Aspiring entrepreneurs and employers can learn to excel in business by attending the Prism Awards banquet later this month.

The Prisms recognize the hallmarks of a well-run organization: teamwork, product quality, customer service, creating opportunity, community involvement, job creation, innovation, safety and providing competitive employee benefits.

This year, the 18th annual awards will honor 20 nominees (See story on Page 6). Here are some best practices from this year’s class:

Teamwork: Good communication is the key to teamwork. That means an open door policy for management, team meetings and a way for employees to make suggestions. Heartland of Oregon, an 110-bed skilled nursing facility, holds management meetings daily, department meetings monthly, individual meetings every other month with each employee to discuss continuous improvement and a corporate “Care Line” available 24/7 to air staff concerns not being addressed.

S & D Capital, an Oregon financial planning firm, promotes teamwork by offering quarterly bonuses based on meeting performance goals.

Product Quality:  Customer feedback systems and surveys help achieve high product quality. One such survey conducted two years ago by the State of Ohio and Federal Inspectors challenged the staff at The Little Sisters of The Poor’s Sacred Heart Nursing Home in Oregon. A corrective action plan was immediately implemented and in 2010 the home scored a 97 percent satisfaction rate in the annual State of Ohio Nursing Home Family Satisfaction Survey. The score placed the home among the top 12 in the state.

Lutheran Homes Society, which has been serving Northwest Ohio for 151 years with senior housing and community services, has a quality assurance program that includes review of resident files, resident interviews and quarterly site visits.

Customer Service: The German-American Festival is the oldest and largest ethnic festival in the Toledo area. Attendance has nearly doubled in the last few years creating an economic impact in the Oregon community of $1.5 million.

You couldn’t host this large scale festival for 45 years unless you were dedicated to excellent customer service. The G-A-F is known region wide for its quality food, entertainment and its beautiful oak shaded site. The seven organizations that host the festival also listen to their customers by soliciting comments on their websites and Facebook sites. The Facebook sites have more than 2,000 members.

The organizers have adopted such customer friendly innovations as these: providing “boots” to drink from, taking 50,000 beer cups out of the garbage stream, credit card sales and bus transportation to and from the festival.

Creating Opportunity: Last year, Red and Paulette Seckinger owners of Jack’s Superette in Reno Beach, expanded its deer department. The move increased the number of deer the store processes from 50 a year to more than 200.

Serenity Farm, located in Luckey, partners with local colleges to increase its pool of volunteers. The partnership provides students with experience in their career path and allows Serenity Farm to provide animal-assisted therapeutic services to children and adults with disabilities.

Community Involvement: Giving back to the community supporting you is socially responsible and creates goodwill. Most Prism nominees excel in this category. Many came to the aid of the victims of the June 5th tornado which killed seven and destroyed Lake High School. Luckies Barn & Grill in Oregon, raised more than $4,000 at a benefit dinner. The dinner spawned a region-wide effort among other restaurants and they raised an additional $17,000. Luckies also delivered food to local fire stations during the clean-up effort.

Mainstreet Church in Walbridge dispatched more than 1,000 volunteers to provide clean-up and relief assistance and became a distribution center for supplies, clothes and financial assistance. The church has also opened its auditorium to Lake High School for its concerts, awards ceremonies and plays.

Adams Screen Printing of Millbury partnered with a number of local businesses for a t-shirt drive which raised more than $8,000.

Job Creation: Job creation is usually the culmination of doing everything right. Norplas, which has a continuous improvement process, has secured additional contracts within the automotive industry to expand its Northwood plant. Employment increased from 485 in mid-2010 to 592 today. The company expects adding 300 more jobs in the next few years.

Innovation:  Mercy St. Charles Hospital won a Best Practice Prism Award in 2008 for its effort to recycle 25 percent of its 175 tons of waste. In 2010, the hospital increased that to 35 percent by adopting electronic payroll, donating furniture and medical equipment to schools and organizations for reuse and recycling landscaping and co-mingled waste.

The hospital also installed four live roofs, roofs that use soil and plants as a protective shield from the elements. The roofs reduce air-conditioning and heating costs and are mentally and physically restorative for patients and staff.

Simply Green Lawn Services, a two-year-old Oregon landscaping company, uses phosphorous-free fertilizer to help combat the toxic algae problem in Lake Erie.

Safety: Jeffers Crane, an Oregon company with 80 employees, provides safety and CPR training to meet OSHA standards. It has not had a lost-time accident in three years.

Employee Benefits: In addition to health care, vacation and retirement plans, good companies make the workplace a fun place to alleviate stress. Occupational Care Consultants, an Oregon provider of occupational medicine services, provides lunch on extremely busy days, gives employees thank you cards, allows jeans on Fridays, provides four hours of paid time off on a monthly basis in addition to vacation time, celebrates employee birthdays with gift cards, and gives employees a bonus on Thanksgiving.

OCC also ran a Biggest Loser contest to promote health and wellness and gave a $250 prize to the final winner.

Comment at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . To reserve a seat at the March 23rd banquet to be held at Sunrise Park & Banquet Center, call Sarah at 419-693-5580.

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