belonging initiative Archives - Penn-Mar

Strategic Plan Identifies Four Priorities

ggorham — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 16:01:40 +0000

Focus on tech, growth and support opportunities

Gregory Miller
President/CEO Penn-Mar Human Services

Our mission at Penn-Mar is to support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live courageously in pursuit of their best life.

Our success in fulfilling this promise relies on thoughtful strategic planning that evaluates best practices and areas of improvement, aligned with a bold vision for future opportunities.

In our current Strategic Plan, we have identified four priorities that will build upon the many innovative initiatives already established within the organization.

Empowering Technology

We envision amazing opportunities in the tech space that will give the people we support the independence to live the life of their choosing and allow our team members to devote their time and energies to person-centered supports. We are piloting 25 tech-enabled community homes that will provide everything from voice activation systems to Smart equipment, safety, and energy enhancements. To help us adapt these life-changing technologies, the Aegon Transamerica Foundation has awarded us $25,000 for innovative Smart Home Technology for an additional 30 residences. The Arc Maryland’s SpArc Tank Initiative provided $6,500 to fund Smart Home technology for 10 additional houses.

Mission Based Growth Opportunities

I am passionate about how we take care of our team members. It’s imperative that we create an environment where they feel they have everything they need to be successful at their job. Our “Belonging” initiative was developed to use their input to explore and develop ways to make them feel more connected to our mission. We are highly motivated to retain and attract good talent. To become the employer of choice, we have supported our Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) with growth opportunities such as the Career Ladders credentialling program, made possible thanks to the Michael James Pitts Endowment for the Advancement of DSPs, and have expanded that training to include a program designed for Frontline Supervisors. In addition to the Michael James Pitts Endowment supporters, we are also indebted to the generosity of Mike and Dawn Zgorski, who created the Zgorski Family Endowment for the Staff Training and Aid Fund. Part of that $1 million gift supports this essential new staff training. For the second year, Northrop Grumman has contributed funds to continue expanding our SHIFT Training to include additional DSPs, Community Job Developers, and team members within our organization to attain a credential that encompasses knowledge of technology integration, best practices, and person-centered assessment.

Exploring External Growth Opportunities

This strategy basically says that our leadership will continue to keep our eyes open for other organizations who may want to partner with us for all the right reasons. It’s not about getting to a certain size by a certain time through mergers and acquisitions. Rather, we want to have a good understanding of what is on the landscape. If there are opportunities for partnerships, we need to consider having those conversations. There are a lot of folks out there who do what we do. Could Penn-Mar be part of their succession plan for the benefit of both organizations? That’s what we will be exploring.

New Models of Support

As a learning organization, one of Penn-Mar’s core values is innovation. And while we continue to innovate our processes, we have enough humility to know that other providers are doing some incredible, cutting-edge things from which we could learn. This is not about doing something different just to do it. It’s about embracing the entire environment out there with an open mind for any thoughts or ideas that will help improve the lives of the people we support.

I am grateful to our Board of Directors for their dedication to our mission and their tireless efforts in helping to develop our Strategic Plan. I would like to pay tribute to Joy Keller-Brown, a former Penn-Mar Board Member, who died unexpectedly on June 16. With her husband Jeff, she spent over 40 years growing Keller-Brown Insurance Services in Shrewsbury. Joy served her community in leadership roles too numerous to mention and we were privileged to have had her support over these many years. Rest in peace, Joy.

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What Does It Mean to Belong at Penn-Mar?

ggorham — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 18:52:25 +0000

Creating a culture where everyone feels respected, heard, and empowered.

Everyone has a fundamental right to feel included in their workplace and community, although feeling “included” and “belonging” are not quite the same thing.

Gregory Miller
President/CEO Penn-Mar Human Services

To “belong” is to feel accepted and valued within a group or community, to experience a sense of connection with others, and where one’s presence and contributions are recognized and appreciated.

At Penn-Mar, we’ve spent time listening, learning, and looking inward to explore how our team members can feel more connected to our mission — supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live courageously and pursue their best life.

Our “Belonging” initiative doesn’t stop at fostering connection, and it is not designed to be a top/down process.

It is rooted in listening to individual voices and navigating the complexities of shared organizational experiences. By fostering open, candid conversations, we seek to bridge the gaps between diverse work responsibilities and create consistent practices that uphold respect, mutual understanding and equitable treatment across all levels.

