At Right at Home, Honesty is Always Emphasized

Honesty is The Best Policy. Always.

At Right at Home, Honesty is always emphasized.  Our new-hire orientations are kicked off with an intro on core values, and “Honesty” is the first value discussed.  Without Honesty, there cannot be trust. That’s true of any relationship.  If something happens with a client and we do not make sure their family is aware — they will lose trust in us. If a caregiver lies about a situation with a client — we lose trust in the caregiver.  Or, if a caregiver does not make us aware of an incident and we later find out — some trust is lost in that caregiver. Being Honest can also include the error-of-omission in not telling someone what happened.

During our interview process, we ask our prospective caregivers if they can tell us a time when they demonstrated honesty.  Since honesty means you are truthful, how does one “demonstrate” being truthful? It would be easy to tell a story of dishonesty, but demonstrating honesty when you DID NOT deceive someone is hard to do.

Most recently an incident occurred where honesty was demonstrated by one of our caregivers.  The caregiver called and said she felt guilty because an emergency type situation in her personal life had come up and the caregiver was forced to be on her phone for a short period of time to handle the situation while caring for her client.  She told us she felt she shortchanged the client by spending time on the phone.  The caregiver had always performed exceptionally in the past. Always on time and always kept us informed of what was going with her clients. The caregiver was also known for receiving excellent reviews from clients.  We thanked her for her confession and let her know that occasionally things will happen. 

Later that day, we received a call from a family member of the client.  The client had a camera system installed and told us that the caregiver appeared to be spending an excessive amount of time on the phone during that same day in question.  We were able to relay to the client that the caregiver informed us she had an emergency arise and had to handle it.  The client was very impressed that our caregiver had already confessed the situation to us.

To add a bit of humor to this situation, when we told the caregiver that the client called and informed us that she had a camera system installed, our caregiver said, “Oh, no!”  When queried as to her concern, the caregiver told us that her client might have seen her pick her nose. Now that’s honesty!