Dan Roberge:
All right, Nicole, it's nice to meet you.
Nicole Belanger: Nice to meet you too.
Dan Roberge: So tell me, who do you work for? We've been dealing with your company, Marquis, for a long time in maintenance care. So tell me a little bit about them.
Nicole Belanger: Yeah, so Marquis Hospitality is a division of Compass Group, and we serve long-term care and retirement sectors. We primarily provide food service, hospitality services, environmental services, and laundry. Any type of service you can outsource to an organization, we would take on, outside of anything that's a core care capability. What we like to do is work with organizations that really want to focus on delivering the best care and allow us to focus on delivering the best resident experience.
Dan Roberge:: I've been to some of your food tastings and things like that, and the food's great. How many homes are you in in Canada, approximately?
Nicole Belanger: We currently have over 200 partnerships across Canada, so it's been great.
Dan Roberge: Yeah. Have you seen the marketplace change in recent years? What have you seen as far as trending in senior care for ownership and so on?
Nicole Belanger: So many changes! It's sometimes hard to keep up with them, honestly. But from a resident experience perspective, what we're really seeing is a lot of innovation and technology coming into the space. We're also finding that this aging population is very much in a shift. Tomorrow morning, we're actually delivering a session on the evolving baby boomer, and our division called E15, which is our insights and research division, has accumulated all this research and all these insights, and we'll be sharing that tomorrow morning.
Dan Roberge: That's incredible. So you're here at the show. Do you have a booth? How has it been for you?
Nicole Belanger: Fantastic! We actually did a theme this year. We called it "The Marquis Diner," a 50s-style diner. We've got 50s-style food. Tomorrow, we're serving up milkshakes and donuts. We have 50s music. It's a nice vibe that we're tying into. We thought about the boomers, and we were like, "The boomers were teenagers in the 50s and 60s, so let's bring it for the boomers."
Dan Roberge: I like it. You talked about the DISC assessment. Tell me about that. What is the assessment?
Nicole Belanger: Our organization, across the board at Compass, is very focused on human behavior and how we tie that into the best service delivery we can offer. Before I joined Compass Group, I actually became a trainer on DISC, so I'm a certified trainer on DISC behaviors. It's been a great aspect of what we do. We utilize it within our team and on our leadership team. It's a part of every conversation.
Dan Roberge: Yeah, and so it improves communication between team members because you understand how to communicate with someone differently based on their personality. For example, whether they want it fast or slow, or more detail or less detail. Would a home be able to benefit from that, like their personnel? How would they go about getting some training related to that?
Nicole Belanger: So a couple of things. Right now, I'm completing my master's degree in educational leadership, and one of the things I've been researching is how the DISC personality assessment training tool helps leaders and teams within long-term care with retention and engagement. What I'm finding is it hasn't really been done well. There isn't a lot of documented research on how this tool can support leadership teams. However, it has been researched in other industries like education and healthcare. How are we in long-term care any different? We can certainly tap into DISC resources and training. If a home wanted to get started on DISC training, there are a vast number of trainers available within your own province, within Canada. You can do it virtually or in person. I think the best experience is always in person. What did you think? Did you do it in person?
Dan Roberge: Yeah, we did it in person. I've had some background with it from previous roles, so I knew about it, but we use it at our company, and we found that all our managers started to interact a lot more productively together. It was less competition and more about opening up. There were some obstacles initially, as people don't want to share things they think they're hiding, or they'd say, "It's not me, I'm not like this." But they are who they are, and it does bring out a little bit of that. The results have been amazing for us, so yeah. You also have a podcast; tell me about that.
Nicole Belanger: We have a podcast! We just recorded the first ten episodes and are launching it in a couple of weeks. We have a big event coming up at the end of April, on April 29th, which is specific to Marquis and everything we deliver. We're excited to launch the podcast; it's called "Marquis Moments." For us, it's really about becoming better thought leaders within this space in long-term care and delivering better educational experiences for any of our current customers and any of our future partners that may exist.
Dan Roberge: Absolutely. Who are your guests on your podcast? What type of people?
Nicole Belanger: We've had tech CEOs like Elizabeth from Welby. We've had Phil Flach, who is a tech guru from Chicago. So not just with tech, obviously tech and innovation are high up there on the list; everyone wants to know about it. But we've had a death doula on the podcast.
Dan Roberge: Okay, what is that?
Nicole Belanger: Death and dying doulas support people who are in palliative care and their family members. They're like an ally to those folks, either living in long-term care or in palliative care settings.
Dan Roberge: Wow, that sounds interesting. Where do people find more information about Marquis and the podcast and other things like that?
Nicole Belanger: We're going to be launching it soon. What I can say is if people want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, they can find me. My name is Nicole Belanger. I try to provide as much information and education as I can on LinkedIn. It's a really great platform to be able to share some insights there. So certainly connect with us there, and I'd absolutely want to be on the podcast.
Dan Roberge: Yes, let's connect for sure. Maybe we could do a longer-term podcast outside of this environment, but it's been great talking to you. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you so much.
Nicole Belanger: Thank you for having me.
Dan Roberge: Thank you.
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