Post by Gregg Caplitz on Jun 15, 2021 11:06:08 GMT
A. Write an article (no more than 500 words) that offers insight into the elements that you feel build and maintain staff morale. Be specific and give examples as appropriate. Please post your article on the Discussion Board.
Why is a Can-Do attitude essential to an organizations’ success? A very simple question with an incredibly important response. If your organization has a Can-Do approach, it is far more likely to deal with challenges created during turbulent times. Absent such an attitude your organization can fail to adapt or in a worst-case scenario simply fail. We need look back no further than those days of early spring 2020 as Covid raged throughout the country and cities and states ground to a halt. Organizations struggled to seek a means to survival. Many who could not adapt are gone today or greatly diminished.
Almost all Social Welfare and Workforce Development agencies in Boston had closed their doors. They either had a very limited staff working remotely or had turned off the lights and simply closed the doors. Community Work Services remained physically opened staffed by a small group of senior management led by their Executive Director Craig Stenning. I was the Culinary Director of a program where all our catering clients had closed. Most of my staff had been or shortly would be laid off. All of our state contracts had gone into suspension and revenue had slowed to a trickle. How in a Can-Do environment do you deal with these issues? You simply can’t cut expenses enough in a no revenue environment to survive.
We identified a potential need. First Responders where working long shifts in facilities where the kitchen staff had been cut to a bare minimum providing only limited in-patient meals. Many of these First Responders were working 18 hour shifts with nothing but a sandwich they brought from home. We had kitchen facilities and staff but no clients to purchase our products. I identified a potential partnership with Off Their Plate a local non-profit arm of World Central Kitchen who was willing to pay for meals to be provided to these essential workers. We located food suppliers who would continue to deliver to us, recalled our kitchen staff and went to work. We identified a partner who helped us recruit young adult homeless who we could train and staff the meals program with. Over the dark days of April -July of 2020 we delivered over 30,000 meals to these Heroes of Healthcare and generated over $200,000 in revenue to CWS to help keep the lights on. We helped 22 young adult homeless find the skills and training they needed to support themselves. As conditions at the hospitals began to normalize, the need for First Responder meals disappeared and the Off the Plate program ended.
Our Can-Do attitude helped us to morph the program into a program to feed food impaired individual with both meals and grocery boxes. We got funding support from the Boston Resiliency Fund and continued to supply meals and in a new part of the program groceries. To date, this program has delivered over 70,000 melas and 700,000 pounds of groceries to Boston ‘s neediest families and has continued to produce revenue This is what a Can-Do attitude can mean.
Why is a Can-Do attitude essential to an organizations’ success? A very simple question with an incredibly important response. If your organization has a Can-Do approach, it is far more likely to deal with challenges created during turbulent times. Absent such an attitude your organization can fail to adapt or in a worst-case scenario simply fail. We need look back no further than those days of early spring 2020 as Covid raged throughout the country and cities and states ground to a halt. Organizations struggled to seek a means to survival. Many who could not adapt are gone today or greatly diminished.
Almost all Social Welfare and Workforce Development agencies in Boston had closed their doors. They either had a very limited staff working remotely or had turned off the lights and simply closed the doors. Community Work Services remained physically opened staffed by a small group of senior management led by their Executive Director Craig Stenning. I was the Culinary Director of a program where all our catering clients had closed. Most of my staff had been or shortly would be laid off. All of our state contracts had gone into suspension and revenue had slowed to a trickle. How in a Can-Do environment do you deal with these issues? You simply can’t cut expenses enough in a no revenue environment to survive.
We identified a potential need. First Responders where working long shifts in facilities where the kitchen staff had been cut to a bare minimum providing only limited in-patient meals. Many of these First Responders were working 18 hour shifts with nothing but a sandwich they brought from home. We had kitchen facilities and staff but no clients to purchase our products. I identified a potential partnership with Off Their Plate a local non-profit arm of World Central Kitchen who was willing to pay for meals to be provided to these essential workers. We located food suppliers who would continue to deliver to us, recalled our kitchen staff and went to work. We identified a partner who helped us recruit young adult homeless who we could train and staff the meals program with. Over the dark days of April -July of 2020 we delivered over 30,000 meals to these Heroes of Healthcare and generated over $200,000 in revenue to CWS to help keep the lights on. We helped 22 young adult homeless find the skills and training they needed to support themselves. As conditions at the hospitals began to normalize, the need for First Responder meals disappeared and the Off the Plate program ended.
Our Can-Do attitude helped us to morph the program into a program to feed food impaired individual with both meals and grocery boxes. We got funding support from the Boston Resiliency Fund and continued to supply meals and in a new part of the program groceries. To date, this program has delivered over 70,000 melas and 700,000 pounds of groceries to Boston ‘s neediest families and has continued to produce revenue This is what a Can-Do attitude can mean.
