Director, Food Services, Nutrition Services

Job Summary:

In addition to the responsibilities listed below, this director level position is also responsible for planning, organizing, and managing the provision of high-quality, cost-effective in-patient and out-patient clinical nutritional services and feeding operations that meet or exceed regulatory and budget requirements. This includes the provision of nutritional services including professional services, nutrition care services, and in- and out-patient feeding and computer nutrition programs. This also includes overseeing department operations, including but not limited to the planning and development of departmental operating and capital budgets; overseeing payroll and non-payroll expenditures; and partnering with the management team to develop short- and long-term departmental goals and objectives in alignment with service area medical center strategic plans.

This position acts as a key partner and liaison with professional staff (e.g., physicians, nurse managers, pharmacists, and other Kaiser staff) to ensure open communications regarding patient food services and nutritional care services. This role also builds and fosters partnerships with the other service area leadership to plan, integrate, and coordinate provision of products and services across customer groups. This includes directing quality assurance programs; developing, implementing, and maintaining policies and procedures for area of responsibility; and ensuring quality care of members, patients, and staff through continuous monitoring and process improvement initiatives.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Prepares individuals for growth opportunities and advancement; builds internal collaborative networks for self and others. Solicits and acts on performance feedback; drives collaboration to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to foster performance improvement. Demonstrates continuous learning; oversees the recruitment, selection, and development of talent; ensures performance management guidelines and expectations to achieve business needs. Stays up to date with organizational best practices, processes, benchmarks, and industry trends; shares best practices within and across teams. Motivates and empowers teams; maintains a highly skilled and engaged workforce by aligning resource plans with business objectives. Provides guidance when difficult decisions need to be made; creates opportunities for expanded scope of decision making and impact.
• Oversees the operation of multiple units within a department by identifying member and operational needs; ensures the management of work assignment completion; translates business strategy into actionable business requirements; ensures products and/or services meet member requirements and expectations while aligning with organizational strategies. Gains cross-functional support for business plans and priorities; assumes responsibility for decision making; sets standards, measures progress, and fosters resolution of escalated issues. Communicates goals and objectives; analyzes resources, costs, and forecasts and incorporates them into business plans; prioritizes and distributes resources. Removes obstacles that impact performance; guides performance and develops contingency plans accordingly; ensures teams accomplish business objectives.
• Directs the sanitation and maintenance of food services work areas and equipment by revising and establishing companys standards for cleaning and sanitizing procedures, and working with senior directors or above to ensure future budget needs for new equipment or related expenditures are maintained.
• Directs vendor contract management by establishing long-terms needs and aligning relationships with vendors to ensure vendor contracts are in place; implementing standards to ensure vendors are providing services consistent with vendor agreements or regulatory compliance standards; and establishing vendor metrics to ensure service delivery is compliant, safe, sanitary, in support of patient patient satisfaction.
• Directs the procurement, storage, and distribution of food by directing planning for inventory needs across the company, reviewing inventory usage, and providing strategic direction for and signing off on procurement budgets; setting strategic direction and planning/forecasting for stock levels, sufficient inventory, while making considerations such as budget and quality of foods; and driving the use of best practice strategies and procedures for labeling and storage of perishable items to align with company standards and regulatory requirements, within procurement budget.
• Directs the food recall by establishing strategies to return food that has been recalled or is at risk of contamination; and refining communication plans to inform patients and staff about ongoing updates or actions being taken to resolve food recall issues.
• Directs the preparation and production of meal plans by directing the strategic planning and continuous improvement of menu items to meet patient/customer needs, setting standards for how teams are processing meals according to a variety of recipes and/or production schedules, advising and signing off on budgets as needed; driving state-of-the art solutions to ensure food is prepared in a safe manner per food preparation standards and is safe for patients; and ensuring a clear understanding across teams on protocols used to assemble patient meal trays and cafeteria and/or catering services, and directing the planning of resources so that team members can cater food items according to scheduled mealtimes.
• Directs emergency planning by coordinating with leadership across other departments to support workplans that ensure food supply, delivery, and services are efficiently maintained during times of crisis or emergency.
• Leads improvements to the customer and patient care experience by driving open communication and collaboration across teams to develop innovative solutions that increase customer/patient satisfaction, advising senior management on the resolution of service recovery issues; ensuring operational and strategic plans are in place so that unit-based teams are able to support food service and delivery operations and help the business unit deliver quality care; reviewing reported patient responses to quality control survey questions, establishing cohesive strategies used by others to submit quality control reporting, integrating knowledge of metrics to assess quality control and quality performance across businesses to align on strategy; driving state-of-the-art efforts to reduce critical control points to acceptable levels and improve the care experience; and participating in interdisciplinary teams that review customer/patient concerns to ensure that each is addressed/resolved.