WHAT IS CULTURE CHANGE?

           We say Culture Change is a deep change involving three major initiatives:

1. Renewal of the Spirit – We’re speaking of the Renewal of the ‘spirit’ of our work – a personal transformation as we re-discover the reasons we entered this field and/or stayed – often because of the meaning and purpose it brought to our work life.  This change gives us the opportunity to renew our commitment to the residents we serve.  The staff, residents and families work together to create purpose and meaning within the facility. We begin by focusing on creating a good daily life for the residents. This results in a satisfying and meaningful work life for staff. Staff grows in leadership and team abilities and often develops additional marketable skills by cross training. Families benefit as they see their Elder flourish, and discover the effort and energy that staff is exerting. Elders with memory loss can also find their way, moment by moment, in this journey – through person-centered care, and opportunities for moments of home and family.
2.  Renovating Into Home – This initiative means looking at the physical environment and reshaping it into neighborhoods or possibly households – centered around a living room, dining room and, in the case of households, a kitchen for every small group (10-20) of residents.  Effort is made to create smaller environments, throughout the facility that create more of a home feel, where relationships can happen naturally. This means creating spaces that better respond to the intimate, private needs of the residents, to the semi-private (family or “household”) needs and to the more public needs of the community.
3. Reframing the Organization - This initiative is about doing the very hard work of looking at how we are organized as an organization and moving to flatten the top-down hierarchy.  Decisions are made to move leadership deeper into the organization, closer to the resident. This is done by moving the formal leadership to the neighborhoods and households, resulting in decisions that better reflect realities of the residents’ daily life. This dynamic brings more opportunity for growth in critical thinking, team and leadership skills. Reorganization also includes empowering more self-led work teams of caregivers and residents to discover and carry out the residents’ choices and daily pleasures. All benefit as formal leadership grows their abilities to engage and motivate staff, residents and families; frontline staff become resident-centered: residents’ families get positively involved and residents begin to enjoy their day, every day.