Your employees may not realize it but the attitude they carry as their work responsibilities are being completed sends a message out to everyone who comes anywhere near them. As they go about conducting their duties, residents are exposed to their presence. Think about how a pleasant ‘hello’ or a random grumpy scowl affects you as you walk past someone while you are out shopping. When it happens to a resident within your community it is even more intense in its effect on an older person walking to the dining room. Because this is their home, they want to know, at all times, that they can trust the people around them. This includes everyone who serves their meals and each employee they pass on their way to wherever. Trust must be built on a daily basis, bonding residents with the representatives of the community its employees. If possible, it is more significant after this past time due to COVID-19 when many people were separated by the fear of contagion. The time is now to rebuild the trust needed to restore the comfort zone of being at home in the community.

This same trust between the older people of the community who rely on it also applies to coworkers. Employees knowing trust is there with coworkers puts more effort into their own work. They gladly chip in to help elsewhere when it is needed. This is called teamwork and can be built from day 1 in Kind♥Dining training sessions. Trust is a learned experience that comes with practice and discussion. Even members of your workforce team who have been so dedicated during the pandemic, have also experienced the sorrow of often being alone from that pandemic. They too have lost family and friends to the Coronavirus, finding themselves struggling in their personal lives. Working to rebuild trust in the workplace will help to strengthen their overall health just as it does for the residents in the community they serve. The loss of friendships made in civic groups, church families, and school programs have left many with low spirits. Those losses can be softened by building stronger relationships in the workplace. Lending a hand to help others returns to help them.

A key factor in recovering from the loneliness the Coronavirus forced on our older population is rebuilding trust in those that surround us. In our senior communities, employees, including and especially our food serving teams, can directly help assuage emotional disappointments by small acts of kindness and thoughtfulness. Hospitality and healthcare continue to go hand in hand.

B♥ Kind ®Tip: Through hospitality, you can help build relationships one meal at a time.