Emeritus Senior Living: Strategic Implementation Plan
This paper presents a strategic implementation plan for Emeritus Senior Living, a major U.S. assisted-living operator that expanded rapidly from 135 to 479 communities between 2000 and 2010 while sustaining significant net operational losses. The plan addresses mounting quality-control failures — including a rare "D" compliance rating at one facility — and proposes three coordinated phases: strategic downsizing through the sale of underperforming facilities, internal quality improvement through centralized standards and personnel development, and public image rehabilitation through community engagement and transparent evaluation. The paper outlines objectives, functional tactics, action milestones, task ownership, and resource allocation for each phase.
- Introduction: Growth and Its Challenges: Emeritus rapid growth creates internal performance problems
- Implementation Plan Overview: Three-phase plan targets losses and quality failures
- Objectives: From Expansion to Quality Control: Compliance failures drive quality-first correction strategy
- Functional Tactics: Retraction, internal controls, and reputation repair steps
- Action Items, Milestones, and Task Ownership: Timed milestones and assigned roles for each phase
- Resource Allocation: Funds directed to quality, HR, and public relations
- Conclusion: Personnel commitment determines implementation success
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds each strategic recommendation in concrete evidence, including specific net-loss figures and a documented compliance failure, making the case for change impossible to dismiss.
- Maintains a clear three-phase structure (downsizing, quality control, image management) that gives the argument logical momentum and practical coherence.
- Balances internal operational concerns with external reputational stakes, showing awareness that strategic success depends on both financial performance and public trust.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied strategic analysis by translating abstract business concepts — economies of scale, centralized control, stakeholder management — into specific, time-bound action items with assigned ownership. This move from theory to operational detail is a hallmark of graduate-level business writing and distinguishes a workable implementation plan from a general strategy memo.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with industry context and company background before narrowing to a thesis-level problem statement. It then proceeds through formally labeled sections — Objectives, Functional Tactics, Action Items, Task Ownership, and Resource Allocation — mirroring the standard structure of a professional strategic plan. The conclusion refocuses attention on personnel commitment as the ultimate determinant of plan success, providing a human-centered closing argument.
Introduction: Growth and Its Challenges
In one regard, the senior assisted living community sector is one of the most stable and fastest-growing industries in an otherwise stagnant domestic marketplace. This is to the advantage of the firm that has been at the center of our research discussions to this point. For Emeritus Senior Living, however, this advantage is today being offset by a number of internal performance patterns that must be addressed.
Indeed, the model for growth at Emeritus has to this point been extraordinarily successful from a purely economic standpoint. According to Emeritus (ESL), "at the end of 2000, Emeritus was a small senior living company with an operating portfolio of 135 communities and a capacity for 14,100 residents. Ten years later (December 31, 2010), we are one of the largest operators of senior living facilities in the country with an operating portfolio of 479 communities and a capacity for 49,700 residents. Truly, this has been a decade of transformation for Emeritus." (ESL, p. 1) However, as the implementation plan outlined hereafter will show, there is also a need to reverse a number of trends that have emerged over the course of this decade of growth. Among them, issues of quality control and economic performance per facility are imperative to address.
Implementation Plan Overview
Though Emeritus has thrived by opening or acquiring 479 facilities to date, it has reported net operational losses for a sustained period, to an extent that calls for an adjustment in approach and orientation. According to Traecy, the company lost $104.8 million in 2008, $53.9 million in 2009, and $57 million in 2010. This is a pattern that the implementation plan proposed and outlined here is intended to repair. The plan is predicated on several key steps that should shift the focus of the company from growth to product refinement. Accordingly, it calls for three primary steps: the closure of underperforming facilities; the tactical improvement of existing facilities; and the rehabilitation of the Emeritus product and service image.
Works Cited
Eastday. (2011). Foreign firms moving into senior care. English.eastday.com.
Emeritus Senior Living (ESL). (2010). 2010 Annual Report. Emeritus Corporation.
PRWeb. (2011). Emeritus Senior Living employees raise more than $400,000 for the Alzheimer's Association. Yahoo! News.
Traecy, M. (1992). Customer intimacy. Harvard University.
Villarreal, M. (2011). Senior care facility apologizes after being slapped with D rating. KTNV.com.
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