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.
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.
A friend told me recently that while having lunch at a local café, she overheard this conversation from the booth next to hers and could hardly wait to repeat it to me.
“I just found a larger senior living community with more amenities than where my mom is living. I researched it thoroughly, and when I told her about it, and all the extras offered that she doesn’t have, guess what she said? ‘No, thank you. I love where I am now. I’ve made new friends that I won’t leave them behind. Our group meets every day at noon for lunch, and we have the best time! Mike always has a funny story to tell, and Maryann comes up with one interesting subject or another. She’s a writer, you know. We make plans and go to whatever special program is happening for the day. After dinner together, we get a card game going. That is the most fun! No, dear. Thank you, but I’m having more fun than in the old neighborhood, so I’m not going anywhere.’ I was surprised to hear her so enthused. It’s the happiest I’ve seen her in a long time.”
Her lunch companion replied. “So, you don’t have to feel guilty about encouraging her to sell up and move into the senior community?”
“Feel guilty? I’m collecting congratulations and applause. She went on to tell me how easy her life is now. Huge amounts of work and household responsibilities are gone. No more lonely nights. Replaced with fun time. She has even taken up genealogy to research the family line. I’ve never seen my mother so engaged in living! Really. The staff are all nice and friendly, even to family visitors. She has staff favorites that she now tells me about. She knows who is going to college and who will be a grandma for the first time. My mother has become amazing. All thanks go to her senior living community ‘family’ as she calls them.”
Our Kind Dining® training curriculum was designed to create that true home feeling for your residents that comes from how your staff interacts with them and each other. Once seniors move into your community, it is the warmth of caring that comes, especially from your food serving team, that makes them feel at home. Offer training to your employees to hone the skills that achieve the results you want for your company. Well-trained employees are a powerful asset. Invest in your staff and save the cost of hiring new employees. Keep in mind that happy residents don’t move out!
Cindy has a passion for food and hospitality and a unique approach to it. When you hire her to train your staff virtually, she will bring the energy and expertise that reinvigorates your entire organization to embrace customer service with a new mindset that produces positive results”.
Kind Dining – Hospitality makes the difference!
B♥ Kind Tip: Encourage your staff to show they care by interacting with your residents.
“My daughter tells me it is hard to make new friends,” Coleen told Kelly. They were having lunch after a long stretch of being too busy to get away. “She’s at college, the first time away from home. I almost laughed at her because I know how hard it is when you get older like our residents coming into our senior community when they don’t know a soul here.
“I know what that is like since I moved halfway across the country just before I came to work here. From my experience, I instinctively knew how to show extra care and attention, especially when serving someone who comes into the dining room without a friend.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Kelly replied. I was born and raised in this county and have always lived here. I would never have thought of that. I guess the training courses that teach us about building relationships with the elders and being aware of any resident who seems to be lonely are definitely for me.
“I behave as the training suggests because I enjoy talking with our residents. Now, I am content to know the cause of the loneliness that overcomes some of our elders. Those are some of the reasons, anyway. I know there is more to it. So many residents have outlived many of their friends and family.”
Coleen continued. “We improve their lives by adding intentional acts of kindness and awareness of their problems. Last week, I took Mary B. to the big table and introduced her to the group that usually sits there. They welcomed her with open arms. I knew they would. She’s been smiling ever since.”
Kind Dining® knows an educated staff that serves meals and cares about the residents in the community where they work, which is your company’s golden asset.
It’s vital that residents feel at home and know their neighbors, though many elders are too shy to meet new people on their own. The servers in the community are a major part of their contentment, helping them to feel secure and opening the way to happiness.
Kind Dining ® training modules teach your employees to understand the aging process, how your serving staff can make a difference, and how to protect the dignity of your senior population.
Encourage your serving team to notice opportunities to improve the dining experience around them. Call to arrange a schedule of training modules that fit into your employees’ working schedules.
