Tag Archive for: Employee Spotlight

Sam Morris likes to wear bright socks.

“Yellow, blue,” he says. “The brighter, the better.”

On this day, he is wearing dark socks emblazoned with multicolored stripes in horizontal and vertical patterns. With his bright socks and bright smile, he brings cheer to the workplace as a Homeland Center Certified Nursing Assistant.

Homeland’s corps of skilled, motivated CNAs is an essential element in providing quality care for residents. Through their training and certification, they learn to assist residents with daily tasks such as feeding and bathing, and they support the nursing staff with basic medical duties including taking vital signs.

Morris knew all about the role of CNAs in nursing care because his late mother was a CNA at Homeland for many years.

“She was one of the originals,” he said. She taught him that a CNA “helps out everybody that needs help. You have to be compassionate.”

Morris has been a CNA in nursing homes since 1999, and he finally joined Homeland in October 2015.

“I like the good attitude here,” he says. “Everybody is family-oriented. It’s more like family than a job.”

As a lead CNA in second-floor skilled care, Morris is responsible for promptly completing needed tasks and that all equipment is operating. It’s all toward the goal of “making sure that the resident is safe.”

In Homeland’s quest for constant improvements, a new system for assigning daily duties promotes increased teamwork among CNAs.

“It works better that way,” says Morris. “If you need help, your partner’s right there with you. You don’t have to run for help.”

Before being assigned permanently to second-floor skilled care, Morris floated where needed, so he got to know all the residents. He has helped with activities including bingo and outings, as well.

He appreciates the many chances that residents have to engage with each other and enjoy community outings. He likes talking to them about family, the weather, and the day’s activities coming up.

Morris has lived in Harrisburg since he was 4-years-old and graduated from John Harris High School in 1990. He is among the 40 percent of employees who live in Homeland’s surrounding neighborhoods, part of Homeland’s commitment to the city it has served since 1867.

He loves the short, convenient walk to work every day and the proximity to mouth-watering barbecue from nearby Broad Street Market or Camp Curtin BBQ Station. In his free time, he enjoys listening to music – Michael Jackson is a favorite – and getting together with his tight-knit family, including his two sisters and nieces and nephews.

Homeland helps CNAS maintain their certifications, with reminders every two years when they are up for renewal. Homeland, Morris says, is “a good place to be.” Even when days get frustrating or physically challenging, he keeps his focus.

“We’re here for the residents,” he says.

Roxane Hearn motivates Homeland’s staff to be their best!

Homeland Center CNA Symira McNeely was motivated to improve her health and appearance, but on the way to losing 45 pounds, her apparent lack of progress could get discouraging. That’s when Homeland Health and Wellness Director Roxane Hearn would draw from her arsenal of motivational tools.

“Roxane told me that it’s not always about what the scale says,” McNeely recalls now. “The scale may not be moving, but you might be healthier. She wants you to be happy. Happy and healthy.”

At Homeland Center, employee wellness is a linchpin in assuring that the staff caring for residents are vigorous, capable, and contented. Its unique approach calls on Hearn, a highly qualified coach with a Ph.D. in health psychology, to deliver programs and services that inspire Homeland staff to not only reshape their bodies but also manage the daily demands of staying healthy.

“Change is not easy,” says Hearn. “Working as a health coach, I take the employees through that process and support them and coach them. I guide them along the way when they relapse and keep them on track when they’re maintaining.”

With employees busy work days, Hearn can turn a few hallway moments into a personalized health consultation. Plus, none of her wellness initiatives are cookie-cutter. She loves Homeland because “they trust me and give me top-down support. I’ll pitch ideas. They give their ideas, and we come up with something that fits the employees.”

