More Than a Headcount

If You’re Not Measuring It, You’re Guessing

In resident engagement, we put an incredible amount of heart into programming: planning, organizing, adapting.

But too often, we miss the most important part of the cycle:  Did it work? Did residents actually show up? And did it make a difference?

This is where attendance tracking becomes more than an admin task. It becomes a window into what’s working, what’s not, and how we can do better.

Beyond the Sign-In Sheet

Attendance is a powerful tool to understand how your programming is impacting the health and wellbeing of your residents. We truly believe meaningful attendance tracking not only tracks who showed up to programming, tracks things like:

• Attendance: Did the resident attend or were they a no-show?
• Length of participation: How long was the resident in the program, and what happened if they left early or arrived late?
• Level of engagement: Was the resident active, passive, or refused to engage?
• Registration: Did the resident pre-register for an event but not show up? Or did they not register in advance, but come anyway? Did demand exceed capacity for this program, so some residents couldn’t join?
• Type of program: Scheduled programs, 1:1s, offsites, and more – all off these types of resident engagement should be logged

When you collect that kind of data over time, the insights become powerful: at the resident level, for families, for program design, staffing, and community planning.

For Residents: A View into Health, Interests, and Change

Consistent drop-off in participation? It might be a red flag about cognitive, physical, or emotional health.

A sudden increase in refusals? That could signal a change in mood, mobility, or social comfort.

It could be as simple as a resident’s interests, hobbies, and passions weren’t captured in their rec assessment. Or your programming doesn’t have an offering for their needs.

All of these patterns matter. Making patterns visible helps you change the outcome.

When your teams are tracking participation accurately and consistently, you can start to spot:

• Residents who are withdrawing from once-loved programs
• Shifts in energy level or participation style (e.g. from active to passive)
• Changes in preference that suggest evolving needs of your community

These aren’t just numbers, they’re stories about your residents changing health and wellbeing. And they give your team the ability to intervene early, adjust programming, or collaborate with care teams in more informed ways.

For Families: Trust In Your Team

When you track attendance and participation, it helps families trust that their loved one is in good hands, and having a good experience. As residents move from independent living to assisted living, to memory care and skilled nursing, there can be gaps in the story residents tell their families and the facts of their lived experience.

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With attendance tracking you are easily able to share with families what programs residents have been invited to, participated in, or refused participation in. This can help create better relationships with families, and bring families into care planning.

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We strongly encourage providing AL, MC, and SNF families with access to resident engagement insights in your community portal when it feels right for the resident.

• This gives the family 24/7 access to see how their loved one is engaging.
• Family members can even browse programming and register their loved one for a program to communicate interest to staff!
• Family members can register for programs themselves to help get their loved one to join a program if they are starting to isolate

For Programming: Proof of What Works

• Are your programs resonating?
• Are your staff and facilitators effective?
• Are certain activities consistently underperforming or oversubscribed?

Attendance data helps answer those questions with confidence. You’ll want to regularly track things like:

• Which programs drive the most engagement (by care level, time of day, dimensions, or facilitator)
• Optimize your calendar for performance across all residents, not just the ones who consistently come to every program
• Justify resources and staffing with real participation trends

From Data to Prediction: The AI Advantage

Here’s where it gets even more exciting. AI tools, like Welbi’s AI recommendation engine, use this data to automatically generate insights and recommendations for your team.

• Residents with a streak of attending chair yoga? They’re likely to enjoy other wellness-based activities.
• Someone who never misses poker night? They may engage with other card-based games or social competition programming.
• A resident who attends only when a certain facilitator leads? That’s a relationship worth nurturing.

With pattern recognition at scale, you can help your team recommend the right programs at the right time to the right resident. If you consistently see that John isn’t attending programs, it might be because you don’t have programs that are interesting for him. This is a great point of intervention with both the resident and how you approach recreation planning.

Better Data. Better Programming. Better Lives.

At the end of the day, attendance tracking is about delivering the kind of engagement every resident deserves. This has to be easy for your staff to log, and it has to be easy for your data teams to access. If attendance lives on a piece of paper, you won’t have insights to influence your resident outcomes.

Remember, you want to keep track of:

• Programming that reflects resident interests, across your resident population
• Support or residents when participation changes
• A team that’s informed, responsive, and proactive to evolving needs as resident populations change

And for your staff? It’s about being able to celebrate what’s working, with data to back it up.

Thanks for reading,
Elizabeth Audette-Bourdeau
CEO, Welbi