B♥ Kind Tip: You know that your food serving team is your company’s best asset!
A great way to invest is to encourage them to do their very best on the job. Let them know that you see their potential, expect them to do their best, and that your company believes in them and depends on them.
Remember that complimenting good work will encourage one to continue doing one’s best, whereas criticizing an employee will create resentment, resulting in a declining desire to put extra effort into improving one’s work.
Allow your employees to learn how to make better choices that will enhance their working relationships from training and practice sessions. Choosing to do their best is a conscious decision. Making a better choice to do your best on the job also changes every aspect of your life. You don’t turn it off at the end of each workday. The results of better choices go with you wherever you go and whatever you do.
At the same time, it is important that the ambiance for your senior living community announces it is a choice to look forward to making your home with them. It is the next chapter in a progressing life that will be different but a residence for looking forward. To live in your community is a choice that eradicates worry about house maintenance and expensive repairs. It is a time to have complete enjoyment after a lifetime of responsibilities. The retirement referred to, is retirement from excessive burdens and obligations freeing up time and energy to enjoy interesting, appealing and leisurely mealtimes, meet new friends and invite longtime friends to join you in a different way of life. One suited to your changing lifestyle. One sought after.
To accommodate those pleasures for your new residents, it is necessary to have staff who made their choice to love the work they do. They are the major part of creating this senior living community ambiance. Menu offerings and dining decor can be adjusted and changed to suit taste, but the food serving team must offer their best service each time they serve any kind of repast. Their performance will be noted and work for your community or against it. Word of mouth is the best advertisement you can have, and your food servers are the ones that create that desired commentary.
Kind Dining® curriculum and training/refresher sessions, teach your employees how to create the desired effect you want by honing their skill set. Let your staff step up a notch by being at their best by incorporating kindness and generosity to residents and other staff into their daily habits.
Create a community where you would want to call home.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Let your staff step up a notch by being at their best.
What makes your residents want to stay in your community?
Many older adults have the wrong impression of what a senior living community is like. Just because an individual moves into your community doesn’t mean he/she is happy there. It is often more difficult for an older person to make new friends. It takes time to adjust to a new environment, new daily routines, unfamiliar faces, and not all the home things surrounding them that make a person comfortable. It isn’t easy for some to step solo into a game or activity room, even if the sounds of enjoyment are carried in the air. Many, particularly women, have never entered a restaurant on their own, let alone sat and ate lunch or dinner by themselves.
Amenities in a community are useless if a resident is too shy to walk into the activity room. This is another area where the Kind Dining® training curriculum excels. Our training sessions include introducing soft skills to your staff and teaching how to use pleasant chitchat with residents.
How to greet a new resident and escort them into a dining room or to a table that will happily make room for them will come naturally after some practice. Small acts of consideration tell residents they are welcome and will soon feel like they are at home.
The goal is to make your community an excellent place for your residents to live and for your staff to work. Our training helps your employees reshape their way of thinking so they can transform their lives into positive ones, and it will let your residents know that they have chosen the right place to live.
With training and practice, all your employees will be able to recognize the body language of a resident, which will show them that caring attention is needed. They will also learn to make on-the-spot decisions that can turn a sad situation into a happy one.
All the staff must understand and be fully aware of the stress and emotions of some new residents trying to settle in.
Helping residents feel they belong and are part of a big family is the responsibility of every person who works in the community. Kind Dining® training also allows your employees to befriend each other.
Remember that the community your staff knows well is strange and unknown to a newcomer. It is a new chapter for them that can be the happiest time of their lives if they engage in it fully. Your staff can help with that and make life good for them.
B♥ Kind Tip: Staff can turn an unhappy new resident into an “I love it here” resident.
Do your food servers know the crucial role they play as they interact with residents during mealtimes?
Do they know kindness is one of the skills needed to play that role successfully?