Hearn’s customized initiatives include:

• Weight loss and wellness: Weight loss contests and cash awards for taking wellness actions provide encouragement year-round.
• Healthy eating: Healthy soup cook-offs and “employee farmers market,” when staffers bring fruit and veggie snacks for all to share, encourage recipe-sharing and better eating.
• Individualized wellness consultations and regular screenings: Hearn helps employees make doctor’s appointments, advocates for changes when medications are ineffective, and reviews lab reports one-on-one. She shares the results of her screenings with physicians’ offices and monitors staffers to make sure their medications are effective. It’s all meant to assure that important health tasks, like making a doctor’s appointment or changing ineffective medications, don’t get lost in the daily rush of work and home responsibilities.
• Fitness: Hearn conducts personal training consultations, meets employees in gyms, leads workout walks in parks, and runs fitness boot camps. McNeely learned from Hearn about the discount, all-access fitness-center memberships offered through Homeland’s health insurance, and now she’s a gym devotee, doing Tai Bo, Zumba, and just about anything else at gyms throughout the area.
• Leveraging technology: Texting is Hearn’s “priceless tool of engagement,” allowing her to share photos of healthy food and send messages of encouragement – no matter how crazy the recipient’s schedule. She also conducts health coaching by phone and email with employees who work offsite, and she uses social media engagement to build relationships and understand staffers’ goals.

McNeely loves working at Homeland, where workplace “is like a family.” She knows that her healthier lifestyle has improved her job performance.

“Residents definitely noticed when I was going through the changes,” she says. “My energy level is through the sky. They say, ‘You’re not tired yet?’”

McNeely once never drank water, but now she leads the way in encouraging coworkers to drink their water. That’s what Hearn is striving for — to empower Homeland staff to take charge of wellness among themselves. It’s all in pursuit of sustaining excellent care provided by healthy, happy staff.

“The residents love the employees,” Hearn says. “They like to see them cheery and happy. It’s hard to be that all the time, but in this particular line of business, you have to be. We are working in their home. If I can teach employees to cope with stress and how to park it at the door, it means a safer environment and happier residents.”

Intern Allison Lawruk helps create Homeland’s home-like feel.

What is the role of a social worker in a retirement community? At Homeland Center, Allison Lawruk has participated in family planning meetings, organized current-events discussion groups, visited residents to check on their needs, and searched for residents’ lost shoes and hats.

In short, the social worker’s role is “making sure that residents have a home that’s really a home,” says Lawruk.

“I like interacting with families as well as the residents themselves,’’ she says. “You never know what is going to come up. People come to the table with such different ideas of what should happen and what might happen, and it’s neat to come to a resolution.”

Lawruk is pursuing a master’s degree in social work from Catholic University. As an intern in Homeland’s Social Services Office, she is learning how social work applies in an elder-care setting.

Intern Allison Lawruk helps create Homeland’s home-like feel.

Lawruk was once a high school counselor whose career change was inspired by a social worker colleague who interacted with students and families in “diverse, interesting ways.” She started studying social work while living in Bethesda, MD, and continued her education online after she and her husband, Jim, moved to Camp Hill with their daughters, now 9 and 3.

At Homeland, Lawruk’s duties are as varied as she had hoped – assessing residents’ well-being, resolving any difficulties that residents encounter, and acting as a liaison between families and staff.

She even got the green light from Homeland to convene a weekly news discussion group, where residents share their views on hot topics while also making friendships. One reluctant resident accepted Lawruk’s personal invitation to attend, “and he ended up leading the conversation and brought really good insights that we wouldn’t have had. It was beneficial for him and the group, and at the end, he said he would be back next week. That’s huge because a real issue with older people is isolation.”

A variety of influences inspired Lawruk to work with seniors, including her 108-year-old grandmother living in a care facility in upstate New York. She also once worked at a women’s magazine that focused on “not getting older, even though it’s a process that all of us go through.”

Seniors, she says, shouldn’t be lumped together as one homogenous group but seen as individuals with their own stories.

Lawruk and her husband are avid runners. She also leads a Walking with Purpose women’s group at a local Catholic church, where members discuss “ways that their Catholic faith contributes to their lives.” Her inspiration is St. Therese of Lisieux, the revered saint whose “little way” to spirituality is still celebrated today.

“If I can do small things every day and make someone’s life a little better, that’s a lot more achievable and realistic and sustaining than trying to do big things,” says Lawruk. “I’m not going to change anyone’s life, but I can make it a little better.

At Homeland, Lawruk likes the “committed and friendly” staff. Plus, the residents “are committed to their home. There’s a residents’ council, and a lot of them feel like this is their home, and they’re emotionally invested in making it better. They have really good ideas.”

After completing her master’s degree in 2018, Lawruk hopes to continue working with the elderly. Her time with Homeland has provided valuable experience in the role of social workers among seniors and their families.

“I think I’ve made a small difference,” she says, “which I’m happy with.”