Aging Forward August 2026
Building a More Welcoming Aging Services Workforce
On August 18, 2026 by Anna Mowry
New Americans are essential to the present and future of Minnesota’s aging services workforce. Yet immigrant and refugee employees can encounter language barriers, unfamiliar workplace expectations, and limited access to the support needed to build lasting careers. Employers also need practical tools to recruit, welcome, and retain an increasingly diverse workforce.
Through the first round of Minnesota’s Supporting New Americans in the Long-Term Care Workforce grant, the LeadingAge Minnesota Foundation transformed these challenges into opportunities for action.
With $934,332 in funding from the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) GEAR Division, the Foundation developed a statewide collection of multilingual resources, employer tools, and training and language-access technology. The work was shaped by advisory councils that included New American employees and aging services employers, ensuring the resulting resources reflected both lived experience and workplace realities.
Practical Guidance for Employers
One of the initiative’s newest resources is How to Recruit, Retain & Advance New Americans in the Aging Services Workforce, a 64-page interactive guide accompanied by 13 practical tools.
The guide helps employers examine each stage of the employee experience—from recruitment and onboarding to belonging, retention, and advancement. Rather than offering general workforce advice, it addresses challenges that can arise when welcoming employees from different cultural, linguistic, and professional backgrounds.
Within the first weeks of its launch, the guide was downloaded hundreds of times, and providers across Minnesota requested printed copies to help put its strategies into action.
A companion webinar series, From Recruitment to Retention: Supporting New American Employees, provides four no-cost, on-demand sessions that help employers put these strategies into practice.
Learning Directly from Aging Services Providers
The Foundation also produced The Business Case for Inclusive Hiring: Provider Insights, a collection of video interviews with Minnesota aging services leaders.
In these brief videos, providers explain how inclusive employment practices have strengthened their teams, improved workplace culture and supported high-quality resident care. Their stories demonstrate that creating a workplace where New Americans can succeed is not a stand-alone diversity initiative—it is an important workforce and operational strategy.
The provider videos complement a five-part, documentary-style series created to introduce New Americans to careers in aging services. Available in English, French, Hmong, Oromo, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog and Ukrainian, the series offers an accessible and realistic look at working in Minnesota’s aging services settings.
A campaign promoting the series generated over 1.8 million views, helping the Foundation reach potential workers across the region.
Removing Language and Access Barriers
Other grant-supported resources include:
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A multilingual audio glossary featuring 186 common aging services terms and definitions in English, Hmong, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog and Ukrainian.
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Bilingual learning journals, test preparation and practice resources for participants in the Foundation’s OnTrack Nursing Assistant training program.
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An interactive map connecting New American employees and their families with more than 250 community organizations, workforce programs and family supports.
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Distribution of 143 Pocketalk S2 Business translation devices to aging services providers throughout Minnesota, expanding access to HIPAA-compliant, real-time interpretation in more than 90 languages.
Together, these efforts have helped prospective employees better understand aging services careers while giving employers concrete tools to improve communication, onboarding, retention and advancement.
Continuing the Work through a Second Grant
The completion of this first grant represents an important milestone, but not the end of the work.
The LeadingAge Minnesota Foundation has received a second grant from DHS’s GEAR Division of $750,000 to build on what was learned and created during the first initiative. The next phase, Strengthening Bridges, will deepen connections among aging services employers, New American communities and workforce partners.
The work will include regional job fairs in five areas of Minnesota, a professional network that elevates the experiences and expertise of New American employees, expanded language-access support, additional employer tools and enhancements to CaringCareersStartHere.com.
For the Foundation, the two grants demonstrate what becomes possible when philanthropic and public investments are paired with trusted relationships, sector knowledge and the voices of those most directly affected.
By building practical infrastructure—not simply one-time programming—the Foundation is helping aging services organizations become stronger employers while opening more pathways for New Americans to build meaningful, lasting careers serving older Minnesotans.