Nov. 17, 2020—A wide-ranging, 41-minute interview with Marvell Adams, Kendal’s COO, has been posted by Senior Housing News as the Nov. 16 installment of its Transform Podcast series.
Interviewer Tim Regan began the interview with questions about how Kendal communities have fared during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Operationally, it’s been difficult because we don’t have a national strategy,” Adams said. “In the absence of that national strategy, we’ve really had to customize and look at how can we support each affiliate based upon what their state is doing, or not doing.”
When asked about operational challenges met by Kendal during the pandemic, Adams said, “We’ve had very good success in obtaining PPE. When the pandemic started, we had just begun to move to a different strategy around procurement and ensuring that we could really bring together all the volume-buying power that we have across the system and … drive prices down. But also, we found that we really had to go it alone in the sense of trying to source PPE.
“We have a specific member of our team—Ben Butler, our Vice President of Culinary Services & Procurement—who essentially every day … is sourcing PPE. Procuring it, getting it shipped in and then sending it out to the affiliates as they may need it,” Adams said. “That has been a great success for us because not once did we have a community run short of PPE.”
During the interview, Adams responded to questions on many other topics, including:
- Has the pandemic changed how Kendal is marketing its communities?
- What has hiring been like during the pandemic?
- How is Kendal increasing workforce diversity?
- How will the upcoming flu season impact Kendal and the rest of the senior living field?