Employee Meeting Take-Aways

We are now in the fifth year of employee meetings. The first four years were pivotal in helping steer and achieve our corporate goals.
The purpose of these meetings are two fold. First is to give you all a chance to hear directly how we are doing on our corporate goals and receive updates on our big projects. Secondly, and more important it gives us a chance to dialogue about the questions and suggestions you have.
The folks on Stevens Rd shared with me their real passion to support more clinical research. They are doing great work with one of the partnerships on sensory integration I mentioned in last week's wrap up. In Mountainside we tried a little exercise looking at the top things the organization should be focused on. We got great suggestions from our discussions. In EIP I heard loud and clear that when we do the construction fro the new therapy site, they want to be included! The doctor's reminded me how important it is that we stay focused on making sure our children can continue to get services, in light of the health care reform discussions that are going on nationally.
Her are some of the things we did immediately since the meetings started. I know more suggestions are still to come. If you go to the intranet, you will see a listing of all of the presentations and posters that people within the organization have done. Make sure your presentations are included if you do not see them there. More importantly, it provides with the information of what resources are available to you. Check it out if you want to know who is an expert in a certain area.
Human Resources will be reaching out to employees to do a check on how things are going. A very good point is that we meet with people when they leave for exit interviews but maybe we should be touching base, "just because". With 1200 employees it is not going to be an easy task. We know from our employee satisfaction survey that our 5to 10 year employees have lower satisfaction scores than the rest of the organization, so we will begin there. It is all about extending ourselves in many different ways to make sure we are meeting your needs as employees.
You can post questions anonymously here if you feel intimidated in large groups or email me directly. I want to hear from you and truly appreciate the chance to have these conversations.
I wan to thank all of you for what you do for our children and for Children's Specialized Hospital. It is truly an honor to work with each of you.

Inspiration

I found myself suffering from the winter duldroms. Nothing wrong per ce - just feeling the weight of everything.

Trish West-Lowe sent me this link and it made me once again realize how much "how you see things" impacts what can be accomplished.

Let me know your take after watching this.

2008 - A Very Good Year

My friends at Stevens Road taught me about a practice that they do around the solstice each year. They make wishes for the New Year and free themselves of the old things holding you back. They say it much more eloquently and with special poems and ceremony, but it made me wonder if you would be willing to share your wishes for the New Year and celebrations of last year.

As I think back over the past year, many fun and memorable things come to mind. Sitting at the NJBIZ employer event thinking that they had forgotten to call our name after we got to number five and then realizing we had won: receiving the letter from Modern Healthcare that we had ranked nationally as one of the best employers was a great event: the Autism walk in Point Pleasant and the Toms River folks giving me remedial changing your t-shirt instructions in the parking lot lessons without taking the other shirt off, is one memory that I am only fortunate there was no video for - only pictures when it was over: walking to the gala in NYC and seeing our children on the Times Square megatron, took my breath away: seeing one of our LTC kids ride a pony for the first time, when prior to that all he would do was scream on the unit because he wasn’t going down stairs: seeing athletes from 38 countries watch a baseball game and hang out, even though there was little common language between them: the first time I got to see the sign honoring my folks on the meditation room, still makes me choke up: walking through Mountainside after the renovations and the MOVE from Fanwood Plaza (I am still sore!):the employee meetings when I got to talk about the new vision and seeing tears in both of our eyes about what it is going to mean to create a world where every child would live to their maximum potential: when I got to see one of our little LTC children walk with her pink crutches to get her diploma at Fanwood School. There are many more but these are a few of the highlights for me.

As I mentioned in the last wrap up - it looks like we are well on track to achieve 9 out of 10 of our corporate goals. Truly I am so appreciative and thankful to work with people who give so much of themselves to achieve such greatness. Time and time again, we have pushed our selves, hit our goals and set the new goal. I will never forget that I asked the Senior Leadership team a few years ago how we would know when we got "there". A few of the team members corrected me and told me that you never get "THERE" - You achieve new things and than there is more to be done because our children always deserve us to be striving to make their lives the best they can be.

How about you? Do you have some highlights from last year you’re willing to share? Something memorable that might make you smile and bring a smile to others?

Year In Review - Therapy Garden Video

It is hard to believe that 2008 is almost at an end .We have a lot to be proud of! We have had an outstanding year of accomplishments. This time last year we were settling into our new home in New Brunswick, we consolidated several of our sites and we’re still celebrating being named the Best Place to Work in New Jersey by NJ Biz and among the top 100 best hospitals to work in country by Modern Healthcare!

