Can the Employee Experience Sustain You Through A Pandemic?
This is the 9th time Lifespark has earned the honorable Star Tribune Top 150 Workplace designation. But this year, this award feels different and carries so much meaning behind it especially as we hit top 10 within an already expansive list of remarkable Twin City companies. Despite everything that has happened so far in 2020, our people’s belief in our mission and their workplace remains strong – to us, that means everything. “This is SUPER exciting and validates our collective leadership,” said Joel Theisen, BSN, CEO of Lifespark. “Even during one of the most challenging times in our lives in serving seniors we SHINE! This is a BIG deal and I am thankful to be on such a passionate, committed, and aligned team.”
Who knew the irony of 2020 being declared the Year of the Nurse by the World Health Organization just months before COVID-19 hit Minnesota nurses and frontline healthcare workers. The Economist wrote a great article on the why behind their decision which had at the time everything to do with the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth and how she would be pleased to see how far the nursing profession has come. But even with our medical marvels and technological innovations, she may be humbled to see that even 200 years later, it’s the pure desire to serve people when they need you most that has nurses running into battle to care for people during a pandemic even today. Isn’t that why you went into nursing?
This is most certainly the year of the nurse but also the healthcare worker including caregivers and home health aides, physicians, and all home care professionals working with seniors, especially those in senior living communities – all of whom have risen to a challenge we didn’t foresee and served anyway.
Perhaps this year should have been declared the ‘year of the spark’ because people in every workforce whether healthcare or not, found themselves working remotely, some furloughed, many with children at home balancing families (bring your child to work day has taken on new meaning), and doing whatever they can to stay well at home. It hasn’t been easy. But as workforces change we find ourselves waking up each day with a renewed thought – does my job give me meaning? Will it sustain even through pandemics? Am I making a difference?
A few years ago, when the 2020 workforce predictions were being pooled, the number one trend expected to dominate 2020 was the employee experience. This pandemic has forced us to rethink what we want that experience to be.
At Lifespark we have experienced tremendous growth because of our people. Those working the frontlines who worked round-the-clock to keep seniors and their families safe and healthy and those who continued to innovate – launching a hospital at home program, building a mini-house on wheels to better serve our communities, developing the Lifespark GO! transportation service, and guiding our communities so they have everything they need to stay well at home simply because we had to do more to keep our communities well. All that in just a few short months.
Through it all we continue to grow, we continue to hire, and we continue to believe, even remotely, that we are all in this together to find better ways for seniors to age magnificently long after this pandemic is over. What they say may just be true – employee experience is everything. Our team rose to the occasion and did what they do best – spark lives. It was impressive, it was humbling, and we are so grateful. Congratulations to our team and every company on the Star Tribune Top 150 list – this is an impressive feat in a very challenging year.
If you’re not getting the employee experience you desire check us out, we’re hiring.