“ Our Compass”

Leading strategic growth to better serve our residents, their families, our staff and our community.

Leadership Goal

To consistently leverage leadership skills, techniques, tools and strategies to increase accountability for quality service and compliance at all levels of the organization, creating a” high performing culture”.

Our Required Leadership Skills

Leaders must have the skills to build strong teams and individuals to create the Ultimate Resident experience:

• Lead and manage people
• Build relationships
• Proactively identify and positively resolve issues with:

- Residents
- Families
- Staff

• Positively influence
• Be consistent with rules, consequences, rewards and recognition
• Consistently hold people accountable
• Provide coaching, mentoring and constructive feedback that helps staff be accountable
• Lead and sustain change
• Make good decisions based on facts that lead to positive change
• Promote organizational learning
• Delegate effectively
• Communicate clearly and consistently to create transparency

Our Required Leadership Attributes

Executive directors, directors and managers must have and the following attributes to create a high-performing culture:

Leaders should be:

• Trustworthy
• Respectful
• Accountable
• Fair
• Approachable
• Available
• Consistent
• Confident
• Committed
• Intuitive
• Inspiring
• Motivating
• Strategic
• Creative
• Reliable
• Engaging
• Knowledgeable about the business

Leaders should exhibit:

• A positive attitude
• A sense of humor
• Interpersonal skills

Our Leadership Spirit

Leaders’ behaviors create the organization’s culture through:

• Attitude
• Posture – body language
• Tone
• Consistency – every day – every situation
• Transparency

Leaders’ behaviors have incredible power when dealing with staff, residents, and guests.  Every interaction is an opportunity to develop a productive – “high performing” work environment that allow us to delight our residents and their families!

We know great customer service happens daily!

Customer service is our job!

Our basic customer service strategy:  Smile and listen!

How we define Customer Service?

Customer service at Ivy Gables is two-fold: 

• We look at customer service for our residents and families, which is provided through excellent personal care in a warm, friendly and engaging atmosphere.
• We also aim to provide great customer service to our staff through outstanding leadership that creates a safe, enjoyable and stimulating environment. Our goal is to create the ultimate employment experience where our staff can thrive.

 We are creating the “Ultimate Resident Experience” through the “Ultimate Employment Experience” 

"Our Hiring Goal"

Attract and retain highly skilled people with a passion for seniors who want to be team players.

We do that through a multi-step process that provides:

• Several interactions with a candidate in different situations with different staff and residents
• Allow the candidate time to relax and show their true self
• Allow for a closer analysis of “FIT”
• Create staff buy-in and support of selected candidates

How we attract talent:

We have developed a strategy to draw a pool of quality people in for interviews by:

Advertising:

• A “Great Place to Work”
• Educational opportunities
• Career development

Create and advertise refer-a-friend-programs

We live our commitment!

"Our Training Goal"

The overall training strategy is the belief that ALL staff want to be successful. As an organization, we need to be clear about what is expected. 

• Training is designed to prepare a new hire to become a qualified, value-added and contributing team member as quickly as possible.
• To set clear expectations for new-hires about the Ivy Gables best practices
• To reduce and avoid conflict over best practices
• To engage our staff in developing new-hires and promoting ownership of their success
• To forge relationship between existing staff and new-hires
• To reduce turnover so we can better serve our residents and their families
• To increase accountability
• To provide clear expectations so that our leaders have guidelines for coaching, mentoring and managing performance consistently

Our training process

 
The diagram below illustrates the training process. This process is designed to provide targeted and effective job-specific training for a new-hire to be successful.  It is critical to follow the process to ensure success limit liability and promote teamwork and customer service to both residents and staff.

"Our Performance Management Goal"

Track and reward what you expect and teach what you need to close performance gaps creating the “Ultimate Resident Experience”…

An effective performance management process enables leaders to evaluate and measure individual performance and optimize productivity by:

• Aligning individual employee's day-to-day actions with strategic business objectives
• Providing visibility and clarifying accountability related to performance expectations
• Documenting individual performance to support compensation and career planning decisions
• Focusing on skill development and learning to be a high performer

Our concept

Performance management happens every day through continuous feedback and holding people accountable!

• Choose to educate over discipline
• Use constructive feedback vs. destructive feedback
• Be consistent by providing fair, strong, and direct feedback to retain talented staff
• Avoid giving feedback that reduces communication, trust, and respect

"We Are Creating A High-Performance Culture"

Our strategy: Everyone should be receiving rewards and recognition for performance! As an individual; and as a team!  The diagrams below illustrate what we are rewarding to “CREATE A HIGH PERFORMING CULTURE."