Our approach for ensuring that all Penn-Mar team members feel a sense of belonging is to dig deep, leveraging the different life experiences we all have, in a positive rather than negative way, to unite rather than divide us.

The WHY of all this is to constantly improve our ability to attract and retain good team members and most importantly, for them to have a positive impact on the lives of the people with disabilities we support.

Foundationally our research with team members identified three specific areas needing improvement:

Connections: How we can better connect to the organization as a whole.

Consistency: Create consistent practices throughout the organization that are not situationally based on a person’s job or boss to foster respect and better job performance.

Leadership: Improve engagement between leadership team members so everyone understands what is going on at different levels of the organization.

To address these core areas, we created four workgroups under the umbrella of a Belonging Council to find ways to turn these identified goals into everyday practice.

The groups are now meeting on a routine basis to establish creative ways to make Socialization, Learning, Consistent Practices and Communications operational and integral to our mission to ensure that all team members feel respected, heard and empowered.

There is no “sell by” date to this process. In fact, we have publicized the names of Council members to allow for direct contact to keep the dialog open for any additional issues team members feel should be addressed.

Part of my agenda as the leader of Penn-Mar is to become a student of what our workforce is experiencing. As an organization we are saying we want to improve specific areas. The work of the Council is to ensure that we do.

So far, the feedback we have received from our initiative has been very validating. We are on track to do the right things to ensure a cohesive and dynamic culture.

You can train people to be proficient in anything, but you can’t train someone’s heart if it isn’t in the right place. Treating our team members with respect speaks to their hearts. It has a direct impact on the quality of support they provide each day to people with disabilities. When they feel respected, they are successful. And when they are successful, we remain true to our mission.

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“Why?” Sessions Designed to Show Us “How”

nvenn — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 18:26:27 +0000

By Gregory T. Miller, President and Chief Executive Officer, Penn-Mar Human Services | Chief Executive Officer, Penn-Mar Foundation

Gregory Miller
President/CEO Penn-Mar Human Services

Last August we introduced a new initiative called “Belonging” to help us get an accurate picture of what is going on in our organization from the perspective of our team members.

Its focus is on how we can improve our workplace so that all leaders and managers are better connected to our team members.

My vision of its success is that when we talk about how outstanding Penn-Mar is as an organization, every one of our team members actually believes that is a reality for their work situation.

To that end, during our initial research and investigation phase, we created and distributed a questionnaire asking for their opinions and concerns related to the workplace. The 70 percent response rate confirmed that they were eager to be heard.

To manage the initiative, we brought in Dr. Martin N. Davidson, a Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, the Chief Diversity Officer at UVA, author of the book, “Leveraging Difference,” and a renowned expert on how to manage diversity to generate superior performance.

Those of you who have interacted with Martin know that he didn’t come into the project with any agenda other than to listen to team members. They felt that and it allowed them to be open and honest during the discussions.

Martin used the questionnaire responses to develop the agenda for a series of “Why?” meetings to get an understanding of the current operating environment, identify what was working well and what could be improved, and explore what caused the disconnection in the areas that needed improvement. A lot of valuable information was gleaned from these discussions.

To keep our team up-to-date on our progress thus far, we just released a video of Martin and I having an informal conversation about where we have been and where we are heading with the initiative. We intend to push out videos like this regularly to keep the communications flowing.

As I write this, we are entering the third, more practical, phase of the program where we will be using what we now know to determine what actionable steps can be taken moving forward to help improve the work experience for our team members.

We are now scheduling a follow-up session with some 45 people from our leadership ranks and from staff across the organization who participated in the “Why” sessions to review the research and data. It is not possible to include everyone in this meeting but the discussions will be providing the platform for how we “leverage differences.”

From there, we will create work groups and sub-groups to address issues brought to life during the “Why?” meetings. This will provide many different opportunities for team members wanting to participate. Their task may be as simple as looking at a particular issue or a set of circumstances and recommending ways to improve them.

I’m incredibly excited about the progress we have made so far with the “Belonging” initiative, especially now that we’ve reached the part where the rubber meets the road.

It’s one thing to launch a program to find out information; quite another to use that information to develop actionable steps to address important issues.

By doing so we will be able to shape our culture and deliver on our brand promise to team members: “Live Your Legacy.”

I hesitate to call the third phase we are entering the “final” phase, as our intention is to learn perpetually in order to create a culture where we are never 100 percent satisfied, but always looking for ways to improve.

Stay tuned…

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