by Cindy Heilman | Build Communities of Belonging, Resident Centered Dining Service
This conversation came to me from a woman who knows how I work to improve senior and assisted living through staff empathy and kindness.
“I stopped at a small local café type restaurant for lunch the other day. It was after the usual lunch hour which I chose because it is always a lot quieter and the waitstaff aren’t in a mad rush getting everyone’s meal out while it’s still hot. When eating solo, I often bring my journal to update. I always carry it with me. Sally spotted me coming through the door and immediately came to my chosen table before the other waiters even saw me. I like when she waits on me. She always gives her best, carrying cheerfulness and consideration with her. Today she was wearing a pale pink tee shirt with a saying across it.”
“Welcome. It’s good to see you today.” She said with a beaming smile as she handed a menu to me. “What would you like to drink while you read today’s specials?”
“Water with lemon and no ice for now.” I replied and commented. “Is pink your favorite color? You are positively glowing today.”
“Yes, it is. I wore it today because I think it makes other people happy, customers and other food servers alike. Besides that, we have a new junior cook in the kitchen. He is quite handsome and single, too.” She laughed at her own confession.
“I thought about Sally while she went off to get my water. She paused to answer a question from another table, smiling and leaving laughter behind as she continued to the kitchen. It was like she left a trail of sparkles behind her as she breezed across the room. I wondered if the owners knew how fortunate they were to have her. Without effort she added so much more to a simple lunch.”
It’s true that some people are applauded when they enter a room and some when they leave it. I happen to know that if you don’t carry a natural ability for pleasantry, you can learn how to do just that. It is a choice that can be made through learning how to add that particular skill to your set of skills.
The Kind Dining® training curriculum addresses how your employees can learn to be at their best every day. Everyone in your aging services community will benefit from it, your employees most of all. And they don’t have to wear pink to carry the inner glow that comes from the challenge and growth of doing their best.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Happiness is a choice, like doing your best is a choice.
by Cindy Heilman | Build Communities of Belonging, Training
Do you realize that Creating and Expanding Your Company’s Philosophy is a title for what Kind Dining® has been encouraging and teaching for numerous years?
Have you read about our belief in residents’ and staff’s sense of belonging, finding purpose, and knowing that the food serving team (from all departments) is the best asset the company can have?
Our curriculum teaches a better way of working, honing skills, and introducing social skills. It also discusses all aspects of the importance of the dining experience to residents.
If they are important to residents, they are doubly important to your food-serving staff. Introducing new culinary experiences and remembering to honor traditional ones come from kitchen staff who care about each person who enters your dining room.
Smart hiring practices and interactive educational training sessions keep top-rated staff wanting to benefit from lifelong learning and wanting to work in your community.
We teach them to connect and build relationships with the residents and coworkers. Building relationships inspires your staff to love their work; it is what we do because we love doing it, and we love the results. We want your food servers to share the same values, respect, team bonding, and visions that the company enjoys.
What have you learned from our training today? This is a question we love to ask after a training session. It not only reinforces our beliefs in what we taught, but we also learn what your employees didn’t know yet and need to know to be top-rated employees.
It is vital to your company and your community to have top-rated employees because they are responsible for sharing healthy attitudes that create a happy sense of belonging in your residents. Their attitude, every day, can affect a resident and make their day a happy one or a dejected one. It is also true that your food servers are ambassadors to family and friend guests in the dining room.
Don’t you want your employees, confident in their education, to show their loving, caring ways that shine through in their work? We call it marrying hospitality and healthcare to daily work days. And we call it employees who love to come to work.
Kind Dining® delivers our unique 9-module comprehensive dining service training series for food servers, ancillary staff serving meals, full-time and part-time direct-care workers, and managers.
B♥ Kind Tip: Your employees are more confident as lifelong learners.
