As a busy practice administrator at Capital Otolaryngology in Austin, TX, Sangita Lakhia has a difficult time keeping track of the “special days” – admin assistants week, nurses day, sleep tech day, surgical tech week, and so forth.
“I also felt bad giving a gift or breakfast to just one department and not others,” she tells Medical Office Manager.
So Lakhia decided to drop the Hallmark appointed days and have a CAPOTO Staff Appreciation Week.
“I hyped it up the weeks leading up to it to get everyone excited,” she says.
Here’s what the week involved.
For the first four days of the week, Lakhia gave staff a little something, like breakfast, ice cream, cookies, and lunch. During the week, she had a raffle box placed by the goodies, telling everyone to enter the raffle by writing what they love the most about working at CAPOTO. On the final day, she drew a name each hour and emailed everyone what that person said they loved about working at CAPOTO and the prize they were awarded.
“The prizes were $50 to $100 gift cards from different places that I got for free from our business credit card points,” Lakhia explains.
What was the reaction to CAPOTO Staff Appreciation Week, and the raffle in particular? “The staff loved it,” Lakhia says. “Everyone was excited about who was going to win next and what they got.”
She says that long emails were sent even the week after from staff stating why they loved their coworkers, physicians, supervisors, and patients.
“Morale is always pretty good here,” says Lakhia, “but this took it to whole new level.”
Medical Office Manager wants to send you $100. Tell us how you solved a problem, implemented a successful program – or share any idea we can use in our Reader Tips column and we’ll send you $100. Contact catherine@plainlanguagemedia.com
