Close your eyes, think of the Winter Holidays coming up, and what do you see? Perhaps a Christmas tree in the background, hear Christmas carols being sung, but you ‘see’ family and friends gathered around a festive dinner table, no matter which holiday you celebrate. It’s the table that holds the warmth, celebration, camaraderie, and feelings of joy!
It’s about some foods that are only made on certain holidays. It’s the food that reminds you of past Christmases and loved ones of long ago. Wonderful memories abound! It is a goal for Independent and Assisted Living Communities to recreate some of those treasured moments for your residents. It is in the power of your food serving team to help recall those memories and replace lonely reflections with the joys of today including newly found friends in your community.
The chit chat your food servers initiate can result in favored recipes shared and specialty traditions to be passed along to the chef for planning mealtime events. Small, casual verbal connections between food server and resident can result in making holidays happy replacing any feelings of the blues commonly experienced during this period of celebration. These are vital skills taught in Kind Dining® training curriculum that bring about important results that will linger in the minds of those on the receiving end. Resultant mealtimes are your company’s best asset and your mealtime servers have the power to make mealtimes memorable. Holidays are times when your food serving teams shine their brightest, when feelings are tender, and merriment is present in décor, attitudes, and at the table. Setting higher standards in dining practices is a positive attainment. How your team performs at mealtimes and any time food and beverage is served, matters.
Kind Dining ® continually updates training to reflect the needs of food serving teams as traditional service changes to include new rules, regulations and suggestions that keep residents healthy and safe. Hospitality and healthcare are still wedded together. Kindness has always been a core belief in Kind Dining® curriculum. New challenges in Senior Care Communities show committed food servers learning how to combine that hospitality with healthcare using kindness, compassion, and competence as skills learned and practiced on a daily basis. Our training sessions are experiential. We engage trainees by using action, reflection, application, and performance. Servers build empathy to respect the aging process using kindness to connect with residents on a one-to-one basis. We teach personal and professional skills that improve the lives of your residents while improving the lives of those who serve them.
Be ♥ Kind Tip: Does your employee training include compassion and care?