Enhancing Employment in Long Term Care:
A Guide to Retention

Chapter Six

Training -- Skills for Coping with Life
Suggestions:

• Provide educational inservices, with paid guest speakers, relative to personal life. Focus on topics such as stress management, parenting, budgeting, loss, death, family conflict, assertiveness, and motivation.
  
• Provide programs specific to women's needs and women's issues.
  
• Provide various modes of training (visual impact) and activity.
  
• Provide onsite speakers.
  
• Provide the opportunity for offsite classes at no cost to the employee.
  
• Make connections with technical schools.
  
• Utilize an employee assistance program (EAP) and encourage its use.
  
• Provide a good explanation of the benefit package.
  
• Training should be geared to employee learning needs and disabilities. Consider providing audio tapes and video tapes for reinforcement as well as providing additional one-on-one training as needed.
  
• Invite families to attend these educational offerings.
  
• Provide employees with professional career assessment; encourage employees to pursue interests; help employees determine their abilities.
  
• Set up special interest groups where discussion could take place on breaks or outside of work; examples include wellness programs, budget planning.
  
• Support groups before or after work; brown bag lunches.
  

• Provide educational inservices, with paid guest speakers, relative to professional development. Focus on topics such as teamwork, facility goals, conflict resolution, cultural awareness, and communication.
  
• Seek employee input for facility goal setting.
  
• Host special theme days to educate employees about cultural diversity.
  
• Conduct role playing sessions for which employees play the parts of residents and family members. This is excellent for a resident rights inservice. It allows you an opportunity to model acceptable responses to both appropriate and inappropriate resident and family interactions.
  
• Create a career ladder; post jobs and in-house promotion opportunities; team leader positions.
  

• Have nurses do role playing and have the CNAs critique them.
  
• Incorporate a psychologist or a social worker from a geriatric program in your training.
  
• Rotate the assignment of difficult residents.
  

• Offer training in organizational skills.
  
• Provide clear assignments.
  
• Cluster assignments for better efficiency.
  
• Provide needed equipment in good repair.
  
• Have efficient employees train others on how they organize their tasks.
  

• Develop and publish a VIP newsletter.
  
• Share the Brown University Newsletter as appropriate.
  
• Subscribe to a geriatric newsletter and share it with your employees.
  
• Develop growth-oriented check inserts and send them with your employees' pay checks.
  
• Provide geriatric magazines.
  
• Provide a staff library.
  
• Encourage employees to provide and edit informational material to share with other employees.
  
• Purchase monthly mini-lessons dealing with care of the elderly.
  

• As you consider educational programs, include topics that enhance personal life.
  
• Offer tuition support for offsite educational programs.
  
• Allow an employee to attend an offsite program as a reward for good performance.
  

• Provide scholarships for continued education in any health care field.
  
• Suggest your auxiliary provide scholarships.
  
• Suggest family groups contribute to your school fund.
  
• Seek memorial contributions for scholarships.
  
• Support staff fund raisers for scholarships.
  

• Offer facility-sponsored counseling services. Examples include six free hours of counseling for each employee after the 90-day probationary period, pastoral counseling for staff, and/or small group rap sessions with supervisors.
  
• Provide informational material regarding parenting, divorce, drug, alcohol abuse, wellness topics, and financial planning.
  

• Provide tuition assistance and link its payback to continued service.
  
• Include tuition assistance as a benefit.
  
• Pay for textbooks.
  
• Contract with a specific school for lower rates for your employees.
  

• Develop and establish preceptorship or partnership programs.
  
• Conduct preceptor/buddy training; always work with the same trainer initially.
  
• Assign a mentor to be a personal advocate for each new employee.
  
• Assign each new employee a resource person for several weeks.
  
• Provide one month of orientation for new employees.
  

• Teach managers/supervisors to give clear direction and expectations and then how to respond when an assignment is done correctly or not done.
  
• Instruct managers/supervisors in employee role requirements.
  
• Stress programs on attitudes toward other employees.
  
• Devote a portion of each employee meeting to management issues. Do role playing.
  
• Utilize a RAP small group session structure and encourage open communication.
  

• Have a good overall organization of the work.
  
• Have good written job descriptions.
  
• Provide unit specific assignment sheets and include special duties.
  
• Develop a written protocol for resident cares available on each unit.
  
• Dedicate special inservices to learn about other roles.
  
• Periodically schedule a time for a few hours of job exchange.
  

• Providing clear direction with rationale for each task should be your standard operating procedure.
  
• Feature regularly scheduled inservice and training programs.
  
• Conduct annual skill testing.
  
• Videotape live presentations to replay for those who were unable to attend.
  
• Provide programs on coping skills to help employees adapt to a rapidly changing industry.
  

• Establish a career ladder for your CNAs. Consider steps for each of the following positions: preceptor, medication aide, ward clerk, data entry, and restorative aide.
  
• Offer training for specialized units.
  
• Develop criteria for each level of the CNA career ladder.
  
• Have a charge CNA for each shift. This provides an opportunity to receive CNA feedback through one individual and to get new information to CNAs through one individual.
  
• Promote from within.
  

• Ask one of your employees to speak at a high school health occupations class.
  
• Create a video describing the role of the person you hope to hire. Utilize this video for pre-employment purposes. Require job applicants to view the video prior to hiring them.
  
• Incorporate employees at every level in your recruitment program at local career fairs.
  
• Provide shadowing opportunities in addition to your verbal explanation of the CNA and other long term care professions.
  

• Post job openings and update the listing weekly.
  
• Search out qualified applicants within your facility.
  
• Encourage promotions from within.
  

• Pay a different rate for trainers as part of your career ladder.
  
• Pay a bonus at the end of the training period.
  

• Allow employees to develop standards for themselves in the areas of inservice, attendance, scheduling, policies, and job routines.
  
• Allow for peer input when conducting performance evaluations.
  

• Encourage all employees to provide positive feedback.
  
• Select an Employee of the Month or celebrate special staff recognition days.
  
• Include line staff on facility committees.
  
• Create a staff council for suggestions and problem solving.
  
• Integrate the CNA as part of the resident care planning team.
  
• Encourage employee participation in your quality improvement program.
  
• Insist all employees show common courtesy related to the basics of life.
  
• Offer training for specialty programs.
  
• Provide literature and guest speakers on self-esteem.
  

• Have family members play the role of the resident for sensitivity training; talk about how they felt.
  
• Host an open house and provide a demonstration of what the CNAs and other employees do.
  
• Feature a "scatter board" of residents' interaction with staff.
  
• Feature employees in your local newspaper.
  
• Establish a program to allow a child to come to work with his/her parent.
  

• Include training and tools as part of your employee assistance program (EAP).
  
• Conduct health screenings onsite.
  
• Provide wellness programs onsite and off.
  
• Re-educate your employees about body mechanics.
  
• Develop a back program and feature it at a work retraining session.
  
• Insist on pre-work stretches.
  

Preface
Chapter One: Good Wages and Working Conditions
Chapter Two: Scheduling Options
Chapter Three: Recognition
Chapter Four: Feeling In on Things
Chapter Five: Fringe Benefits and Other Incentives
Additional Resources

WAHSA 204 South Hamilton Street Madison, WI 53703
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