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.
by Cindy Heilman | Build Communities of Belonging, Resident Centered Dining Service, Training
“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!
by Cindy Heilman | Resident Centered Dining Service
DiningRD Acquires Kind Dining
I want to let you know that Kind Dining is transitioning to become part of a more significant movement to enhance relationships and the dining experience in senior living communities across the United States and Canada.
Please understand how critical you all are to positively affect the lives of people living and working in senior living environments.
It’s been my personal mission to fill the gaps, create the way for relationship bonds between staff and residents, and reduce the epidemic of loneliness through staff personal and professional growth through education, skill development, and consistent training.
Being acquired by DiningRD is an honor. It offers a fresh approach to breaking down barriers within and around the dining experience.
Helping people open their hearts and minds to find a new sense of purpose, love their work, and keep their focus and energy on what matters most.
This is key to building communities of belonging.
Thank you for being a part of the Kind Dining Community.
Your support, business, constructive feedback, stories, and love all contributed to the enthusiasm and resources that have contributed to our success.
I am grateful for you.
I will stay an active partner with DiningRD as a mentor and coach.
You can read more details in the press release below.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/diningrd-acquires-kind-dining-302089400.html?tc=eml_cleartime
Kindness is a way of Life ~
Cindy
by Cindy Heilman | Resident Centered Dining Service, Retain Staff
Is the goal for your long-term care community to be superior in service to other communities in your area? To have your reputation rise above all others? To be a top-notch community where service people want to work, and aging adults want to live? If you answer yes, it is time to introduce lifetime learning to your staff.
Kind Dining® has helped staff understand and improve their role and the importance of teamwork to enhance dining and nutrition for residents by adding new ways to their workday.
Learning ‘mindset before skill and tool set’, including soft skills, to their present skills to become a valuable member of the food serving team. These soft skills of conscientiousness, personal reflection, and development, added to experience and mentorship, are learned through our Kind Dining® training sessions. Their soft skills become power skills.
We have revisited staff who benefitted from our curriculum to hear what they learned from Kind Dining® training sessions. The following are a few of the replies received:
“I’m more compassionate, take my time to listen, and make their mealtime more enjoyable. Helped in the serving department and treated the residents as if they were in a restaurant setting. I am more aware of how I serve the resident their food. Try to breathe through my nose before I respond. When something goes wrong.” – Caregiver
“Remembering to have empathy, remembering that the care center is a home, showing kindness to everyone.” -Activities
“I am rephrasing how I want to explain things to the resident. I’m making the food look more presentable and prettier for the residents.” Cook
“I engage in more conversations, and I am more attentive to the needs of the residents when they are dining in the dining room.” Caregiver
“Dining as a community event and the role of food in healing.” Nurse
Quietly send your mother to have dinner in your dining room:
- Would she experience a well-oiled team working together?
- Would the dining room be full of smiles?
- Would her needs be satisfied without asking?
- Would she receive kindness and compassion?
- Would the staff exchange polite words with her?
- Would she be served an appetizing and nutritious meal?
- Would you be delighted with the report she brought back to you?
Be committed to hospitality and healthcare in your community by enrolling your staff in continuous learning with Kind Dining® training. Help your staff advance their skills. Kind Dining® training modules, now offered online, will save your company time and money.
Check them out at KindDining.com
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Superior teamwork enhances the dining experience for residents.
