CindyHeilman
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Sep 29, 2009, 11:33 AM
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Dining Service Makeover Test - did you pass?
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By Cindy Heilman - CEO of Higher Standards
Last month we took a test to learn if your community’s dining department needed a Service Makeover. I hope you had fun with it. My goal was to raise your internal antenna about service and reiterate that exceeding service expectations is a defining factor to keep your community a desirable home and competitive in your market.
Getting Started
Ready to accept the service challenge in your community? If so, here are the first steps to get you on the right path.
1) Stop, look and listen at the service being provided. Monitor all three meals and snack times, daily, in every dining room.
While observing; answer a few pertinent questions;
. What does good service feel like to you?
. Do you know what your residents value in service at mealtime?
. What are you seeing as you stop to pour coffee, or better yet, sitting down to have a cup of coffee?
. Do you hear what servers say to your residents?
Armed with the answers to the above questions;
2) Create routine dialogue between management and serving staff. Get 100% commitment to improve dining service.
. Form a committee of leaders i.e. staff within your community who will affect positive change and are passionate about improving service. Participants should represent each department’s frontline servers. They should evaluate current practices and ask residents directly what they value in service. Communicate that information to servers and commit to making those changes everyday.
Let’s stop here for a minute. If anyone is grumbling that this is already impossible to do i.e.; “We will never get 100% server commitment.” “We don’t have the resources to get staff together to talk about this”. “My young servers are only here for a couple of hours a day anyway, why should I waste time and money talking to them”, or, as the administrator or director of nursing, “I wouldn’t be caught “xxxx” serving coffee”!
Read no further. You are not ready. Let’s explore what it will take to integrate higher standards of service into dining.
Is Service an Invisible Product?
Why does imparting good service seem so hard? In a nutshell, it is not a natural part of this culture. Food service systems in senior care communities have not traditionally cultivated service relationships as a priority. The process of delivering meals in long-term care communities disregarded service expectations until a major service antenna was raised when the Ombudsman Budget Reconciliation Act (O.B.R.A.‘87) was enacted. (read more on OBRA go to www.cms.hhs.gov/home/regsguidance.asp)
Even after O.B.R.A., food quality and service was slow to improve. Critics compared food service in care communities with that in schools, prisons, and the military. In these settings how we deliver food to the person is of minimal concern. The focus is on preserving the system and providing nutrition for minimal cost, not on the emotional needs of the person eating.
It’s no secret that the majority of consumer’s perception of eating in nursing homes still causes people to wince. Assisted Living and Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs) are not exempt either. Many seniors who live in luxurious CCRCs share they too “wince” when they think of having to eat “down there”.
Meaning, eating in their own community’s assisted or health center dining rooms, which often are a stark contrast in décor, food and service found in the independent dining room.
Service is invisible to those who don’t see it. The only way to find it is to commit that it is a priority in a community’s culture. Only then will eyes become opened to see it.
We have a common goal, to overcome the stigma of “nursing home dining” and pledge to offer consistent quality service in every setting we serve. Your community might not be a nursing home but in the eyes of consumers most senior housing options are associated.
If service is not happening the way you want in your community now, don’t worry, there is hope. Educating and training servers are the answer, teaching new skills is the key to a service makeover. Commit to make servers smarter about your business. They are not hired knowing how to best represent your community, what resident rights mean or exactly what your senior diners expect from them. Servers are your best assets and are more capable of helping your residents feel respected and valued than you think.
Remember: Every mealtime is an opportunity to reconfirm a senior’s choice on where to live. I hope your service antenna continues to rise. More details in our next issue.
Cindy Heilman, MS, DTR, is the CEO of Higher Standards, an Oregon-based hospitality company. Born from her vision to transform residential meal priorities and dining for senior residents, Cindy has created her experiential training program Kind Dining ®.
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(This post was edited by CindyHeilman on Oct 6, 2009, 12:28 PM)
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