Building your team from the inside

Right now applicants are plentiful for just about any job. It’s not hard to fill our vacancies. But I remember a year when we couldn’t find applicants, let alone new employees. We offered incentives to current staff; we threw away all of our long standing policies on not hiring close relatives. Basically, we hired just about anyone we could, without a criminal record, to fill our needs.

It was a brutal time for building a strong cohesive team. We had to dig deep to come up with ways to keep our good employees and build our new people into strong team members.

Funny how great ideas often come from moments of desperation. In this particular moment, we decided we needed to designate one month each year as “Employee Appreciation Month.” Since it happened to be summertime, we threw a dart on the calendar and selected October.

Over the next several years, Employee Appreciation Month grew to be something vital and relevant, no matter what the hiring situation. We found ways to include residents, families and the community in recognizing our employees’ dedication and hard work. Administrators created bulletin boards with a space for each employee to bring in photos of their kids, pets, or whatever was important to them. They would select an employee’s name out of a hat every day and do something special for that person – once, an Administrator spent the whole afternoon washing employees’ cars in the parking lot, with residents looking on and cheering.

Now that we’ve sold our own assisted living communities to focus full time on training, I do miss October. I miss the energy, creativity, and, most importantly, the opportunity to go the extra mile to say “thanks” to some very special people.

So if you would, just take a little time out of your busy day – or dedicate an entire month if you can – to saying “thanks” to the people who care for your residents. It’ll mean a lot to me – and to them.