Community Improvement Guide

Transcription

1 Community Improvement Guide

2 Make Improvements That Matter Whether you have results from a recent customer or employee survey suggesting areas in need of improvement, or you just know it s time for change, this guide will help you create and monitor an achievable action plan for making improvements that matter most in your com- a spirit for change, an eye for creative problem solving, and an emphasis on teamwork and you will be rewarded with higher resident and employee satisfaction and retention, more referrals, and occupancy growth. IMPROVEMENT STEPS Create a list of potential areas to improve. With your leadership team, select one or two achievable areas from the list. Talk with your customers / staff to clarify desired improvements. Create your action plan. Looking for free ideas and resources that inspire achievable and lasting improvements in your communities? Sign up to receive our newsletter. Go to sensightsurveys.com/blog and complete the mailing list opt-in form. ful: Show off your pride points! Your step-by-step family communication guide. Want to keep happy employees? The one most important thing. Want to improve food quality? Make this one simple change. Make your residents raving fans the Ritz-Carlton way. It works! Our goal is to help you shine, so do not hesitate to post a comment or question after the posts to generate additional discussion and feedback on a particular issue. 5. Monitor your progress. Never believe that a few caring people can t change the world. For, indeed, that s all who ever have. working on more than one step at a time or circling back as your plan rolls out and new discoveries are made. This is perfectly acceptable. The delight and retain your residents, family members, and staff. -Margaret Mead Sensight Surveys LLC

3 Step 1: Create a list of potential areas to improve Step 1 focuses on identifying potential improvement areas for the purpose of developing an action plan. The goal is to identify opportunities that have the greatest potential to increase customer and/or employee satisfaction. This section illustrates how to identify potential improvement areas using your report of customer or employee survey results from Sensight Surveys. If you do not have a Sensight Surveys report, skip to the next section on page 4 for additional instructions. I have a report of survey results from Sensight Surveys potential areas to improve. Include a brief explanation as to your rationale for choosing each item based on your survey results (e.g., low scoring area, high on priority improvement chart, most frequent improvement request, etc.). Potential areas to improve: Rationale: Report Review Lowest Scoring Areas. Look on page 2 of your community survey report. The chart labeled Department Satisfaction Scores displays your satisfaction domain scores ranked from highest to lowest. The departments with the lowest scores have the ployees and the greatest room for improvement. In the chart to the right, Activities and Health and Wellness are the lowest scoring departments. Sensight Surveys LLC

4 Dig deeper by reviewing the Department Satisfaction Breakdown on page 3. Find the low scoring individual survey items that contribute to the low have the most room for improvement among low scoring departments. As an example, the Activities breakdown on the right shows that only 59% of residents strongly agree or agree that they are given opportunities to build friendships with other residents. High Impact Areas. Some low scoring areas are more important to customers/employees than others. To identify the most fruitful improvement opportunties look at the chart labeled Priority Improvement Chart on page 5. The service areas colored red in the upper left hand quadrant should be considered top priority improvement areas. These areas not only show room for growth (because of their lower satisfaction ratings) but also promise to have greater impact on overall customer/ employee satisfaction than other service areas if made the focus of improvement efforts (because of their higher importance scores). Requested Improvements. Back on page 2, the chart titled Recommended Improvement Comment Themes provides a ranking of improvements requested by customers or employees rolled up into themes. The most common comment themes at the top of the chart should be given top consideration as improvement areas. Verbatim customer/employee comments grouped by theme can be found starting on page 6 under the heading Current Year Improvement Comments. Read er/employee concerns and improvement ideas. This provement goals as you develop your action plan in step 4. Sensight Surveys LLC

5 I do not have a report of survey results from Sensight Surveys customer or employee survey results from Sensight Surveys. If you have a Sensight Surveys report, you can skip this section. You would like to make a change in your community. Perhaps you have gotten informal feedback from your residents or their family members that a service area or physical aspect of your community is in need of improvement. Maybe you or a member of your staff has observed a process or policy that frequently it is time to act. Step one is to make a list of the areas you believe need to be improved based on whatever feedback or observations you have collected. Fill in the boxes at the beginning of this section on page 2 to make a list of potential areas to improve and a brief explanation as to why you feel each area needs to be improved. see as most important. Step 2: Select one or two achievable areas from the list Meet with your Leadership Team. Review your survey results, if applicable, and share what you have identi- or two achievable areas on which you would like to focus. Come up with some initial ideas for making improvements in these areas. One or two achievable areas: Initial improvement ideas: Step 3: Talk with customers / staff to clarify desired improvements Meet with your residents, family members, and/ or staff. Start with a celebration of community strengths (highest scoring areas, most common accolades, etc.) and, if applicable, share the positive results of past improvement efforts. Then move onto improvement opportunities. Share which areas you plan to work on, and ask for help clarifying their concerns and possible solutions. Celebrate highest scoring areas: 3. Sensight Surveys LLC

6 Customer/employee written comments from your survey will shed some light on concerns and possi- to dig deeper. Get to the root of concerns by asking changed. Focus on process and not people to prevent the discussion from devolving into a blaming session. These discussions should help further clarify your action plan goals and action steps. Dig deeper into survey comments: Example survey comment: Have more activities that interest me. Result of follow-up discussion: Residents want more exercise and crafts and fewer games. Concern: Possible solutions: 3. Concern: Possible solutions: 3. Sensight Surveys LLC

