habilis gGmbH Senior citizens' residence "Am Eiskellerplatz" (2018*)

For almost 20 years, the "Am Eiskellerplatz" senior citizens' residence has provided a home for people in need of care. Under the motto "Feeling good in the community", residents can experience many interesting community activities in addition to competent care and individual support. The 74 employees are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

For us, good work means finding solutions together

Co-determination, transparency and a future-oriented management style play a decisive role in this. "It is important to us that all employees feel involved. This includes a constant flow of information and a clear signal to tackle problems openly and find solutions together. Our aim is to design work processes in a targeted and collaborative way," explains Managing Director Cornelia Stegemann. She has been working in the care sector for over 32 years and knows where the shoe pinches in the industry. "It has always been difficult to find nursing staff in geriatric care. It is therefore all the more important to achieve constant employee satisfaction. Employees who feel happy are loyal and stay with a company in the long term."

Good cooperation is the basis of our collaboration

For this reason, a working time account was introduced at habilis gGmbH Seniorenresidenz "Am Eiskellerplatz" many years ago. Since then, employees have been able to flexibly adjust their working hours according to their personal needs, such as caring for relatives or taking school and kindergarten times into account. There is a framework work schedule that can be flexibly designed on the condition that there is continuous staffing and that the individual wishes in the 3-shift system are supported by all employees. The company supports its employees with travel allowances and kindergarten fees. "Good cooperation with our employees is the basis of our joint work. I have a personnel development meeting with everyone once a year. It is important to us to use birthdays, Women's Day, Men's Day and Christmas to say "thank you" to our employees. We have fixed rituals for this with flowers, a gift, cake and, of course, personal congratulations," says Cornelia Stegemann.

With ^Wertenetz©, we were able to take a closer look at the various areas

Why does a company that is already very committed to its employees take part in the Werteetz© ^survey? "With ^Wertenetz©, I found it exciting to be able to look at and evaluate different areas in our company. Above all, the questions were exciting for us: How do employees see their opportunities in terms of further education and training and are they satisfied with our measures to date to reconcile work and family life? We are pleased that our actions were generally confirmed. At the same time, the evaluation results gave us indications of potential for improvement. However, it also showed that we were right to pursue the questions. For example, we were surprised that the kitchen area did not consider further training to be useful. We need to talk about this and work on it," explains Cornelia Stegemann.

We want to focus even more on the individuality of our employees

The identified reserves are now being gradually incorporated into everyday working life. In the area of "social support", work tasks are to be unbundled. More attention is to be paid to the individual interests of employees. "One person likes sport, another prefers music. So far, we haven't taken this into account when organizing leisure activities. But if you don't like or can't do something, you let that out. The residents can sense this. We would now like to link the division together with the interests of the employees," explains the Managing Director. The topic of different needs for closeness also plays a role here. What level of closeness can a caregiver provide and what level of closeness does a resident need? In future, this will be taken into account even more when planning assignments. At the same time, the facility wants to focus on the residents' biographies on a daily basis. Every resident brings their own life story with them. "A baker who has been getting up at 3 a.m. all his life will not be able to break this habit. We don't want to educate or change our residents, but rather accompany them as they are".

It is a balancing act to manage the different needs and the resulting flexibility in harmony and to the satisfaction of staff and residents. habilis gGmbH Seniorenresidenz "Am Eiskellerplatz" succeeds in this balancing act.