Funny, we see it everywhere. So many different companies stuck somewhere between COVID and post-COVID protocols. Don’t know what I am referring to? Go to any hotel, restaurant, bank or grocery store. You can see these businesses trying to find the balance between what they were doing at the height of the pandemic and what to do now. The interactions are sometimes awkward as both the customer and the staff try to navigate the appropriate social norms. Slowly but surely, things will get back to normal. Here is a gut check for everyone. How did all these COVID-19 procedures for your team and clients, negatively impact your culture. It’s hard for many of us to think back two plus years, but how did it feel to be part of your organization back then? What was it like to be part of your team? What was it like for patients and their families? For all the right reasons, many in the health care world had to sacrifice certain aspects of the culture they had built in the name of safety, infection prevention, patient load, staffing shortages and a host of other very good reasons. The question is, how do you quickly and responsibly get back to pre-COVID levels of patient care, staff engagement and core values. We must also consider that many of the folks on your current team, joined during COVID and have no idea what the organization’s culture may really be like because they have never actually seen it. Get a small team who knows what your pre-COVID culture was actually like. Then develop a game plan to reengage the team and the culture. The companies that do this quickly will win as we emerge from the pandemic.
Jay Juffre is Executive Vice President, ImageFIRST. For more information on ImageFIRST, call 1-800-932-7472 or visit www.imagefirst.com.
