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Executive Director’s Message

You are receiving the very first edition of our new agency newsletter, a new and different way for you to learn about what’s happening in and around the organization as well as to get to know your colleagues, old and new, a little better!

One of the most enjoyable parts of my job over the past couple of months has been meeting virtually with the various program and staff teams at Lumenus. I haven’t yet completed my meetings but so far I’ve had the pleasure to meet with the following staff teams, as of the date of writing this:

  • Autism team at McNicoll and Lesmill sites
  • Path live-in treatment
  • Merge, Visions, Valta, Osler, Kenton, and Tess day treatment programs
  • Griffin Community Support Network (GCSN)
  • Special Needs Team (SNT)
  • Organizational Excellence Dept.
  • Corporate Services
  • Richard Kalesky live-in treatment
  • HR

It’s been so great to meet staff and connect names to faces! Staff have shared their experiences including the challenges and stresses of working onsite and in-person during the pandemic; the challenges of keeping up with ever-changing COVID safety protocols; the impact of lots of changes happening in general; challenges of four legacy ways of doing things and integrating these into one Lumenus way. Staff have also shared some really helpful ideas on how we can be doing things better, including:

  • Continue to enhance and advance our use of technology to provide client service and collect data and to support staff adequately in this area
  • Engage direct service staff to advise CERT re doability of new processes and protocols
  • Keep staff well informed of changes and plans via a variety of methods and to include staff in decision making whenever possible
  • Promote and support the mental health of staff
  • Ensure staff have access to the org. chart and staff directory; value to be able to see each other’s calendars for scheduling ease
  • Need for more admin support for all depts.
  • Create an inventory of all the services we provide
  • Committees and work groups with diverse membership are a good way to get to know colleagues

Once I have completed meeting with all the groups, I will summarize the ideas and let you know the plan for what we can address.

Thanks for your feedback!

In late 2020, multiple groups of staff in all roles, were invited to meet with our recently-hired communications consultant, Catherine Cameron, of CAMERON Communications. Catherine hosted several virtual ZOOM sessions to solicit feedback around internal communications (what’s working, what isn’t, how we might do better) and to learn what our team values most in workplace culture. This newsletter is one example of the communications practices we’ll be adopting over the coming months.

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What else can you look forward to?

  • Information (updated program, service and contact details to help you access information on programs and services on behalf of clients.
  • More frequent, but shorter Town Halls on a variety of topics (pick the sessions that apply to you) and more time for questions and answers.
  • Opportunities to connect with the senior team who are keen to hear from and interact with you.
  • Opportunities to be social; to recognize one another; and to have a little fun as we move through the pandemic together.
  • More streamlined communication – hopefully fewer but more relevant emails and updates delivered to your inbox – some by video.
  • A commitment to creating an employee intranet – though this will still take several months.
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