Many residents and even other staff suffer from an emotional disconnect in workplace relationships when kindness is ignored. We all know mealtimes are the best chance your organization has to impress your diners with an experience they will delight in repeating to other potential residents.
That experience should have kindness teamed with the serving skills each of your staff carries. They must always remember that their service enables you to have full capacity in a competitive marketplace.
Speaking of kindness, did you know Japan started a World Kindness Day, soon observed by the USA, Canada, Australia, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, and later Singapore, Italy, and India joined in?
Japan is commonly known as the world’s most polite country with its tradition of selfless hospitality. (Wouldn’t it be great to have your community known as the kindest?) They emphasize the necessity of a global kindness movement.
Think of the impact, that following their lead can have on your community when the staff accepts the challenge and agrees to support the interplay of kindness. It is also commonly known that intentional acts of kindness start a ripple reaction that will affect the thoughts and feelings of those on the receiving end. It affects the giver, too. Picture a cascade of kindness in your community.
With a career that began in the hospitality business before working in healthcare, I’m more excited than ever to work with communities that step out of the past and into the future. They transform their dining styles of service.
Skills and positive attitudes in staff behavior make a huge difference to a newcomer who is acclimating to the community.
A small kindness, even a smile extends a feeling of welcome to a new resident nervous about her choice of a home. Striking up a meaningful conversation is the beginning of building a solid relationship that will reinforce a sense of comfort and belonging. Actively listen to their reply so you can ask a follow-up question. Show that you are sincere in your interest.
Kindness is a skill that has a powerful influence yet is easily learned when introduced in training and refreshing sessions. It is a skill that can be incorporated with Kind Dining® curriculum that includes other skills going hand in hand. These are skills that can lead to making your community known as the kindest community available!
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Make every day in your community a reflection of World Kindness Day.
A few on the second shift food serving team gathered at a table for their dinner break. They picked up the conversation where they left off earlier about their pre-shift training session that morning.
“With a little more practice, I think everyone on our team will have Module 6 down pat. We have all learned about being friendly and chatting with the residents, recognizing that our community is the place they chose to call home.
Now that the only bully on our team has been replaced, we can honestly say that we show courtesy and respect to each other as well as to our residents.
I’m sorry we couldn’t help her change her attitude to a positive one. It affected her work and created resentment among the residents. Once the residents got used to the care and consideration from the rest of our team, they rejected her outright! But we all tried in our different ways to reach out to her and refused to react to her bullying.”
“You know, our encouragement and guidance worked with Sally. She often says how our working together to show her the intentional, positive way of working has changed her life! She certainly has gone from glum and gloomy to a cheerful woman who now loves coming to work each day! We should all wear a little red heart sticker or pin on our uniform to show how much we do care.”
She laughed in case anyone may think that was a silly idea.
The newest person recently hired piped up. “I learned part of her lesson, the part that being civil was not the same thing as being neutral or reserved. I’ve learned it means lifting someone through kindness, courtesy, and caring. Like hospitality! Right? Don’t you always say hospitality and healthcare go together?”
He was proud of his learning and moving forward with the team.
Kind Dining® training sessions alleviate the problem of bullies without pointing a finger at one person but by bringing improved ways of working, introducing and stressing civility to all on the food serving team.
Create a team working toward the same goal and dissolving the problems of anyone who behaves like a bully.
Open discussions regularly with the entire food serving group and encouraging new ideas from the very people who do the serving instill leadership qualities and trust in their coworkers including administration.
Aging adults are particularly aware of the atmosphere that exists around the people who serve meals to them three or four times a day. It is easy to notice when someone strays from team goals for whatever reason.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Have your food servers learned what civility truly means?
Do your community supervisors continue to read research on how to secure and keep healthy employees?
Do they know why it is necessary to have healthy employees and how it benefits your residents and your community?
Do they know the benefits of teamwork?
