Emeritus Assisted Living Asks Employees To Do Damage Control After Frontline Exposé, Accidentally CCs Reporters

One day after Emeritus Senior Living, the nation’s largest for-profit assisted living chain, was the subject of a Frontline/ProPublica exposé, the company reached out to its employees, asking them to do damage control. Emeritus also made a classic mistake straight out of the Worst Company In America handbook when it accidentally copied ProPublica on the staff-only e-mail.

For those who haven’t had a chance to see the Frontline episode — and you should definitely watch it, especially you or a love one is considering assisted living — reporters investigated the largely unregulated assisted living industry, focusing mostly on Emeritus and several tragic incidents that have occurred at the company’s facilities around the country.

In the documentary, former Emeritus employees discuss the company’s alleged push to get warm, paying bodies into its assisted living facilities and to “Keep the Back Door Shut,” an actual name for Emeritus’s strategy for dealing with residents who want to leave.

Early Wednesday morning, Karen Lucas, Emeritus’s VP of Product Development and Communications, sent out the following e-mail to the staff… and to ProPublica, which did all the reporting on the Frontline episode:

OK, everyone, it’s our turn now.

The broadcast has aired. Frontline has told their story. Now it’s time to tell ours. And folks, let’s tell it LOUDLY.

I am asking you, right now, to take five minutes, go online to one of these websites (or cut and paste to all of them, for that matter), and write just one sentence that speaks to your incredible community, your amazing staff, your wonderful residents and families that you care for, the job that you love and the difference that you make.

There’s a great quote: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.”

If you don’t think your one post will matter, it does. A LOT.

We have only to be proud of what we do. Now is OUR time to flood the internet with the sounds of OUR united voices. Shout out about the exceptional care your team delivers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for your residents and their families who trust and believe in you.

Please. Do it now.

ProPublica

http://www.propublica.org/

Frontline

http://www.Frontline.org

Frontline Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151535403996641&set=a.491930816640.259623.45168721640&type=1&theater

ProPublica Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/propublica

Your work is love made visible. You are an example for us all.

~Karen

Oops.

While we have no problem with people who genuinely feel compelled to defend their employers, it’s problematic when a company has to nudge its employees into white-washing social media. Emeritus employees were probably very aware that the Frontline was airing, and a number of them surely watched the show, whether they agreed with it or not.

This e-mail is not telling employees, “please go online and tell everyone how you really feel about working at Emeritus,” which might lead to some honesty. It’s not even suggesting that employees rebut allegations and complaints aired on the Frontline episode.

Instead, it exhorts them to write about “your incredible community, your amazing staff, your wonderful residents and families that you care for, the job that you love and the difference that you make.”

In other words, Emeritus just wants its employees to paint a sunny picture to distract from the disturbing issues brought up during the Frontline episode.

Perhaps Emeritus is making its case for inclusion in next spring’s Worst Company In America tournament, where this sort of “rally the troops and get them to game the system” shenanigans have backfired on such WCIA legends as Comcast and Ticketmaster, both of which begged employees to sway the vote, only to have those same employees forward these requests straight to Consumerist.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist