Do all your employees make choices to improve every work day?
Making choices in Senior Living and Long Term Care communities is not just about the residents. Staff face making choices every day. After scheduled meetings and training sessions they have choices to make their work easier and better from tips and new ways learned in those training sessions. Their main choice is to keep an open mind, especially to staff that has been on the job for a number of years. Often they think their work responsibilities are familiar to them, so why should they attend meetings and training sessions? Surprise! Changes are happening all the time. New ideas and better ways of performing chores are constantly being revealed. Attitude adjustments in combining Healthcare with Hospitality are changing the way food service staff and nursing staff see how their work affects the care of residents. Making that choice to accommodate newly emphasized regulations that improve the quality of life is a choice to improve their own life at the same time. When enlightened attitudes are adopted by foodservice and healthcare staff it will become second nature by way of practice. The new ways will overflow into their personal life away from the community, too. Training sessions and pursuing new ideas at meetings are investments in your community employees helping them to improve their lives.
Kindness, civility, and hospitality have always been cornerstones that build respect in Kind Dining♥ training. Consideration between coworkers and practice is strongly featured to attain desired results from all who serve residents. This includes staff that only fill in when necessary. Guidelines and regulations must be recommended to all employees of the company whether referring to coworkers or residents.
Higher standards of person-centered care and service are a goal attained by embracing new skills. Remember the food server still sets the ambiance of mealtime for residents. Proper training turns your food serving staff into your most valuable company asset. Mealtimes are central to success for a community and a great marketing point. Those mealtimes are still where your residents focus, universally value, and hospitality is still the universal language. Following these skills learned in training sessions brings success to your employees and to your company.
B♥ Kind ®Tip: Improve communication skills with coworkers on other shifts.
Senior and Long Term Living newsletters inform us that dining is back! It is returning slowly but safely and steadily by small groups in dining rooms, cafes, sunrooms, and other small areas. Open spaces with scattered seating have been popular for picnics and festive occasions. Outdoor spaces are being utilized, encouraging social gatherings again. Some residents are wary about reentering the social scenes and need to build up confidence after being isolated to their rooms for the last 18 months. Again, the food serving teams are being called upon to help residents by incurring their trust and reliability. Employees are asked to also be aware of the mentality of their fellow coworkers; to be alert if reassurance is needed and to offer it if it is. The food serving teams are asked to be supportive, be social, even add some humor into their daily lives and exposure to residents and coworkers alike. It is time for building trust. The culture of treating everyone with respect and dignity remains in place as the staff is asked to exhibit their empathy. Older adults, in particular, have experienced fear and anxiety during these past pandemic months. Many will need to advance slowly back into a social scene again. Food servers have the perfect opportunities to assist in drawing residents into a comfortable alliance. Opening lines of communication will open trust and courage the resident diners may need at that moment.