Category: News

I feel very privileged to be filling the role of Acting Executive Director, Foundation at this exciting time for Bethany. Our job in the Foundation is to connect donors and their giving to the great work that all of you do every day in service to Bethany residents and families. While a big part of our focus right now is on completing a $5 million capital campaign for Riverview, we also have the honour of talking to donors every day who care deeply about the Bethany site or program that has touched their life.

People often say “It must be tough out there for fundraising these days.” In many ways it is. The changing nature of our economy in Alberta has impacted everyone, including our donors. Probably like most of you, Bethany donors receive lots of requests for donations from many different organizations. My mailbox at home seems to have an ‘ask’ in it every day. It has become more important than ever for us to help our donors see that the dollars they give to Bethany are spent wisely and really make a difference to the lives of the people and communities they care about.

What gives me great optimism about fundraising these days is that you – our People of Bethany – are the secret ingredient that helps our organization rise to the top of the list when donors are thinking about where to make their donation. Whether you’re bringing your expertise to help us talk to donors about a particular program or need, greeting a donor with a smile as we tour through your site, or letting them get a glimpse of your kind, compassionate care in action…you’re bringing Bethany’s mission to life for our donors – thank you!

With appreciation,

– Gail

This past weekend, around the world people gathered to celebrate the mystery of resurrection, a promise of light in darkness and new life that rises out of death. While Easter marks this promise in a formal way, at Bethany we experience and contribute to how this happens in people’s lives every day.

In your compassionate care, you shape how our residents experience life. You honour them and help them heal from the losses they experience with aging. You bring light to their darkness and give them meaning to fill their days. This can be challenging work, and yet done with good intention and skill, can be truly transformative for the residents in our care and the loved ones who support them.

As you care for our residents, it is my hope that you also experience the promise of new life in your own lives. May your spirits be lifted when weighed down and your deep hopes realized. May you be filled with encouragement, sharing your passion and gifts with the world so that others would be buoyed by your presence.

Blessings,

– Daranne

Recently, many Bethany staff members have been immersed in gathering information, over the past several weeks, to finalize the business plan and prepare the budgets that allocate the resources necessary for us all to do our important work for the residents and tenants we serve. Bethany’s Business Plan and Operating and Capital Budgets will be presented this week to the Board of Trustees for approval. Our organization, however, is not unique. After similar processes, in February, the Federal Budget was announced by the Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, and the Provincial Budget was announced by the Provincial Treasurer, Joe Ceci, just last week.

Although budget preparation may seem far removed from much of the work done by many of the People of Bethany, I was pleased, when I reviewed the Bethany Standards for Service Excellence just how many of those standards played a central and important role in the work that was performed, not only by the Finance Team, who summarized the information, but also by the many leaders throughout Bethany who contributed to the information gathering and analysis that helped enhance the quality of the budget report.

I would like to thank all of the staff who were involved for their significant contributions of information, and for the positive ways in which they completed their tasks – collaborating across many sites and departments, treating others with respect, honoring the diversity that is evident across all sites and programs, and above all taking pride in always identifying our current and future residents and tenants as the primary beneficiaries of the work we do.

Thank you to all of you who contributed – in large or small ways, directly or indirectly – in the preparation of the Business Plan and Operating and Capital Budgets for the next fiscal year, commencing in April. This example of great teamwork will enable Bethany to enter its new year with confidence and allow us all 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 we approach the last few weeks of Bethany’s fiscal year, I think it’s important to reflect back and recognize our many great achievements, and to celebrate our successes. From my perspective, the greatest organizational achievement is the positive impact on our culture resulting from the launch of WAVE – our Service Excellence program. During this fiscal year, we have embarked on Performance Management, Leadership Development, Standards for Service Excellence and Recognition – our 4 pillars of WAVE.

I am excited to hear about the great conversations happening between leaders and employees across Bethany through performance and coaching conversations, focusing on everyone’s growth and development. Embedded within performance management are our Standards for Service Excellence – the critical behaviours aligned with our core values that define how all Bethany employees are expected to show up to work each day and work effectively together in service of our residents, families, tenants and each other. 45 of our top leaders recently completed the first cohort of our Leadership Program, and we are committed to continuing the program and ensuring all leaders have the skills and knowledge necessary to support their employees. The success of our recently launched Recognition Awards program has exceeded all expectations, with so many nominations across the organization, including peer to peer recognition.

With the introduction of WAVE and our culture of Service Excellence, I have reflected on my career and the different organizational cultures that I have worked in. As a young female lawyer in a male dominated firm, you were rewarded for competing against your colleagues, resulting in a culture in which each person was concerned with their own success, often at the detriment of their co-workers. I also had the misfortune to work for an organization in which having a positive and friendly attitude was discouraged, and I was actually asked to stop smiling and “what do you have to smile about?” Needless to say, I didn’t stay there long. For me, it is critically important that my values are aligned with an organization’s values, and this alignment of core values were critical factors in my decision to work at Bethany.

To say that “We Action our Values Everyday” is not just a written statement on a poster, we are truly living into and embracing WAVE and our core values. Our success as an organization continues to be recognized, and I am so proud that Bethany was again recognized as one of Alberta’s Top Employer’s, making it 11 years in a row. Congratulations Bethany, and keep up the tremendous work!

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

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