7 Step 4: Create your action plan Use the action plan worksheet on the next page to complete the action plan steps below. Action Plan Goals. Your discussions with residents, family members, and staff should provide the details you need to write one or two action plan goals. An action plan goal states what you are going to accomplish but not how you are going to accomplish it. A well-written goal is focused and stated in simple, measureable terms. It is seen as achievable by you and your leadership team. See example goals to the right. Try to avoid writing goals that simply state you will increase satisfaction scores in time for next year s survey. Instead, and monitored throughout the action plan phase. Action Steps. After you have written one or two action plan goals, work with your leadership team to meet each goal. Refer to the ideas you collected from your customers and/or employees. If you are looking for additional sources of inspiration, you may want to seek advice from resources outside of your community. For example, if your goal is to increase the variety of dinner menu options you could: Example action plan goals: 1. Once a quarter, provide a resident status update to every responsible party. 2. At the beginning of every shift, conduct a 5-10 minute informational staff meeting. Example action steps: (for the first action plan goal above) 1. Update RP contact list to include valid addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. 2. Create an /letter template that can easily be customized to each resident. The template should be less than one page and include personable language addressing the resident s status. 3. Set up a schedule to create and deliver 5 in-person, , or mail RP updates per week. Responsible Parties, Resources, and Target Dates. Identify the individual(s) who will be responsible for completing each action step. Meet with your action team to discuss their individual goals and work as a team to identify needed resources and realistic deadline dates. Determine and procure required resources, such as funding and materials. Remember... Making improvements requires team effort. For example, achieving the family communication goal listed as the first example at the top of this page may require the talents of diverse individuals within your community, such as the business office manager, director of nursing, assisted living manager, and someone in the IT department. Sensight Surveys LLC

8 Action Plan Worksheet: Illustrated Example Goal: A well-written goal is focused and stated in simple, measurable terms. Once a quarter, provide a resident status update to every responsible party. Action Steps What will be done? Responsible Parties Who will do it? Needed Resources (Funding/Materials) Date By when? 1 Update RP contact list to include valid addresses and/or mailing addresses. Jeri Ebert, Business Office Assistant N/A 8/15/ Create a one-page /letter template that can be easily personalized to each resident. John Salerno, Asst. Executive Director N/A 8/15/ Set up a schedule to create and deliver a specific number of updates per week. John Salerno, Asst. Executive Director N/A 8/30/ Schedule recurring weekly meetings with dept. directors to gather info to include in each resident update. Monica Stone, Executive Director N/A 8/30/ Begin preparing and sending updates. Monica Stone, John Salerno, Jeri Ebert, and Department Directors N/A 9/1/2014 Action Plan Worksheet Goal: A well-written goal is focused and stated in simple, measurable terms. Action Steps What will be done? Responsible Parties Who will do it? Needed Resources (Funding/Materials) Date By when? Sensight Surveys LLC

9 Action Plan Worksheet Goal: A well-written goal is focused and stated in simple, measurable terms. Action Steps What will be done? Responsible Parties Who will do it? Needed Resources (Funding/Materials) Date By when? Action Plan Worksheet Goal: A well-written goal is focused and stated in simple, measurable terms. Action Steps What will be done? Responsible Parties Who will do it? Needed Resources (Funding/Materials) Date By when? Sensight Surveys LLC

10 Step 5: Monitor your progress What methods will you use to measure progress? Review each action plan goal and identify one or two easy methods for measuring change in performance throughout the year. Let s say hour. Below are a few ideas for monitoring this goal. Establish Baselines. In many cases, it is important to establish a performance baseline before improvement efforts are initiated. This simply means measuring your performance before you rollout your improvement plan so that you will be able to determine how much you have improved. For example in the dining improvement scenerio above, you could create a simple tally sheet to record your daily service times for the week. As additional weekly results are recorded, you can gauge if your efforts are making a difference. Daily Minutes to Finish Serving First Dinner Course Baseline Measurement - Week 1 January Day Minutes Average Average Minutes to Finish Serving First Dinner Course Baseline Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Monitor Progress. At set points throughout the year (we recommend monthly), review the results of your progress measures. Does performance seem to be improving? Should you stay the course or make adjustments? If you feel a change in direction is needed, modify your action plan and communicate changes to team members. Be careful not to change course too often as doing so could create a efforts to be felt by customers and employees. Don t forget to review trending data in next year s customer or employee survey report to evaluate the impact of your improvement efforts on relevant service areas measured on the survey. Sensight Surveys LLC

11 Capitalize on Your Strengths This guide covers how to make improvements that matter to your customers, employees, and the success of your community. The goal is to make achievable and lasting changes that delight your residents and staff members and, as a result, earn your community positive word of mouth and higher occupancy and retention. That said, it would be remiss to neglect the important subject of how to show off your community strengths. This section provides some basic steps for identifying areas in which your community shines and showcasing them in your marketing materials, during tours, and as a strategic component of employee recruitment. Let s say your community received a satisfaction score of 92% on dining room service. That is an accomplishment worth bragging about. Now back it up with resident testimonials from your survey and you have referral sources that customer satisfaction with your dining room service is 92% is to follow it with something like One resident said she feels like the Queen of England every time she walks in the dining room! Steps: 1. Make a list of areas in which your community scored 90% or higher in customer/employee satisfaction (see page 3 of your survey report). 2. Read through the customer/employee accolade comments in your report and look for some you can use as testimonials to showcase areas of excellence. 3. Make a list of the marketing materials you share with prospects and referral sources and any company information you give to prospective employees, such as your: Website or web page Brochure Social media pages Ad placements 4. Meet with your sales and marketing or human resources team and create a plan to incorporate your high satisfaction areas and testimonials into your materials and community tours. Areas that scored 90% or higher: Tip... Use the action plan template on page 7 of this guide to define specific goals and lay out the what, who, and when of your plan. Sensight Surveys LLC