by Cindy Heilman | Leadership, Resident Centered Dining Service, Retain Staff
A friend told me about running into a woman she used to work with while she was out shopping. The woman looked terrible! She asked if she had been ill. “No,” the woman replied, “just tired of the same old job, the same old complaints, and the same old me.” My friend quickly decided to abandon her list of errands and share a cup of tea, cake, and lend an ear. Maybe she could help. Her friend was a nurse in an assisted living community and was burned out from too many hours, no one seemed to care, and she was trying to gather enough energy to look for a different community to work in. Normally she loved her work and couldn’t understand why she was feeling so run down. My friend knew immediately that a good training curriculum could turn her working life into a productive one where she would be happier and healthier.
Do you know that employees experiencing the oncoming feeling of burnout are more likely to take sick days and are probably looking around for another place of employment? Their taking sick days increase the workload for coworkers spreading burn-out to others without their realizing it. Replacing employees is costly and troublesome. Even before the Covid-19 epidemic threw assisted and long-term care communities into the employee crunch, management was aware of the burn-out syndrome. Pressure in service-oriented positions that grow worse from working too many hours without respite because you are needed doesn’t solve the problem. Being aware and facing the problem is the first step to repairing the situation. Scheduling flexible hours and freeing up the rigid routine would change that feeling of being in a rut. Allowing employees to have time off to tend to their personal responsibilities lifts that burden of weight that sits on many overworked shoulders.
Training comes in to face and solve burn-out problems. Kind Dining♥ training discussions can recognize if employees believe they are being treated fairly and give them a chance to add ideas to improve their work and to express if they are being supported by their manager. This is vital to their mental attitude in the workplace. Kind Dining♥ training exercises help to reduce burn-out by teaching new skills, helping gain confidence, and helping find value in what your food servers and all your staff do. Your employees will learn how to manage their own behavior and improve their self-image leading to a happier, healthier life.
Kind Dining♥ training is now approved for 11 Continuing Professional Education credits for Registered Dietitian Nutritionists, & Nutrition & Dietetic Technicians Registered, as well as for Certified Dietary Managers.
Be♥ Kind: Do you know body language extends communication beyond mere words?
by Cindy Heilman | Leadership, Resident Centered Dining Service
The best experience you can give your residents is the employee who loves to come to work every day. This is the result of taking the hassle out of the hospitality you offer. Encourage all of your employees to become friendly with each other, to work as a team, helping each other when help is needed the most. This is a key to the community that flows smoothly, eliminating costly upsets. When your employees enjoy the work they do, they bring out the happiness of your residents in a natural way. This is nurturing that is a skill and cannot be forced, but can be discovered lying beneath the surface of the untrained server. The reality and logic of this plan can come from Kind Dining training for all your staff from your caregivers, housekeepers, nurses, to your managers.
Encourage camaraderie between employees at all levels and those employees with the residents. This dissolves walls that isolate people. Including your residents in this seemingly casual way makes them feel an important part of the community. They will thoroughly enjoy an enriching conversation with any staff member. It is a warm feeling of welcome that long remains after the initial newness. Residents will boast about their home where the staff feels like family. It is the staff, and servers in particular, that they see more often than family. This is a lifeline to keeping your community vibrant, alive with people who are joyful with their home environment.
Hospitality has always started with welcoming people to your home, your table. It is the same with your residents in this place they have chosen to live the remainder of their lives. The dining room has become more significant than ever. Since the heart of your community is the dining room this is where your servers’ playfulness with the residents will reflect hospitality the most. Kind Dining® will train all your servers to understand that they carry this vital shared responsibility. When the community runs smoothly troubling incidents are eliminated. Investing in valuable training is a better choice than fixing costly repairs in the fabric of running a successful community.
by Cindy Heilman | Resident Centered Dining Service
Truth #5: You’re Most Dependent on Your Lowest Paid, Least Trained Staff.
Raising dining standards most effectively means training all your staff to shine in the dining room. It does not mean adding a faux palm tree in the corner of the room. Your servers and ancillary staff are your direct link to your residents. The servers generally come to you completely untrained. Yet you depend on them more than anyone to create a comfortable, but professional, contentment in the dining room. Since the residents find mealtimes the most important, and social, times of the day, it is imperative that your staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and trained to put your best foot forward. The residents who are unhappy with their mealtimes, but won’t necessarily complain, will move to a community that does fulfill their mealtime anticipation. This loss of revenue and the cost of getting them to stay in your community, can be avoided by Kind Dining ® training. When your servers learn to utilize a pleasant genuine greeting with the your diners, they will address them by name, not “honey” or “you guys” showing the respect due to them. Your residents’ appreciation will rise considerably. They will take note of this small, but hugely important detail. Visitors and guests to the dining room will also take note and, as humans do, they will talk about the experience they enjoyed in your community. This is how you grow your community by personal recommendations. It is the best advertising you can get.
When your staff learns through good training, to work together as a team, they will wear their B♥ Kind® pins with pride. They will take their new responsibilities to heart and that will overflow to others. This personal attention will also overflow to other areas in your community. When meeting in the hallway or a game room or any other place, your staff will have a personal connection to your resident, their name. When you use a name, you put your best foot forward, create a smile on those you greet and how can life get any better than that?
