used to schedule way in advance are a breeze. Those annoying four hour windows from the cable company? No problem! I’ll be here! Doctor has nothing in the evenings or Saturday for months? I’ll take that random Tuesday afternoon time slot!
  • Toilet paper. Not to be indelicate, but you never think about that when in an office. Ditto for water, pens, post-its, and coffee/tea. In an office, those things somehow magically appear. You will be amazed at how quickly you run through them. Be sure to stock up.
  • Time Management. Without the normal office cues to indicate time, it is so easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of a project, look up, and realize the day is gone. You do not see people coming and going, or have the same number of meetings to break up the day – it is great because it keeps me focused, but sometimes I need to set a timer so that I remind myself to take a breather.
  • Family and friends think I am free to play. Set boundaries if you start to work from home. People assume that it means that you can chat on the phone at any time or meet them for downtime when they have a day off. That is not the case. I am working from home, with a big emphasis on the w-o-r-k.
  • MOVE! Living in the city, I often walked a mile to and from the office, and clocked thousands of steps while there going to meetings or to grab lunch. Now I need to remind myself to move. One thing that helped my waistline is the lack of the office candy bowl and endless birthday cake and leftovers from catered lunches, and if I ended a conference call in the office and started doing pushups, I would have been looked at funny. At home, it is a judgment-free zone.

There are a million perks to working from home, and if you can work around the very few challenges, you may just find your professional utopia. Good luck with it!

Hire the best! With personalized service and proven results, Pillar Search & HR Consulting provides retained executive search services and human resources consulting for exceptional non-profits and socially responsible for-profit firms. A woman-owned business, Pillar is based in Boston, MA, and works on the national level. To learn more about how Pillar can assist with your hiring and human resources needs, please contact Cindy Joyce at cindy@pillarsearch.com.