This article was featured in NH Business Review on October 23, 2020, where Justine Vogel, the RiverWoods Group CEO, shares the lessons learned from COVID-19
Listening to your team will give you a better understanding of what we’re all going through right now
Listening to your team will give you a better understanding of what we’re all going through right nowAs a country, we have a lot of issues these days — the obvious public health challenge caused by the Covid-19 virus, but also the underlying racial, social and political issues that divide us.
When I find myself stuck, I try to learn something new by hearing new voices. This summer, I asked our nearly 1,000 employees to share their viewpoints with me on what working through Covid meant to them. As a small family of nonprofit continuing care retirement communities, our teams have been in this game for a while now. The wisdom I found in their viewpoints is worth sharing, as their perspectives can help us face the future.
“This is the most meaningful work I have ever done in my career.”
Whether it is providing direct nursing care to a resident, or delivering meals or running errands so that our residents didn’t have to go out in public, the virus reminded our essential workers how much they each mattered in others’ lives.
“It’s reminded me to be grateful for people, not things.”
When the physical presence of your people is taken from you, as we all experienced during the past six months, you remember the value of relationships versus material things. If you have set the roots of your friendships properly, they will endure, and this time of enforced isolation reminded us all that we need each other.
“Things are hard — but it’s not the worst.”
The past few months have changed our perspective. This is a really difficult time, but it is teaching us to be more patient with the daily irritations of life, and teaching us that we are stronger than we ever knew. We are finding that we are more resilient than we imagined.
To learn how the lessons learned by COVID-19 have been applied and for more information about the safety requirements and current precautions on our campus, please visit our COVID-19 Updates page.