Not So Random Acts Of Kindness
Kelly Piccininni
Senior Director, HR Operations and Shared Services at Northside Hospital
One of the things I sometimes marvel at is how kind everyone at Northside is. It’s especially amazing to me when I consider how hard everyone works, and how much pressure many of us are under every day. After all, life and death situations come with the territory when you work in health care.
Recently, a group at our Forsyth campus came up with a way to keep the focus on kindness, no matter what else was going on. It was fun, true, but the underlying message was serious and important: Kindness is a choice, and we need to choose it consistently to keep it flowing.
The “Kindness Challenge” used a daily log that tracked simple acts of support or encouragement and used some cool prizes as an incentive. At one point, we set a goal to reach 10,000 acts of kindness and hit the mark before any of us thought could be possible.
Because we also look at kindness as a “superpower,” we created superheroes such as Captain Kindness, Kindness Woman and Kindness Girl, all of whom handed out KIND bars to deserving recipients.
The success of this campaign, and the fact it has continued and spread throughout our health system, showed all of us how important kindness in the workplace can be, especially in high-stress environments.
I am proud to work with colleagues who value compassion and kindness -- not only toward our patients but toward each other as well. It is just one of the many reasons Northside is an amazing place to work!
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