Research results reveal that employees who work together as a team show better communication skills with residents as well as with their teammates. When they share the same goals with staff members on their team, they are impacted with a sense of respect and are apt to perform their duties with a lighter step. This especially refers to employees in a minority, whether gender, race, or age.
A team member will feel accepted and know they will be treated as fairly as their teammates. They also are reassured that they will not suffer any kind of harassment. This affects health and creates decisions to stay on the job.
A healthy employee seeks to improve their performance, will have the patience to be kinder, and gentler, and will create positive relationships with both their coworkers and the residents.
Kind Dining® encourages practicing teamwork relationships, ideas, and sharing opinions, to strengthen new, team-building habits.
Occupational friendships with teammates convey a sense of belonging that works on behalf of an employee’s health. It’s a small kindness, to extend a hand or smile, that creates a huge response.
Kind Dining® training sessions teach that learning and practicing together promotes team culture.
The presentation and serving of meals are a complex choreography. Teammates learn to have each other’s back when someone falters. This builds trust and a winning team.
My research has proven that building meaningful relationships helps aging services communities attract residents, retain staff, and create a community where your employees and your residents feel like they belong in this very place. By mastering the fundamentals of attention, respect, and kindness, you too can improve the experience of everyone in your community.
Kind Dining® is approved for 11 Continuing Education Units for RDNs, & NDTRs. CEUs are from the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR), the credentialing agency for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. This includes 1 Ethics unit for the entire series.
For CDMs, CEUs are from the Certifying Board of Dietary Managers (CBDM). 9 General, 1 Sanitation, 1 Ethics.
Why does the brain like learning?
It’s freeing the cognitive capacity so it can seek out new information and learn. To keep our brain in tip-top shape, it needs exercise. And learning something new is the best workout we can provide. Habits and routines follow neural pathways that are well-developed and etched deep into our brains. – Jan 21, 2022
How do you become ‘one of the good ones’, as an employee is sometimes referred to? Many times several employees do the same work, get it done on time and never cause a problem. Yet they aren’t especially referred to as ‘one of the good ones’.
There is more to responsibility than basic work. Attitude is important. A positive, uplifting attitude is major. It is the sincere smile, the pleasant comment, and adding some hot coffee to a half-filled cup that makes a difference.
Often it is the small things that someone may accept without fuss but notice when they don’t happen. It is noticed when an employee gives a lending hand to her teammate without even thinking about it.
Those little things make a person shine. Often, they don’t even realize it. Residents notice and smile because they know ‘that’s one of the good ones’.
Every employee can be one of those good ones.
First, it takes desire (who wouldn’t want to be noted like that)
Then it takes learning how to be aware and
Finally, it takes practice.
Kind Dining training sessions can step in to help with those requirements. Starting with a positive mindset uplifts the individual as well as those around them. Follow up with intentional acts of kindness to the work performance and your elders will notice.
They will also gain a sense of being wanted; feeling that they fill a special place. It is impressive to your employees when they realize it only takes 5 seconds to perform an intentional act of kindness, with great positive results.
How could anyone resist after learning such a powerful fact? The next step is practice, practice, practice until it comes naturally, without a second thought.
The Kind Dining curriculum was designed to teach your employees, among other skills, the soft skill of small talk, and find value and joy in the work they do.
Your employees are a powerful asset to the company when they are giving quality service.
When a member of your staff serves a meal or a beverage, they are extending hospitality.
When they freshen a cup of coffee or tea, start a conversation, or offer a sincere compliment, it is an act of intentional kindness while also extending healthcare.
When hospitality, healthcare, and kindness are given together from one of the team, they are ‘one of the good ones’.
Do you know that holidays can bring severe, sometimes unexpected, melancholy to many seniors?
Even though the pandemic is gone, it has left many elders without loved ones who passed away during that time.
There is nothing a food serving staff can do to bring back those who have passed away, but they can turn a sad moment into a happy memory just by knowing the right words to say.
