Author: KolencK

Early on in my career, I got a piece of advice from a mentor of mine. He said to me: “Never stop asking questions; always be curious. Being curious will help you move forward and to think differently”. His words have stayed with me, and over the years I have come to realize how good his advice was.

Curiosity is a great thing to have. It keeps us moving forward and developing. It leads us down new paths and opens new doors. It opens up new possibilities. In fact, Albert Einstein even said “the important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing”.

Guided by Vision 2020, we have been on a journey towards organizational excellence that has helped us ask many questions about what we can do to enhance the lives of our residents, support our families, volunteers and our staff. Through this process, we have had the opportunity to try new things, and to look at what we do in a different way.

Being curious and asking questions has helped us achieve many great things of which we should all be proud. Whether it be the introduction of our Service Excellence Program, the introduction of new technologies, changing care processes through quality improvement initiatives, or the planning of our new Bethany Riverview Care Centre, to name a few, curiosity has been an important attribute in helping us live into our mission of Creating Caring Communities.

Thank you for all that you do every day. I encourage you to keep asking questions, keep an open mind and never lose your curiosity!

As always, I welcome any ideas or suggestions you may have. Please send them to me directly at nancy.hughes@bethanyseniors.com.

Kind regards,

– Nancy

Recognized as one of Alberta’s Top Employers

It gives me great pleasure to announce that Bethany Care Society has been acknowledged yet again as one of Alberta’s Top Employers! This makes 11 years running that we have received this special designation that recognizes Bethany as an industry leader in offering exceptional places to work.

Being awarded Top Employer is a distinction bestowed on only 70 organizations across the province each year. It is an affirmation of our organization’s efforts to attract and retain the best of the best talent. More specifically, it acknowledges the dedicated professionals within Bethany who bring life to our mission, vision and values every day.

Being recognized as one of Alberta’s Top Employers would not be possible without each of you, the exceptional People of Bethany. In this spirit, we will help fuel this celebration in upcoming weeks to acknowledge our success and help remind all of us that we work in one of the best places in the province because of our collective effort.

We all have an understanding of what makes Bethany Care Society great, but here are just a few of the reasons why we were selected as one of Alberta’s Top Employers (2018):

• Bethany partners with a number of post-secondary institutions in order to reach out to the next generation — in the past year, the organization helped over 300 students complete clinical practicums in a variety of fields, including nursing, occupational and physical therapy, and social work.
• Bethany invests in the development of its workforce, offering tuition subsidies for courses taken at outside institutions (up to $1,000 per year) as well as subsidies for professional accreditation.
• Bethany supports new mothers with maternity leave top-up payments of up to 100% of salary for up to six weeks.

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for all your hard work and dedication within Bethany this past year. Congratulations on your outstanding success!

Kind regards,

– Jennifer McCue

Over the last few months, I have had the pleasure of meeting many great, hardworking team members at our Bethany care sites. Getting to know these dedicated individuals – and seeing them in action caring for our venerable residents – renews my enthusiasm and redoubles my positive energy each day I walk through Bethany’s doors.

Since starting at Bethany, I’ve learned so very much about the organization’s exceptional staff. I’ve observed how everyone tends to roll up their collective sleeves to make life better for all our residents. These attributes of hard work, dedication, commitment and determination are what I was anticipating at Bethany, and I’m glad to say that all my expectations have been exceeded.

My hope is that, in the months and years ahead, my personal contribution will be similarly positive, and will help Bethany continue its essential mission of Creating Caring Communities.

My door is always open, and I encourage any and all ideas, suggestions and questions. Please feel free to send them to me directly at spencer.harmer@bethanyseniors.com.

All the best,

– Spencer

There’s something in the air!

For the last 3 years, Vision 2020 has been guiding Bethany towards organizational excellence. Together we have been on a journey to redefine how we care for our residents, their families, our volunteers and each other. We have enjoyed meeting the “People of Bethany” and we have learned to live into our Standards for Service Excellence. It has been quite a journey.

Over the last several weeks I have been touring people through some of our Bethany sites. I am so proud to show them the great work that goes on at each site every day. It doesn’t matter the age of the building or the community we are in, the experience has been the same.

Today, my message is simple. Thank you for coming on this journey with us. Thank you for greeting our guests with a smile as we tour your site. Thank you for taking pride in your workplace and our residents’ homes by making sure areas are clean and clutter free. Thank you for your kindness to our residents, families, volunteers and each other.

Everywhere I turn, I see your commitment to Service Excellence. I cannot express how grateful I am – and how exciting it is – to be part of our collective journey to take Bethany from good to great!! There really is something in the air…and it’s pretty amazing! Thank you.

As always, I welcome your feedback.

