Norton Audubon Hospital’s nutrition department featured in management book

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (April 29, 2008): The food and nutrition services department at Norton Audubon Hospital has been featured in a new management book titled “The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up” by Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher. Chapter 4 of the book describes how the department’s customer courtesy scores rose from a 1 percent approval rating to the 99th percentile under the direction of Michael Jewellson during his first six months on the job. The department’s scores also improved significantly in areas of food quality, employee satisfaction and other criteria during the same period.

Jewellson said the first step in improving the scores was to build respect.

“We made a conscious effort to be positive with everything,” the book quotes Jewellson as saying. “We started showing each and everyone respect, listening to them, thanking them. And we started stressing that we should have fun at work.”

Jewellson, who is an employee of Morrison Healthcare Food Services, a Norton Healthcare contractor, allows his employees to occasionally dress in costume and play jokes on one another and on him.

 “The Levity Effect” quotes Jewellson as saying, “We [take] courteous service very seriously, but everything else [has] to be fun.”

Another tactic Jewellson employs is to turn his attention to his high-performing employees and recognize them in meetings for the good things they do. “We shifted our focus from the complainers to the high performers,” he is quoted as saying. “When they started getting respect for what they’d done, it changed the mind-set of what everyone was doing.”