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Article of week: Show your appreciation every day

Contemporary Long-Term Care Weekly, March 27, 2008

Small incentives will make a big difference

What has your skilled nursing facility (SNF) done for its employees lately?

Usually the answer is some sort of periodic event, says Donna Cutting, CEO, president, and employee morale consultant at ShowStopping Solutions in St. Petersburg, FL.

"It's wonderful to host a lunch and give out pins and prizes once in a while, but you can make more of a difference in the day-to-day interaction of people by incorporating appreciation more frequently," she says.

When your employees feel valued, they take more initiative and meet goals more easily, and people don't leave the company because they are unhappy, she says.

Improved productivity and decreased staff turnover lead to a healthier bottom line. And it won't take much extra time and money to make priceless changes to your employee retention program.

Administrators take lead

The SNF's administrator must set the tone for appreciation efforts, Cutting says. Supervisors need to spearhead employee appreciation training for all department heads and constantly reinforce the programs' importance.

Your department leaders may find training useful because administrators and other leaders might perform well at their jobs, but might not thrive in interpersonal relationships. Train your leaders to promote appreciation of their staff and encourage employee-to-employee support, too.

Host short workshops for leaders and provide them with easy-to-implement ideas such as the ones outlined in this article. Role play a few of the methods to help supervisors become comfortable with the programs.

Don't pass the buck onto one of your employees when it comes to appreciation efforts, says Gary Peters, administrator at the DuBois (PA) Nursing Home. "If I appointed someone else to do this, it wouldn't be done with enthusiasm because it would become someone's job."

Recognize all staff

In addition to your clinical staff, show your gratitude to the housekeeping, office, and dining staff. This will keep each discipline as motivated as the others. "If one team is not performing well, it will affect everyone, including the residents," Cutting says.

Put special notes of recognition in companywide newsletters or on bulletin boards throughout the facility. Also add a more personal touch. For example, the maintenance director may not receive much feedback unless something is broken. So if the maintenance crew plants flowers, gather a group of employees from another department, ask them to admire the work, and tell the maintenance director what they think.

Be a team player as well as team leader

One of the biggest complaints that Cutting says she hears from SNF staff is, "We did all the work, and the boss took all the credit." Give credit where credit is due to foster employee appreciation.

For example, when you observe a staff member taking extra steps to ensure a resident's safety or comfort, tell the staff member as soon as you can what you noticed. Be specific. Tell the employee that you saw him or her calm down a resident or make a resident smile.

Take it a step further and write him or her up for good behavior. Put notes in the employees' files for reference at evaluation time.

Also send an e-mail to staff when they go above and beyond the call of duty and send a copy it to the corporate leaders in your company.

Keep programs lively

Peters' facility introduced a program that divided employees into teams, with each team work on personal goals (e.g., quality improvement or fire safety) during a 12-week period to win an award. But after a while, it became old hat and managers found it made more work for them to follow up with each team member's data collection. After a while, Peters decided to shorten the program to six weeks.

To keep the efforts exciting, DuBois is now replacing that program with another incentive focusing on safety, attendance, and quality.

The safety and attendance portions are each worth 40%, and the quality score is worth 20%. Employees take biweekly safety quizzes and are also judged on whether they have major safety incidents during their daily work.

Attendance includes coming to work and participating in mandatory meetings. The quality piece takes into account any departmental survey deficiencies. At the end of the year, each employee receives up to $400 depending on how well he or she scored.

This incentive includes all staff, not just clinical, and supervisors give employees ample opportunity to achieve their best (e.g., offering make-up tests).

DuBois Nursing Home budgets $16 per person per month for all its employee appreciation programs, and the return is great because the facility only has a 10% voluntary staff turnover, Peter says.

Easy ways to show appreciation

Try the following easy and inexpensive ways to show your employees that you appreciate them:

Say it with stickers. Inspire your returning vacationers by sticking Post-it® notes with encouraging words at their workspaces, suggests Donna Cutting, CEO, president, and employee morale consultant at ShowStopping Solutions in St. Petersburg, FL. Leave messages such as, "We missed you," "Glad you are back," "We really couldn't do this without you," etc.

Give out come-in-late passes. For a job particularly well-done, hand out late passes that allow employees to come in a half hour late. Late passes could also work for parents on their children's first day of school. If you do this, don't forget to treat your nonparent employees with a late pass on another day, Cutting says.

Pamper your employees. Rally your supervisors and department heads to host a car wash for the employees. Charge each of them $1 and use the money for a pizza party later.

Host a morale day. The DuBois Nursing Home also sets aside $1-$5 per person per month for Morale Day. Last month, employees were treated to peanut butter and chocolate pretzels from favorite local sweet spot.

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