Kind regards,

– Jennifer

Last weekend my 8-year-old son and I embarked on a project together. He is a budding artist and we had a new batch of un-stretched canvases that were sitting in the corner of our basement. After a quick trip to our local hardware store to buy some lumber, we set to work measuring and cutting and nailing together the wooden frames. After stretching the canvases tight we set about finding wall space to display his creations in our home. It was fun to hear the names he has assigned to each work or why he did what he did when creating his masterpieces. And it brings a smile to my face to see his creative expression as I move from room to room.

With the launch of the new Bethany Service Excellence Recognition Awards, I hope you too will tell your stories of the great work you and your colleagues are doing. For ours is the work of creating masterpieces of care for those we serve. By recognizing our “care artists” in a formal way we all can celebrate how these acts of living our mission, service excellence, engaging families as partners in care, innovation, and leadership come to life across our sites. Please take some time before March 5 to look around you for excellence and then nominate your co-workers for one of our annual awards. You can find all the details Here.

Blessings,

– Daranne

Unlike previous years, Bethany will NOT be mailing out printed copies of T4/T4A tax slips. Please make sure you print your own copies of these slips from the Employee Self Service Portal.

Your 2017 T4/T4A tax slips are now online via the Employee Self Service Portal, saved in the same place as your pay slips. These tax slips can be accessed either at work or from home.

Please note that if you have changed your employment status during the year (full-time, part-time, or casual) you will receive a T4 for each status. If you have multiple T4s, they will all be saved in a single PDF file called “T4 2017.”

An electronic T4/T4A is an environmentally friendly solution that eliminates lost or stolen personal information and significantly reduces the risk of identity theft. Your information can be accessed 24/7 from work or home. Your electronic T4/T4A will remain online, secure, and accessible.

How will I access my T4/T4A tax slips?

To access your T4/T4a tax slips from a computer within the Bethany network, Click Here.
To access your T4/T4A tax slips from a computer at home or outside the Bethany network, Click Here.

At Bethany, we action our values each and every day. Now it’s time we recognize one another for our “best of the best” efforts!

Our new Service Excellence Recognition Awards program lets us acknowledge the very best efforts from across Bethany! Efforts that soar far above the average, taking our people-centered work to brand new heights. By nominating your most excellent co-worker(s), you validate their best efforts to champion our Standards for Service Excellence.

Click Here to learn more and nominate a colleague.

Join us in celebrating Bethany’s “best of the best” Service Excellence! And hurry…your opportunity to nominate closes March 5!

As I write this message to you late on Friday afternoon, my thoughts turn to the last few days and to a couple of things in particular – first, how cold it has been this past week, and second how much snow has fallen around our homes and Bethany’s buildings, as well as on the roads in between.

In the almost four decades I have lived in Alberta, I can think of only three other times when Calgary had such a large snowfall. One was in the early 1980s when there was a fierce snow fall in the north end of Calgary (and, as my colleagues of the time delighted in telling everyone, no snow in south Calgary); the St. Patrick’s Day snow storm in the late 1990s; and the September 2014 snow storm when so many of Calgary’s trees were damaged, some irreparably.

I believe that one of the measures of a person’s character is shown by how they react to an emergency, such as the large snow fall we had this past week. I am very proud to report that so many of the People of Bethany that I spoke to last week demonstrated the wonderful quality of resilience in making sure they were at work to meet the requirements of their roles. For some, that meant leaving earlier from home to get to work on time; while for others, it meant taking public transit in favour of driving themselves, or having someone else give them a lift. As well, some of our scheduled work had to be re-arranged to make sure that services to our residents, tenants and other clients were not impacted by the cold and snow.

Thank you to all of you who demonstrated resilience, in your own way, to continue fulfilling Bethany’s mission of ‘Creating Caring Communities’.

As always, I welcome ideas, suggestions and any questions that you may have.  Please feel free to send them to me at alasdair.smith@bethanyseniors.com.

Take care,

– Alasdair

As many of you may know, I am a huge NFL fan. February 4 was Super Bowl Sunday, and my beloved New England Patriots were in the championship game taking on the “underdog” Philadelphia Eagles. It was a great game of football, and in the end, the underdogs came out on top. On Monday morning, I had a steady stream of people coming to my office offering commiserations for my team’s loss. Interestingly, I am not commiserating. Quite the opposite. Great teams competed and the best team on the day won.

I was inspired by Philly’s story. When their star quarterback suffered a season ending injury, the coach’s son found a picture of Coach Pederson taken when he was back up quarterback with the Green Bay Packers years ago, and it became Coach Pederson’s mantra to the team throughout the playoffs: “An individual can make a difference. A team can make a miracle”.

These words are very relevant for all of us at Bethany. I am inspired every day by the great team work and commitment to providing outstanding service to those we serve. Together, we do great work, and we all should be proud of everything we do at Bethany. Football games come and go, but Bethany’s mission of Creating Caring Communities will live on forever.

If you have any questions, or would simply like to share your ideas, please contact me directly at lisa.watson@bethanyseniors.com.

Kindest regards,

– Lisa