Happy Valentine’s Day! ~ Voice Of The Township
As another Valentine’s Day rolls around we are reminded to celebrate the warm relationships we have in our lives. We often think of our closest loved ones around this time, but in fact, it’s good to remember that all of our interactions with other people have the potential to enrich our lives. In a recent Emergency Preparedness Training presented here at the Wayne Township Trustee Office, former police officer Wayne Kelly quoted statistics that many of us spend as much time with our co-workers as we do with our own household family members. Because of that it pays dividends to have good, solid relationships with the people we are spending so much time with.
Since Trustee Austin Knox took office in January of 2020 he has been particularly focused on building a team spirit here at WTTO. Coming from a sports background he realizes that operating as a team encourages members to provide each other with not only practical assistance in our day-to-day work, but also moral support, friendship and sometimes just a listening ear when that is what’s needed.
With that in mind, this winter Trustee Knox and Deputy Dominique Dickey formed an in-house committee called Active Relations: Motivation and Morale, or ARMM, consisting of three staff members who all volunteered to serve: Executive Secretary Patsy Brewer, Township Accounting Clerk Michael Pfeiffer, and Front Desk Receptionist Shalonda Saunders.
At their first meeting, the committee discussed what would help the staff feel more a part of the mission of the trustee office, and several ideas came up. For one, it was decided to hold a quarterly team building activity and at the first one, coinciding with our annual Christmas gathering, they held the first annual WTTO Spelling Bee. Committee member Mike Pfeiffer was tasked with finding hard-to-spell technical terms (keeping it professional), and Communications Director SuzAnne Runge took the title, winning a certificate and a free lunch.
Patsy Brewer said that the committee will be sponsoring the next event around Valentine’s Day. Other activities have included new suggestion boxes for the staff members so that everyone can have a voice in choosing and deciding the kind of activities that will be most helpful in building a strong and cohesive workplace experience.
The ARMM committee, as the name implies, is all about building relationships among the staff with the aim to keep up our motivation and morale as we do our work in often stressful situations. All three committee members cited the fact that staff members are better at helping the people we are here for, our clients, if we are coming from a place of security ourselves, where we know we’ve got each other’s backs. It’s a lot easier to be empathetic and helpful with people who are going through hard times if your own stress is being kept in check. Good working relationships can do that for you.
Shalonda Saunders said it best; “It’s great working for a trustee who cares not just about the community we serve but also the workers who do the serving.” We all appreciate that and the positive attitudes and hard work of the new ARMM committee.
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