Written by Scott Miller
In The Amazing Adventures of Hugo & Val, retired superheroes take their grandkids on inspiring, memory-packed escapades. Introduced in the Fall 2019 issue of Destination Magazine, the comic book style series is based upon the fact that the residents of Garden Spot are superheroes. They may have left their full-time careers behind, but they have not stopped living. They are putting all those professional and life skills to work as they are out changing the world, engaging and involving younger generations.
The residents are not the only superheroes at Garden Spot. Our employees are everyday superheroes! Drawing upon the superhero theme, Garden Spot is doing its best to celebrate the way our team members are going above and beyond to save the day during COVID-19.
On April 17th the human resources team launched the “Garden Spot: Everyday Heroes” campaign. In collaboration with the creative team, Human Resources created and released a colorful, superhero-style recognition reward card. It was distributed to all team members so anyone could celebrate and recognize the contributions of their team members or anyone working at Garden Spot. Each Monday and Wednesday a group of team members are recognized with a Boom! or a Bang! in traditional comic book fashion with our internal communications.
We wish we had all the great ideas but we don’t, so we are happy to borrow best practices and add Garden Spot pizazz to them. We saw many companies with yard signs and banners celebrating their employees so we extended the superhero-style theme, creating a larger banner at the screening tent and adding yard signs coming up the drive onto campus.
If I listed everything team members are doing to go above and beyond, that list would be long and impressive. It includes things like starting a no-cost day care program for team member children whose regular child care centers are closed (using all the proper precautions, of course). Taking extra shifts. Doing jobs in other departments. Volunteering for all sorts of odd hours. Revamping normal ways of doing things, for example: a widespread delivery program that includes everything from the take-out orders at our restaurants to delivering groceries dropped off at the entrance by family members and a comprehensive online grocery ordering system with Shady Maple. We are doing things we never imagined we would be doing six weeks ago.
In addition, Garden Spot has adapted or added team member recognition programs. A few examples include: temporarily replacing the monthly “Happy Birthday” sheet cakes in the employee lounges with delicious, individually wrapped Otis Spunkmeyer chocolate chip cookies, box lunches for all employees and a visit by the Auntie Anne’s pretzel truck, no charge of course.
All in all, like many other essential businesses, Garden Spot is doing its best to thank, congratulate and celebrate all our superhero team members. They really are “knocking it out of the galaxy” with all their superhero efforts!