It’s About Your Team

We have a motto at our company, aQuire Training Solutions. We say, repeatedly, that “In senior care, your most valuable asset is not your building, it’s your team.”

We say this based not only on our passionate belief that people make the difference in care, but also on our experience as owners and operators that you can have the most beautiful building in the world but if it is not staffed with people who love their work – and love their residents – it will not be a successful business venture, let alone a valuable contributing force for excellence in senior care.

Not too surprising then, that a company called My InnerView’s recent survey of employees in senior care found that what matters most to senior care employees is having management who cares and listens to them.

This 2006 survey found that, among the 100,000 employees of about 2,000 nursing homes, 45% felt their satisfaction level was “Good” with only 16% feeling it was "Excellent". This appears to be a win, since over 60% of employees apparently are reasonably happy.

If, however, you follow the Disney approach to customer satisfaction, you’re running a pretty dismal show. Disney, according to Fred Lee (If Disney Ran Your Hospital), considers anything less than "Excellent" to be missing the mark.

We’re about to embark on a time in history when our needs for caregivers vastly outnumber our supply of trained and capable individuals. Perhaps this is a time when we, as a profession and as a society, need to be investing far more in building the teams than in building the buildings.

Just a thought.