A minute can mean a lot to an older adult who is experiencing loneliness.
Kindness of thought or a few words can change a tear to a smile. The moods of food servers affect everyone they come in contact with on their daily rounds of service. It is a small thing that has big results.
When training is offered for new hires and refresher sessions for experienced servers, it is vital to add the knowledge, and skill, of kindness to those sessions.
From a leadership point of view, kindness can aid in building relationships with elders, but also with coworkers.
Your food serving team armed with vital skills applied continuously, reduces loneliness and melancholy. This is especially so during the holidays when the mood of your food serving team turns the general atmosphere into holiday fun and happy exchanges of greetings.
Keep in mind that many residents were previously hosting the holidays. After moving into a retirement community, they are just another person living among a melting pot of people who are strangers to them.
Their holidays are now vastly different.
This is a time when gathering around a mealtime table, meeting new friends, and sharing holiday stories becomes the most important hour of the day. This is a time of creating a new normal way of life. This is a time when food servers can help elders acquire a sense of belonging in your community.
A huge part of how quickly your residents make that adjustment depends on how your staff welcomes them while dining.
Kind Dining® training sessions show your employees the way to improve and grow their behavior patterns.
Knowledge and practice can make your food serving team aware of their movements and moods and how they affect your residents.
To aid new residents in making positive, permanent changes, invite the Kind Dining® curriculum to teach your employees how to make positive, permanent changes in their own lives. It doesn’t happen overnight.
When your employees work as a team, helping each other through education and practice, your community is on the way to being a top-learning and earning company.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Are your employees aware of their behaviors and moods?
“Does this new management team take care of us employees as we take care of our residents? No, I’ll answer for you.
As you know, I’m unhappy and have been for the last six months since the new, upper regime moved in.
I’ve brought my concerns to the bosses hoping to discuss some problems with them. I was sincere and wanted to get answers to my questions. They have canceled our discussion and training meetings and I haven’t heard a word from anyone at the top.”
A friend was eavesdropping at the park listening to two women sitting on the next bench feeding the pigeons.
One of them was obviously upset.
“What can you do? Her companion asked.
“I know exactly what I can, and will do.
I’m taking my eight years of skill and experience and going to our competitor on the other side of town.
I’ve already spoken to a woman I know who works there. She’s quite happy and content with their work schedules, responsibilities, training/discussion sessions, and management, and she’s even content with her paycheck.
That says a lot!” she laughingly replied.
Any employee who has concerns about work and takes those concerns to a supervisor shows evidence of being a responsible worker. A knowledgeable supervisor with good leadership qualities would appreciate it.
Employees have private lives too, with their own families to look after.
When occupational issues arise for them, they need to be addressed. It’s important to keep stress from building up or burn-out forcing a good employee to feel they need to quit their job.
Health problems can result. That should not happen to any employee. Issues can be avoided with discussions and compassion.
The Kind Dining® Experience in Senior Living Communities is vital to improve the health and well-being of employees. That includes residents and staff.
We believe our training sessions help build relationships in ways that improve our communities. Again, that improvement is for residents and all employees.
Our passion is to improve the work experience for staff serving meals, and residents receiving them.
We do this with education that involves kindness, civility, and empathy because we also believe that hospitality is healthcare.
Actually, training never ends. It continues to educate employees about changes, adjustments, new ideas, and ways to improve their work performance. It builds communication skills necessary for a community that feels like family.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: The employee who brings a problem to a supervisor is a responsible employee.
Can you honestly recommend your assisted living community to friends who are looking for a job?
If you know they are naturally thoughtful, caring, and considerate, and would look forward to training and education sessions to hone their skills, would you alert them to position openings?
Do you know if they are good listeners, and communicators, and enjoy interaction with the older adult population?
These are skills just as important as knowing how to serve a proper meal, clear a table, and deliver room service meals with all the condiments, along with a cheerful smile and kind words.
