Driving AI Adoption

‍Technology is scaring your team, you need to make it feel safe

“I’ll Never Use AI.”

That’s what a rec manager told one of our customers during an early rollout of our recommendation engine.

And honestly? I don’t blame her.

For many staff in senior living, AI feels foreign, confusing, and maybe even threatening.  Most roles in senior living are built on relationships, intuition, and lived experience. A spreadsheet? Maybe. AI? That’s for Silicon Valley, not caring for a resident.

So when software vendors come in promising AI automation, prediction, and transformation, it can feel like an existential threat.

How can a computer know a resident better than I can?

And here’s the truth: It can’t. But it can support your work if it’s done right.

We’ve Been Here Before

At Welbi, we’ve been building AI into our platform long before it became the buzzword of the year. Features like:

• Predictive program recommendations
• Likelihood to attend predictions
• Friend matching
• Conversational assessments
• … and more

These aren’t flashy add-ons. They’re deeply embedded tools that quietly make teams more efficient, calendars more accurate, and residents more engaged.

We don’t always market them as “AI” to floor staff. We made them easy to use, and easy to love. That’s why teams actually adopt them.

AI Shouldn’t Feel Like a Science Project

AI rollouts often fail because they’re framed as tech innovations rather than workflow enhancements. The trick isn’t to sell AI: it’s to solve a problem.

Conversational assessments are a great example of this:

❌ Tech-first pitch: “We’re introducing AI assessments. We’re data mining audio recordings to eliminate manual work for more efficient digitized actionable insights.”
😬 Staff reaction: “Wait, what? How does AI know what’s right? Is this replacing me?”

‍

✅ Person-centred approach: “When you do an assessment, you can now record a conversation with a resident. The system will transcribe it for you and provide suggestions when you’re filling out an assessment. It helps you be present with residents and get more nuance into your plans later.”
😊 Staff reaction: “That feels natural. And helpful.”

It’s still AI. But now it feels like support, not surveillance.

Start Small, Scale Fast: How to Roll It Out

It’s important to understand the mix of staff reactions for the specific software you’re rolling out. It’s one of the reasons we are very hands on with training. Here’s what we recommend when introducing AI-based features, based on the successes we’ve seen:

1. Start with one or two communities
   Let them pilot the tool, give feedback, and build early success stories. This also helps refine how you position the rollout for others.
   
   
2. Train with empathy
   Focus on how it helps staff do more of what they love (resident time, creative planning) and less of what they don’t (paperwork, back-and-forths).
   
   
3. Highlight what won’t change
   Reinforce that AI supports their decision-making, not overrides it. Their expertise still leads, AI removes the tedious and repetitive work.
   
   
4. Share wins early and often
   Use simple stories: “Sophie used recommendation insights to find out that we don’t have any programs that appeal to John, and came up with a creative new program based on a hidden gem about his interests in his conversational assessment.” Or “We caught a decline in wellness because the reports flagged a drop in attendance in physical programming.”
   
   
5. Gather feedback quickly
   Don’t wait six months to hear how it’s going. Get input in the first 2–3 weeks and course-correct early.

AI Is Only As Smart As the Data You Feed It

Here’s the other side of the coin: AI doesn’t work without good data. If you are rolling out to your team with bad data, the recommendations will be bad, and your team will have a very hard time trusting the software again.

That means:

• Attendance must be accurate
• Programs need proper tags
• Assessments need to be completed
• Staff need to be comfortable and compliant

If adoption is patchy and your data is incomplete then the predictions won’t hold up. That’s why ease of use isn’t just a design feature. It’s mission-critical.

You can’t afford to roll out AI that only works in theory. It needs to meet your team where they are, often still using paper or Excel, and bring them forward without fear.

Empowerment, Not Replacement

There is a big fear that AI will take jobs away from humans. And that may be true for some industries and roles, like marketing, where you can get away with fewer writers than before. That kind of fear trickles into how everyone feels about AI.

In senior living, the work of a rec manager was never to hunt for files and manage spreadsheets. The work of a recreation teams is to connect with residents and provide them with an engaging life that meets their needs.

That is irreplaceable. The right AI tools will make that easier.

Thanks for reading,

Elizabeth Audette-Bourdeau
CEO, Welbi

P.S. If you’re rolling out AI in your communities, I wrote an ebook just for you: 📘 AI and the Gray Wave: Using AI to deliver personalized wellness at scale for better senior living