Spotlight on BAYADA’s Mentorship and Partnership Program (MaPP)

At BAYADA Home Health Care, we often talk about how The BAYADA Way is infused in everything we do. Our core values of compassion, excellence, and reliability remind us that our clients always come first, and that great employees and teams who Love What We Do are our greatest asset.

It only makes sense to invest in your greatest asset, which is why BAYADA was the first home care provider to offer nurses the opportunity to practice their skills in a clinical simulation lab. We’re also raising the bar in a number of other ways to foster employees’ professional development and career growth with a variety of training and educational programs such as nurse residency, specialization, and certification programs.

Since 2013, that list has included our Mentoring and Partnership Program (MaPP) which to-date has graduated over 500 mentors and 900 mentees (whom we call partners). MaPP was developed to provide ongoing support and guidance for new employees and for employees who are advancing on their career path, to ingrain The BAYADA Way culture, cultivate relationships between employees of short and long tenures, encourage professional growth and development, and build a positive pipeline of future leaders. Already, participation in MaPP has been shown to significantly improve employee retention—one of its stated program goals—by more than 10 percent.

The quality of this program earned BAYADA a 2017 LEAD Award—Leadership Excellence and Development—putting us sixth on a Top 15 list that includes Fortune 100 companies like FedEx and PwC. LEAD is an annual conference sponsored by HR.com, where human resources executives come together to share the latest insights and tools required to develop the best leaders. BAYADA has also earned a spot on the LEAD Award Winner’s Circle for 2018, however the rankings will not be available until February.

BAYADA employees Karen Dumm and Alexa Ciancia recently were paired up in MaPP for the latter half of 2017. Karen’s been with BAYADA for six and half years and has been volunteering as a mentor for almost three. As a director of regional business development, Karen was matched with Alexa to support her transition into a new role as associate director of BAYADA’s home health specialty practice in Forsyth County, North Carolina.

As associate director, Alexa oversees operations for the entire office, a promotion from her former position of client services manager (CSM). CSMs have crucial responsibilities such as scheduling caregivers and covering shifts—a challenging, very important job that ensures that clients receive the highest level of quality, uninterrupted care in accordance with their individualized care plans.

To paint a picture of what it’s like to be a mentor and partner in MaPP, we sat down with Karen and Alexa to ask about their experiences. Here is part of what they had to say.

Alexa:  I’ve been working here for two and a half years, and when I was client services manager, I had a different kind of relationship with my office colleagues—we were peers. Now I have a whole new set of responsibilities as associate director. I need to think about growing the business, and it’s a delicate balancing act to evolve and direct the same friends I used to work alongside.

I’m loving this new role though, and I think that’s in part to having Karen as a coach and sounding board. We had an immediate connection, and I think our personalities are pretty similar.

Karen: I wanted to get to know her better, because I could see that drive in Alexa. MaPP has been incredibly rewarding and enjoyable because it gives me the opportunity to connect with someone I wouldn’t ordinarily work with. Mentorship is a continuous learning process. It helps me with my own communication, and the whole process just keeps you transparent, and vulnerable sometimes, and focused on our mission to help people have a safe home life with comfort, independence, and dignity.

They had a formal mentorship program where I used to work, but they didn’t invest in it, and it didn’t have much of a structure or mission. BAYADA is very intentional about investing in our people. It’s built into the culture. I find that incredibly refreshing!

Alexa: That’s the perfect word—intentional. I feel like Karen and MaPP helped me develop more confidence and become very intentional with people and engagement, and being able to execute on that. She encourages and inspires me to do my best.

Karen: You do the same for me! The power of connecting with people can help you realize goals you never thought were possible. Whenever Alexa and I are at the same meeting or event now, we always seek each other out to check in and talk.

Alexa: To have this kind of energizing support network…it’s a great feeling.

Division Director of Employee Relations Sherri Pillet, a human resources executive at BAYADA Home Health Care, says, “The Mentoring and Partnership Program was developed to provide support to new office employees in the company to help them assimilate to BAYADA’s culture and embrace The BAYADA Way. Our mentors coach, inspire and encourage our new employees and feel good about helping them. The mentors themselves also develop through this relationship. Many directors have told us that of their staff who have mentored in the program, they have seen growth that has been a result of that participation.”