Are they well-groomed, have integrity, and respect for a Code of Ethics?
Would any of your friends realize that teamwork is involved and that the team becomes an on-the-job family that supports each other as the company also does?
Could they handle flexible hours and schedules if necessary?
Are they aware that the residents of today are more sophisticated and worldly than generations past?
That they come from various ethnic backgrounds, bringing vast experiences with them? Do your friends display empathy for others?
Have you ever told them that you are a skilled professional with finely honed skills that encompass many avenues?
Can you honestly recommend your company as one that invests in its employees with excellent training and has ongoing educational meetings?
During those meetings can you participate and offer ideas, suggestions, and discussion?
Can you tell your friends that you are supported in your efforts, offered guidance, and recognized for your unique talents?
Can you say that the wages are competitive with other communities?
How about rewards, recognition, and benefits?
Are they offered?
Does the company offer schedule flexibility?
Is there a 401k plan for full-time employees?
Would they receive vacation, holiday, and sick pay?
Do full-time staff receive medical benefits? Are your company’s values clearly stated?
Is your community one they would love to work in?
And a company they would come to love working for?
Kind Dining® training sessions help to build the company/ employee relationship that creates the community employees love to work in and the company shows pride.
We deliver our unique 9-module dining service training beneficial for all your employees. We deliver wise training investment consultations by phone and virtually in Zoom.
We are approved for 11 Continuing Education Units for RDNs, & NDTRs.
CEUs are from the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR), the credentialing agency for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. This includes 1 Ethics unit for the entire series.
Cindy Heilman, Kind Dining Training
The credentialing board for Certified Dietary Managers is the Certifying Board for Dietary Managers (CBDM), also approving 11 credits, 9 General, 1 Sanitation, and 1 Ethics.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Can you recommend your company as one that invests in its employees?
Do your residents ever make a complaint or suggest the food service?
Do you take the time to listen? Or do you try to change their mind before they even finish saying what they have on their mind?
It costs absolutely nothing to pause, stop what you are doing, look them in the eye, and listen.
Whatever you were doing can wait a minute or two. It can. But it could cost a great deal if your resident doesn’t get the satisfaction that their thoughts are important to you (and the company) if you don’t. You don’t want to have a resident move to a different community because they feel invisible to you.
Residents must feel they are valued, and their opinions are valued by you and your company.
You also don’t have to agree with what they are saying. You do have to acknowledge their comments. You can sympathize with them, offer to carry their thoughts to someone who can help, and you can certainly thank them for telling you.
They must have confidence in you, or they would have gone to someone else.
Think about that. It is building relationships by way of communication and a responsibility that is part of your training in the culture of person-centered care. Let your elders know that they matter to you and your company. Your consideration will create a loyal resident, instill a sense of belonging, and show respect. It will also demonstrate the excellent training your company has provided for you.
Communication is at the heart of the culture change taking place in the business of Aging Services.
Determination and persistence in practice at training sessions pay off.
Cultural change in your community marries healthcare with hospitality.
Kind Dining® knows the results for a company that invests in every employee by supplying excellent training. Educated employees are more efficient, have positive attitudes, are prepared to take on responsibility, and know they are valued. Properly trained employees work as a team and are aware of rules and codes of conduct.
They are more likely to adhere to health codes, so you pass surprise inspections with flying colors. Everyone wins when employees have proper training and listening is part of that training.
Kind Dining® is approved for 11 Continuing Education Units for RDNs and NDTRs. CEUs are from the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR), the credential agency for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. This includes 1 Ethics unit for the entire series.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Do you demonstrate your excellent training?
The two women were walking down the hallway heading towards the kitchen to begin their work shift at an independent living community. They just finished a segment of the training session and were discussing their opinions.
“First of all,” the older one said, “I never heard the term ‘soft skills’ and I certainly didn’t realize I had them. Timewise I’ve probably worked longer on our food serving team than most anyone else.
