Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

6 Ways to Thank Your Employees Taking On Call While you Celebrate the Holiday

 

 

 

We just passed Thanksgiving, when we offer thanks with our friends, loved ones, family. But what about your employees this holiday season. How will you thank the very people that power your business and profit and may be on call for you right now?

“Truly, from bosses I liked, anything was great because I appreciated that they thought of me. From “bad” bosses, anything would annoy me. You can’t make up for being a jerk with a token of any kind once a year.”

Ideas for inexpensive but really appreciated gifts for Care Managers and staff– cards to grocery stores or department stores, a gift certificate from Amazon all given with a nice personal handwritten note.

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Staff Thank You Gifts All Year.

  1. You need to bill 85% of your client hours. When a care manager does bill’s 85% write them a handwritten thank you note being grateful for having the amount of productivity to keep the business thriving. Handwriting is not a lost art. It sends a message that you take the time personally to really care what the employee does for your business.

2. Send a handwritten thank you note to each staff member during the year to applaud something they did. Saying thanks about something specific may be the ultimate reward. If you do it selectively yet authentically, a thank you note may be pinned above your employee’s desk for years. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee ’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. If you really want to do it right, frame it.

3. Name an employee of the month in your newsletter with their picture. Give them a gift to tell them you are grateful for their hard work. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign the letter and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. If you really want to do it right, frame it too.

4. Have an employee holiday party and give gifts to all employees for being such excellent care managers and for billing the 85% you need them to bill so you will all have employment.

5.Plan employee picnics, birthday parties, anniversary parties to thank them publicly throughout the year.

6. B.J Spitler , one of the first and I might say the greatest care managers, founded Age Concerns in San Diego in 1982. She gave gifts of massages to her care managers. A brilliant gift, a massage recognizes the tough emotional work that care manager’s do and their need to take care of themselves- which you as their employer are doing.

Give Thanks Throughout the year.

 

     

 

     

The Ice Storm Cometh Again This Thanksgiving For Aging Parents

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 Kids who grew up in the 70’s will soon have Thanksgiving with their 70 or 80

something aging parents. Will they recall the ” Ice Storm”?

In the film, it is Thanksgiving weekend in the early 70″s and a boyish Tobey Mc Guire returns home from prep school to a Thanksgiving feast that his sister starts with this prayer.

” Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff us like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.”

 

So we begin the descent down the cusp of the 1970’s as the nearly normal family shapeshifts into dysfunctional in Ang Lee’s brilliant film  The Ice Storm 

Lee’s Thanksgiving classic is the perfect reflection of some family’s plunge into the early 70’s season of hell.

If you’re in your 40’s and grew up with parents gone haywire through 70’s social change, you will remember the ice storm.

 Divorce imploded the family, as we knew it. If you were a parent then you may recall,  Key Parties, or Nixon Resigning,   Deep Throat or hear David Bowie who did the soundtrack to the film.

 

With Lou Reed you can loop back to his fabulous song of that spins the period Walk on the Wild Side and maybe recall the template for it the entire era the -book, Open Marriage.  

 

Children of this 70’s social tumult may now share another Thanksgiving with aging parents who put them through hell. What will they do when they find they have to care for those same parents who did not care for them?

When they return to Thanksgiving they may call an aging life or geriatric care manager. Are you ready?

 

 

 

 

 

 


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