Bringing Cultures Together

ParaMed just held our first leadership conference since our expansion last year and I want to thank everyone for contributing to its great success. As you know, in May of 2015, we acquired the Revera Home Health business from Revera Inc. This greatly increased our size and scope and brought together two leading Canadian private-sector home health care providers; it also brought together two different organizational cultures.

An organization’s culture is made up of its values, beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by the people within the organization. Culture is the behavior that results when a group arrives at a set of generally unspoken and unwritten rules for working together. Merging cultures is never an easy or a short term prospect and the key component to do this successfully is to achieve alignment. This is a process which takes time and dedication from everyone involved.

Despite the organizational and culture differences that existed in our two organizations, I am proud to say that all of our home health care team members have a strong commitment to quality and person-centred care. Now, with our new organization, we are able to take the best of both of these and redefine ourselves.

In fact, we are redefining care. For our clients, we are redefining care by achieving care outcomes that exceed expectations and care and service delivery designs that improve upon traditional models. For our current employees, we are redefining care by engaging them in creating a synergy from the recent acquisition that will result in a new driving force that everyone can be a part of moving forwards.

We have started on our path towards our new common culture and this recent conference was another milestone demonstrating our progress. Having everyone come together as one team to learn, to share and be inspired about our future was a privilege for me and truly a remarkable moment.

I am excited and inspired by the future of ParaMed and what this will mean for the clients we serve and for all of our employees. I look forward to continuing to lead this team as we “Redefine Care” across the country.

By Rik Luneburg, Vice President of ParaMed