I learned early to adapt to the many changes made over the years. With my natural curiosity, I communicate easily with the residents, and as you know, with my coworkers.
I think my mom taught me about empathy and she always encouraged learning new skills.
I’m glad they taught those things in today’s training session. Many of our coworkers need to learn those skills. Some are downright stubborn and need to add these skills to their toolbox.
I love my job, always have, right from the beginning, so learning new ways to work has always excited me.”
“Well, I thank you for taking me under your wing and guiding me when I needed it,” replied the younger woman, obviously newly hired.
“I’m also really delighted with this Kind Dining® training module number 3 because, like you, I love learning new ways to work.
I plan to stay in this community, so I want to be a top-notch team player. You make yourself available to talk with me about our work. I enjoy that and discussing what we just learned helps me even more. I appreciate that.”
One person can make a difference.
It’s called the Power of One and it often begins with helping a change of attitude, to encourage learning new ways that change a person’s life and changes the life around them, all for the better.
Discussion after learning sessions brings what they were taught to a personal level and embeds the information like a file cabinet where the content can be brought out and used again and again. What was learned becomes second nature; building confidence.
Kind Dining® curriculum was created to change lives for the better.
Our training is an opportunity to introduce new skills, but more importantly, it’s a way to reshape thinking that will transform the lives of your employees.
Your food serving team will take note of the residents’ increased satisfaction as they receive small acts of consideration, Such as starting a meal with a smile from your server. Add pleasant chitchat and watch the residents at the table light up. It’s good to be recognized. The goal is to make your community a great place to live and a great place to work! Life is good.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Encourage learning new ways to work, it changes the life around them.
Do you know what the most successful companies look for in an applicant when hiring?
They seek a person with the combination of skills that enable a person to learn, relearn, and relearn again.
We know how rapidly changes are happening in our long-term care communities. Our industry has been experiencing major changes and upgrading of services.
People with EQ (emotional quotient or intelligence) can easily learn the changes necessary to keep their community reputation far above their competition. Those people understand, empathize, and conquer unexpected and distressing situations that arise in the kitchen, dining room, or anywhere in the community.
Building strong workplace relationships comes naturally to those with emotional intelligence as they turn intention into performance with the ability to command perceptive decisions.
The EQ skills that Kind Dining® training sessions have been teaching include self-management, which is controlling your emotions in healthy ways by adapting to changes in work responsibilities and taking initiative.
We’ve been training in the skills of empathy, active listening, social interaction, and group dynamics. Relationships, including how to build bonding relationships to inspire and create a team that works together are stressed in our training.
In our training of skills, we teach how your emotions affect your thoughts, and behavior and how to build self-confidence. If you cannot control your stress it can lead to serious physical health problems high blood pressure, a reduced immune system, and an increase in earlier aging.
As a long-term care provider, you want your community to be the leader in your industry, surpassing any competition. Your employees can do that with the training of these skills that benefit your residents, your community, and your employees themselves.
We have returned to ask healthcare providers their thoughts on what advantages they gained from our training.
Working better as a team and improved communication with both coworkers and residents stood out among others in their answers. After completing the training curriculum, the learners thought and acted differently!
Nearly all agreed with this statement: Kind Dining has helped me to understand my role and the importance of teamwork to enhance dining and nutrition for residents in my care center.
Yes, hospitality and healthcare go hand in hand.
Kind Dining® training sessions were designed for all employees who serve meals or beverages, including nursing and wellness teams, housekeeping departments, recreation staff, and managers.
Food servers that learn the skills of emotional quotient are a powerful asset to the company. When they perform with self-confidence from the skills Kind Dining® teaches, they provide quality service. Sessions are now available online.
A retired friend told me recently how she made an excellent living in the old days, by being a waitperson during the years of raising a family.
