Blogs

May 10, 2012 - Hospital Week Winds Down/Employee Engagement Update

May 10, 2012 by Marc Strode, CEO
Folks,
We are winding down what has been a festive (and competitive) Hospital Week!  We've served breakfast, dolled out treats to the night shift and will have to wait until next Tuesday for our culminating event, the Awards Party out on the lawn.  This was planned for this evening, but the threat of storms and soggy lawn prompted us to move it back on the other side of the weekend.  This is a pretty cool deal I'm glad to see that we do to recognize some of our brightest stars.  Much in the spirit of the service awards given earlier this year, we will award several folks in different categories w/ certificate and nice cash prize!!!  These are all people who were nominated by their peers!  We'll have food out there as well as live music so please stop on by next Tuesday early evening. 

We snuck in our Star of the Month award yesterday in the festive cafeteria.  And the winner is.......Maria Lujan from Surgical Services was the recipient this month so if you see her around give her a high-five.  We did.  And put an extra $100 in her next paycheck!!! Congrats Maria and thanks so much for your spirit, attitude and hard work!  

Today was executive work day, and while us executives were on skeleton crew today, I had the opportunity to get out and work the morning w/ Manuel and Irvin in materials.  I helped stock, so if your stuff is out of whack, don't blame those guys---there was a rookie in the fold today.  You can't imagine what goes into making sure our front-line folks have all the stuff they need to take care of patients.  These two guys, along with Mona and Dennis, their fearless leader, have a huge hand in that.  It's a complex process, and from what I can tell these guys are on top of it!  Thanks a bunch for letting me hang out with you and for teaching me a thing or two about inventory process.  

And let me close by talking about our Employee Engagement Survey Process.  It only took VVRMC a few days to go through this, and I appreciate everyone's enthousiasm and more importantly the feedback.  Francine's team took the big prize, but there were actually 2 teams at 100% on the first day.  Outstanding!  My team the Chevy Chases, as I type are only lacking one survey, but she's on vacation.  Otherwise, we would have won and been done Monday!  At least we will beat Jackie Lockett's crew!  One advantage to the manual process we went about this year is we will have our results tallied by next week.  We will immediately share that feedback with you.  I am most interested in the "one thing I would change" question.  I know there will be a lot of good ideas we can follow through on.  I expect to make a bucket list of those and simply check them off when we've accomplished them.  This is good stuff!  Again, stay tuned for the results.  

And lastly, to all the moms out there, happy Mothers Day early!  I hope you get to put your feet up Sunday and get some papering from the kiddos and your husbands!  That's what I'll be doing.  And if you are not married to one, be sure to call your own mom on Sunday!!!!

Keep the Spirit,
Marc