By Susan Misiorski

Susan Misioriski

Susan is the National Director of PHI’s Training and Organizational Development team.

A longer version article originally appeared at the Western New York Alliance for Person-Centered Care’s blog.

Home as Workplace

Long-term care providers have the unique challenge of balancing the “culture of home” with the “culture of the workplace.”

Long-term care employees, whether in home or residential care settings, are working inside people’s homes. This fact causes us to need to design interventions that have a clear and compelling impact on the employee’s experience of their workplace and the elder’s experience of home. Peer mentoring is an excellent example of one such intervention.

Inclusion and Connection

A mentor is someone who provides ongoing support that is not mired in the issues of positional authority that can sometimes accompany supervisory relationships. A mentor offers mentees a feeling of inclusion and connection, even in a workplace that may have cliques or subgroups that could otherwise cause a person to feel excluded.

The quality of relationships between employees will have a direct impact on the culture. A person can sense the difference immediately between the warmth that accompanies kind, respectful relationships and the coldness that follows in an environment where staff are not getting along. Employees in good relationship with each other are able to extend the same warmth to elders and family members.

Peer mentoring was first designed as an intervention to reduce employee turnover, particularly among direct-care workers in the first 90 days on the job. Evidence shows that mentoring is successful in this regard, but it is important to note, particularly in an economy where people are less likely to leave their job, that there are many more reasons to implement and sustain peer mentoring. This is not an intervention that should be reserved solely for high turnover situations.

Mentoring builds teamwork, creates a welcoming environment, supports personal growth and development, and improves employee satisfaction. Loretto’s PACE Central New York provides a wonderful example of an organization that began mentoring primarily to reduce turnover, but realized additional benefits of stronger relationships and more confident staff.

Loretto's PACE Central New York

“The mentor program was great,” says Tami Irish, who completed her orientation in May 2009. “It made me feel confident … that there was always someone to call if I had a question or any kind of problem.”

Mentors similarly have seen the difference the program has made. Peer mentor Deirdre Johnson observes that “more people are staying … If you put someone out there [without support], they feel frustrated and just quit. Now [they’ve] got someone [they] can talk to about even their [own] problems or the job problems.

Supporting Culture Change

Mentoring is particularly important in residential care homes that are implementing culture change practices that require direct-care workers to take on more flexible roles. To support the culture of home, direct-care workers are increasingly assigned to work in “neighborhoods or households” and their roles may include caregiving, light cooking, housekeeping, personal laundry and activities. These flexible roles require ongoing support and skill building — an ideal opportunity for mentoring.

Because mentored employees are more satisfied and supported, they are well positioned to contribute to a loving, comfortable home environment for elders and individuals living with disabilities. Peer mentoring is a relatively easy-to-implement, high-impact intervention to support a healthy organizational culture.