To close out the year, we had two things left to do in New Brunswick, open the pedestrian bridge from the parking garage and complete the therapy garden. I am thrilled to tell you that both were completed in December.

As you recall, the Therapy Garden was funded through a combination of employee contributions and friends and family of our former patients.

We created the garden to add some green in the middle of this concrete jungle, to take a part of Mountainside and Toms River with us. It is also a place where you each could be part of the creation of our new inpatient hospital. Truly, it is an amazing experience to go out there and read the names of those who gave and those who gave in honor or memory of loved ones. One of you told me that you gave in memory of your sister because you wanted her to be with you every day. It is a special garden of healing, both of the children who will receive their therapy there, and those who we celebrate.

Below is a video that the Foundation created that commemorates the opening of the garden and reminds us all why we have chosen to be a lasting part of Children’s Specialized Hospital.

Thank you for another wonderful year.

May the New Year bring good health and joy to you and your family.

Children's Specialized Hospital Foundation's Therapy Garden Video

Face to Face with the CEO

My thanks to all of you who attended and participated in the employee meetings. It is always good to have a chance to provide you an update on big picture issues that face our hospital, and be able to answer your individual questions. This time I asked Directors to solicit questions ahead of time and it was very helpful to be able to have those and answer them. Some of you also sent me questions from a request I made in the wrap up - those were also appreciated.

The best part of these meetings is the chance to be with all of you and have that face to face time. I was tremendously excited to share with all of you our new vision and mission adopted by our Board of Directors. This new focus is reaffirming that in these difficult times, uncertain times; we are still positioned with our eyes on the future and trying to make the best choices for our children and their families. Often these choices are comparable to Hobson choices - no matter what you do, there will be pain but you have to try and limit the people impacted and make sure we are doing what is necessary to be able to provide the core services to our children.

As I have listened to President Elect Obama speak over the last few weeks, he continues to talk about their being pain in order to get to a place of stability. We hope that his pain will not impact our children, but given the magnitude of the crisis in front of us as a country, it is hard to imagine that we all won’t be asked to do more with less.

Senior Leadership and the Director's will continue to work together to make sure that we have the focus on both our children and our finances. Your feedback, ideas and thoughts are always appreciated.

We have my entire presentation available on our intranet – take a look to see what our new mission, values are and where we stand on meeting our annual goals.

Thank you for your continued support for our children.

Steve Horner

It is with great sadness that I share with you the passing of our dear volunteer and friend, Steve Horner. He passed with great dignity, in his home surrounded by his family and those who love him.

Please keep his family and everyone here at Children’s in your thoughts as we grieve the loss of a truly special soul.

Funeral services for Mr. Horner will be held on Saturday, November 22 at 11 a.m. at the Church of Holy Innocents, 681 Prospect Avenue, West Orange. A reception will follow at the Cranford Hotel, One South Union Ave, Cranford.

Condolence cards may be sent to the family at 209 Holly Street, Cranford, New Jersey, 07016.

A Precious Gift

I know that I have written about random acts of kindness in one of my first blogs but something happened this weekend that brought it all home again. The daughter of our long time volunteer, Steve Horner, called this weekend and asked Janet Weston, Director of Volunteers, and I to come say our goodbyes.

Steve has given over 8,500 hours to the hospital over his 20 years of volunteering. He was recently honored by NJBiz by being named the 2008 volunteer of the year. Steve worked mostly in the school program on our inpatient unit, but he was always available to help where he was needed.

Being invited into a family's grief, before the family member passes away, is a tremendously personal and generous thing for the family to do. Steve’s family made it very clear to me as I sat in their home that his life, after he retired and especially after his wife, Aurelia, died three years ago, was dedicated to spending time volunteering with our children.

Aurelia was also a volunteer, who encouraged Steve to donate his time to our children. As we sat with Steve and reminisced, his daughter grabbed one of two cards that was on the bureau in his bedroom. She told me that this card had arrived last week and was from Jackie Jones in our dietary department. His daughter went on to explain that Steve would come home and tell stories about all of us, but especially Jackie. He had a soft spot for her and the stories would be about - how she had given him a hug, or told him a story - things that I know Jackie never thought would be worth retelling to your family but she brought him tremendous joy. His daughter showed me how the card "sang" when you pushed the button and how much it had meant to him to get this card at home.

As I left that night, I was so thankful for the chance to have time with Steve and his family. Steve’s daughter reminded me how the little things we do make such a difference in people’s lives – in ways we may never imagine.

While I know Steve will join his dear wife Aurelia soon, he has given me a tremendous gift to remind us no matter how small the gesture is, showing that random act of kindness defines who we are as people and could add so much to someone's day.