Make yourself visible. I try wherever I can to pop in from place
to place when I’m out traveling
between appointments. I try to
spend a little bit of time and
have a casual conversation with
the staff.
That gives me an opportunity
to look at things and ask
what’s going on and pose
some strategic questions. It gives them opportunities to
ask me questions.
When I go into some place, I
primarily look to see how things
are operating. I can ask individual employees directly, ‘How’s
your work today? How are you
doing?’
They feel good about the fact
that you have the CEO or one of
the leaders of the organization
out there spending time and
asking their opinions and asking
them to give you input. It helps
me immensely to know how
services are going along.
That goes a long way for the
employee to feel that their opinions are valued and they are valued as a person and as an
employee. It gives me an opportunity to thank them for their
good work.
Guide employees through mentors. We use some of our training
and development staff as mentors. It could be a veteran
nurse mentoring a new nurse.
It could be a habilitation assistant mentoring another habilitation assistant who is new,
and so on.
What we’re really looking for
are the people who have the
most experience on the job in
that job we’re trying to train.
You can bring anybody in and
say, ‘Today, you’re a mentor.’
That doesn’t always work.
That mentor should be right
there side by side with the person making sure their training
is good and that they are
applying it directly. They have
to be in touch with the person:
‘How are things going? Any problems I can help you with?
Anything I can line up for
you?’
Once that process occurs,
the new employee feels much
more confident and feels their
skills are much stronger and
sharper because that person
took time to really focus on
them as a person and care
about what they’re doing.
Whenever they are in contact with the employee, they
have to then report back as to
the results of that particular
encounter. If there are problems, we want to know about
that. By establishing that kind
of relationship, you want to
be able to encourage the
employee that they’re a valued employee and that we
want them to stay.
HOW TO REACH: Hattie Larlham, (800) 233-8611or www.hattielarlham.org
