Shaping Your Company Culture

In my years in Hospice I had an unique opportunity to build something that shaped our entire company culture.  This project would also provide a guiding light to make each discipline in our company better at their job.

The program was called the “The Model & Mentor Program”.  My first task was to find the ‘Model Employees’.  Who are your models?  Models are those who are so good at their specific job that they redefine it.  They LEAP OVER the Job Description in a single bound and directly into a new territory of effectiveness.  They are fearless, tireless job ‘role models‘.

Let Your Great Staff Shine

Maybe you have some of these model people in your organization.  Are you fostering their talents?  Did you find some great people in your recruiting efforts?  Do you have Diamonds in the Rough? If you do, you are lucky.  But that doesn’t mean it’s time to rest on your laurels.  If you do work that inspires your best, and challenges them to be even BETTER?  You will attract even more ‘lucky hires’.

But let’s start with how to bring the better into the BEST.

Here are some tips to better challenge and inspire your company Hero’s:

Verbalize Appreciation

Shout it from the Rooftops!  If they are doing Great, LET THEM KNOW!

“You’re Awesome At Your Job!!!”

There are tangible and practical ways to do this while also achieving larger mission oriented goals.

Foster their growth with more opportunity.  Here’s a hard truth.  These diamonds are going places.  You won’t be able to ‘keep them‘.  And do NOT lose sleep over it when they go!  Your obligation is igniting in them a hotter fire than the blaze already aflame in their belly.  Achievers need challenges.  They desire to make their team stronger with their efforts.

Select “Models & Mentors“

In my former organization, we held elections across a company with 45 locations and 5,000 Employees.  We asked everyone to vote for a representative from each of the 5 disciplines in our Hospice Services.  We flew our mentors to the company headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. We spent a week learning from them.  Focus groups.  Quizzes.  Testimonials.  Tips and Tricks.  White board sessions (including a blank white board with their OWN job description to re-write).

Will this investment make our company better?  Yes.  Our program was a SMASHING SUCCESS.  We filmed many of the segments in Scottsdale and edited together training material to watch for any new member of any discipline joining our team.

We added a salary bump to the mentors and made them available a half day a week for opportunities to provide guidance to the other members of our team. They were assigned special emails like askmyfinancementor@companyname.com

These mentors were critical when it came time to roll out new services and techniques.  The opportunity to serve others became a highly sought after calling within the organization.

Give Them Incredible Challenges

Superman would be bored to death if he didn’t have a world to save.  In addition to showering our highest level staff with praise and appreciation, we enabled a 2 year occupancy of Model & Mentor duties.  We found great performers doing great things across the spectrum.  We told these stories (collected by email submission) in a quarterly video highlight called “The Family Album”. Showing a highlight reel of the very best in action and the inspiring ways they do their job?  This had a lasting and resounding effect.

Invest in their success

Mentors also met in person once a year for inclusion and revision.  Finding a one day retreat location between sites was fun and easy.  Our mentors travelled one day out of the month to a regional location and either taught or participated in a workshop.  They were provided funds to a non work social event, concert or meet the spouse party night.  The mentors also penned a quarterly article on the company intranet.

Bon Bon Voyage

Did we treat them well JUST so they would stay?  Of course not.  Did our Mentor’s stay?  NO!  Not always.  But many of them did and reported increased job satisfaction.  Did we create an environment in which more internal recruiting and advancement was taking place?  Yes.  Did we get better work from non-role models?  YES!

Most importantly, we provided real hands on skills that we didn’t have before.  Admissions (our bottom line goal) increased.  Profitability increased.  Retention also increased.

Mentors, the Company Glue

A great team is like a brick wall…they can also knock one down

I often referred to our Model & Mentor program as the Mortar program.  Even the strongest brick can’t stand alone.  These efforts were all about providing an inclusive and adhesive element for the glue that would hold us together across an enormous organization.

After all, when you build a structure strong enough to fix it’s own ails, it will weather any storm.  And when you foster a positive competitive spirit across your multi-skilled professional offerings, you end up with a top to bottom collection of team players who begin to solve any problem with the words:

“What Can I Do To Help?”

Ben Smith is the Founder, President and C.C.I.C. (Chief Caregiver In Charge) at Always There Home Care.  Ben also consults for growing teams and organizations looking to raise their team to a higher level.

At Always There Home Care, our continuing mission is to find, foster, mentor, and model the hard work of those unique caregivers willing to give that special talent that they have to those in need.

Call us on our 24-Hour Home Care Hotline to learn how we may help your senior loved one in Columbus Ohio.  (614) HOME-CARE 466-3227

24-Hour Home Care is made immediately available to Each and Every client of Always There Home Care.  Start today with a basic plan of care and allow the relationship with your loved one and our caregiving staff to flourish.  Click to our home page to hear Jack Hanna sing our praises.  Find out what essential home care feels like.

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