It’s only natural that we think everyone who knows where we work and what we do, knows all about our highs and lows of the workday, during these pandemic times, including our struggles to get things right. Not so! People outside our Long Term Care, Senior Living, and associated communities have no clue about the problems we face and how we work to overcome them to make every resident safe, secure, and happy in their homes. People may read a headline, often one created to draw attention rather than presenting an accurate description of the content that follows. It is vital to reach out to the public to reassure and educate them about the senior and community living options today that are so far removed from the old images of sticking Mom in a ‘rest home.’

Your well-trained and knowledgeable food serving team comes to the rescue again. They have learned from their training about talking to residents to communicate the struggles of the community and the country at present, so they can better understand how it affects them. Now is the time for those same employees to share precisely what senior and long-term care communities are like with the public. Information needs to come from the inside, from people who work in this specialty marketplace, from these dedicated men and women who have the inside track and are willing to share it.

Again, our Kind Dining♥ training series emphasize our philosophy of helping employees (through education and respectful training) to love where they work and the work they do by learning how to work smarter and manage through unprecedented challenges. The results of enjoying their work can easily overflow into the general public, spreading the benefits for Mom or Dad when they choose to live in a senior living community. Social gatherings are ideal places for talking about work when you are enthused about it. Introduce the subject and watch how many ears are eager to hear what it is like in a senior living community. Speaking freely about one’s work or even placing suggestions on social media helps the marketplace and allows the general public to get an inside glimpse of something they may have thought about but never asked questions that linger in their minds.  

Our Kind Dining♥ training educates staff, leadership, and ancillary employees across departments on the value of a positive dining experience and how to achieve it at every meal. This education can be shared to alter the public image of an organization. It can begin in a small way and let the thread of interest grow firmly until a more significant number of people have gratefully changed their idea about being food servers in senior living and other long-term care communities. Kind Dining♥ knows when employees are happy with the work they do, proud of the community they come to every workday, and want to share their joy; then Kind Dining♥ has accomplished the service standards they set out from the very beginning.

B♥ Kind Tip:  Are your community successes hidden in your employees?