Mary McKenna (DDS) and Jessica Elliot (Exec Chef) took the idea of the regional Jam Sessions and transformed it in to their own version here at the Moorings.
They have converted the traditional staff meetings for each department into a mini “Jam Session”. After Showtime, the cooks, health care staff, servers, and utility staff meets to “Jam” on several topics which include: upcoming events, scheduling, needs of the department, concerns the associates have, and most importantly ideas that the staff have to improve their area and the overall department. The team has created a “Jam Jar” as one means of capturing ideas when they are not available to listen directly to an idea. These jam jars may be placed in prime locations where there are several associates working at any given time (dish room, cooks area, server station, etc). To take things a step further, Mary and Jessica review the ideas that were placed in the Jam Jar from the previous week and discuss how they are implementing those ideas. This process gives the staff a sense of empowerment and has created an employee think tank. At the end of every jam session all the staff feels they have been heard simply because they are given a forum in which they can express thoughts, concerns and ideas.
