After reading this story I bet you will want to go to work for this company . . . or run your company this way.

Mark Ide is president of Ide Management Group, based in Greenfield, Indiana. Ide Management operates 31 skilled nursing facilities. Mike made the final presentation at the recent Marcus Evans Long Term Care CXO summit.  It was one of most inspiring presentation of the event.  It was a great way to close out the summit. It was  unfortunate that so many people had headed for home.

Crazy Good Treatment of Team Members

From the very beginning, Mark was committed to making each facility as autonomous as possible with the corporate office serving as a resource center rather than a compliance monitor.  To this end he decreed: no conference calls and no reports!  The company motto is “Residents First, Employees Always”.

The very best way to describe their approach to operating Skilled Nursing Facilities is to tell some stories.

The Drunk Nurse

One evening a nurse showed up for her shift clearly inebriated.  This was, and should have been, an “on the spot” fireable offense and this is exactly what happened.

The administrator realized that the nurse was too drunk to drive home safely so she drove the nurse home.  After helping this inebriated nurse into her home, the administrator looked in the refrigerator and it was completely empty.  The administrator drove to the store and bought a full refrigerator’s supply of food, returned to the nurse’s house and stocked the kitchen . . . . using the company credit card.

Afterward . . . . she called Mark and told him what she had done.  It was exactly what he would have wanted her to do. And she knew this because of the Ide corporate culture.

Going on a Mission Trip

Many of Ide’s team members participate in church sponsored mission trips.  Even though mission trips are frugal excursions, (I know because I have run a bunch of them), they are still expensive.  Every employee knows the corporate office will contribute every time.

Free Cars

Every skilled nursing facility struggles to control workers comp costs and there are lots of well-established tricks and techniques to control costs.  This has to be the coolest one.  Every time a facility goes 24 moths with no lost days every employee in that facility is entered into a drawing to win a free car . . . yes a new car.

In the past year Ide Management has given away 6 cars to dishwashers, CNA’a and others.   It turns out that this is a very cost effective way to control costs.  The savings: $1.6 million.  The cost: $200 thousand.

At their Christmas parties there are even more cars given away.

Driving this crazy management style is the idea that people work harder for people they like. Ide Management believes that every single staff member has the potential to grow, to get stronger in their career and even to advance beyond their current position.

Steve Moran

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