“I was good at it. My aunt trained me,” she said. “I was pleasant and paid close attention to my customers’ tables without obviously staring at them. With my ‘regulars,’ I remembered what their preferences were. That impressed them. I pampered them without fussing and I was thoughtful and kind.
It was just a matter of good manners carried a little further. It works very well. I was more than civil to my coworkers and often stepped in to help when it was needed. We all wanted to get the food to the table while it was still hot. Of course, in return, they responded with the same kindness. I loved my customers, my work, the wait staff, and the results it brought.”
When any query is raised about improving work performance, training, and education are always at the top of the list. It’s unfortunate, but not everyone was raised with good manners and showed consideration for others.
In communities, serving older adults it is imperative to display those fine qualities along with the professional skills learned for fulfilling your responsibility. Residents receiving physical help are in dire need of kindness and consideration.
Coworkers who are sometimes overworked and may have personal problems of their own running around in their heads, also appreciate a helping hand from another teammate. That kind of relationship with a coworker builds commitment to the job and the community.
A few minutes of chit-chat creates cultural conditioning, shows respect, and establishes trust between coworkers. These may seem like small doings but they are important social skills that make a better environment. Employees stay on the job when they are content with their working relationships.
Kind Dining® training curriculum has impressed companies with the value of educated, multi-skilled, kind, and civil employees.
It is commonly understood that well-trained employees, confident in their work, remain on the job much longer than those without proper training. Our online courses are for your full and part-time, direct care workers, and managers.
Our training sessions are experiential. We train by using action, reflection, application, and performance.
All employees build empathy to respect the aging process by using kindness to connect with residents. They also learn to build solid, trusting relationships with their coworkers.
We teach personal and professional skills that improve the lives of your residents while improving the lives of those who serve them.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Help residents feel they made the right decision by moving into your community. Remember you are the face of the organization.
The latest trend towards cooking to order is setting assisted living community chefs and food serving teams on fire!
Spring changes in the kitchen in food preparation and in the dining room in serving food have awakened creative culinary minds. The focus on utilizing local, fresh, and seasonal foods results in fresh food prepared without increasing the food budget. Chefs use their talent to create additional innovative ways to present healthy selections of food.
Residents with a waning desire to cook for themselves still want to dine on meals that tempt their taste buds. Cooking with fresh herbs and seasonings instead of sodium pairs healthcare with hospitality. Eye appeal is important and can easily be achieved by creative cooks in the kitchen. Staff who serve timely meals with pleasant, positive comportment and are neatly attired carry food service to a higher standard.
With many older adults entering the community companionless, mealtimes are even more important as social hours that will keep them from feeling isolated and lonely. Food has always been a key factor in bringing people together to form friendships and share stories. Mealtimes are the highlights of the day; a time to experience, savor, and enjoy.
Today’s senior living residents have been introduced to multiple cultures in their lifetimes and wish to continue the wide knowledge of taste they have acquired. This fine dining experience that satisfied them in their favorite restaurants is sought in the community they chose to call home. Grabbing a candy bar or bag of chips for a snack may no longer be satisfactory. Interesting, healthful refreshment options are desired at snack time they want. These goals are attainable for your community. Consider salad or sandwich bars and cooking stations that have become popular.
Kind Dining® training modules are a proven turnkey curriculum for assisted living communities that realize resident-centered care is good for business.
Our modules include:
Can we Make a House a Home-(creating community);
WHO are you Serving?-(respecting the aging process);
What do YOU bring to the Table?- (how to be successful);
Making it Personal- (knowing how to be ready to serve);
The Symphony of Service- (applying what you know correctly);
If Only I Had a Heart- (caring to become better);
Emotion Control-(dealing with the hard parts of serving;
Polishing Service- (respecting the company that hired us).
We believe active learning in practice and experiential classes are better ways of educating. Our unique approach to teaching benefits the seasoned server and the novice, the part and full-time employee alike.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Grabbing a bag of chips for a snack may no longer be satisfactory.
