All I want for Christ­mas is “your voice at the admin­is­tra­tive table” ….to ask for change when oth­er hos­pi­tal staff treat us in ways that some­times feels dis­re­spect­ful and maybe even demean­ing. Those changes might include clean­ing up after their spills, actu­al­ly plac­ing waste in waste recep­ta­cles, pour­ing left­over drinks down the drain instead of dump­ing liq­uids in trash cans, and pick­ing up dropped items from the floor just as they would do in their own homes. Could we also do a demo dis­charge clean­ing for nurs­ing staff so they bet­ter under­stand why we can’t com­plete a dis­charge in ten min­utes (when we need thir­ty)?

All I want for Christ­mas is “ade­quate depart­ment staffing”…could you fill the open posi­tions faster and devel­op a sys­tem so that you have enough replace­ments for sick calls and vaca­tions? Please don’t ask me to do “a favor” by com­plet­ing two assign­ments instead of one when the depart­ment is under­staffed and then per­form qual­i­ty inspec­tions in my area the fol­low­ing day. Also, could we help you inter­view poten­tial EVS work­ers before you hire them?… You already know that we inter­view them on their first day… and we can pret­ty quick­ly tell if they will “team well, clean well and move well”… we think we can help you hire the best EVS staff. Could you also show your appre­ci­a­tion for your good peo­ple… by rec­og­niz­ing our con­sis­tent, prob­lem-free work, our sol­id atten­dance, our acci­dent free records and our good ideas for the depart­ment in ways that mat­ter to us?

All I want for Christ­mas is “a fair work assign­ment”! Could you divide the work areas equal­ly giv­en the vari­ety of areas we serve? Some­times it feels like those of us who work faster are assigned more work and those who “take their sweet time” have it eas­i­er. We can tell you which assign­ments are over­loaded and which ones are eas­i­er. We want you to even the score by divid­ing the work as equal­ly as you can and cre­at­ing an atmos­phere where we can ask for and receive help on the busy days. We want you to adjust the work­load accord­ing the cen­sus so that you staff up when the cen­sus is high or dis­charges are heavy.

All I want for Christ­mas is “up-to-date and rel­e­vant tech­nol­o­gy” – we want you to buy the best clean­ing equip­ment, with our input please, so that oper­at­ing and clean­ing the machine and under­stand­ing its size, weight, and acces­sories etc. make sense for us. We are hop­ing that you have a plan to replace worn out machines before they actu­al­ly stop work­ing for good. We also want you to have good tech­nol­o­gy for com­mu­ni­cat­ing. We work all over the cam­pus and we are often asked to report room sta­tus, task com­ple­tion or our loca­tion, as well as respond to ser­vice calls. Using a pager that requires us to find a free desk phone some­where in the facil­i­ty with­out both­er­ing nurs­es or oth­er hos­pi­tal staff is very dif­fi­cult and feels like a waste of time. Could you give us cell phones so we can text you?

All I want for Christ­mas is “an ample sup­ply of sup­plies”- we real­ly want an ample sup­ply of mop heads and clean­ing cloths. The short­age of these items sends a mixed mes­sage about the qual­i­ty of ser­vices you want us to pro­vide. We want to have the best chem­i­cals, not the cheap­est chem­i­cals. Could you let us try dis­pensers and prod­ucts before you buy them? We can tell you which ones work the best and smell the best. We also want the prod­ucts we dis­trib­ute, such as the paper, plas­tic and hand soap prod­ucts to be of good qual­i­ty… rip free plas­tic lin­ers, qual­i­ty paper tow­els and dis­pensers, excel­lent soap dis­pensers with a soap peo­ple will enjoy using.
Thanks for lis­ten­ing and Hap­py Hol­i­days!

Cindy E. Paget, M.A., CHESP, SPHR has worked with Smart Facil­i­ty Soft­ware (for­mer­ly ESCt) and in health­care EVS and HR lead­er­ship roles for more than 25 years. For more infor­ma­tion about Envi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices soft­ware prod­ucts or con­sult­ing for your facil­i­ty, please call 800–260-8665.