- Good afternoon, I'm David Baiada.
Today is Friday, April 4th,
and this is your daily CEO update.
It's been a crazy week.
The number of
COVID-positive community members, employees, and clients
continues to incrementally grow.
Obviously, we get a lot of news in the media,
we get a lot of information in our personal lives,
we get a lot of information here at BAYADA,
but I wanted to end the week
with a spirit of universal faith, hope, and love.
And to do that, I asked our chairman, our founder,
my dad, Mark Baiada, to join us
to really bring together all of us
with a sense of community and that spirit
of universal faith, hope, and love.
So, welcome Mark.
Where are you today?
- I'm here at home where I've been trapped
for a couple of weeks, because you and your sister
said that Nan and I can't go out because we're over 70.
So we're sheltering at home, going a little bit crazy,
but active on Zoom, and active on my email,
and staying in close touch to what you
and everyone is doing.
I wanna applaud you and applaud the team
and all the nurses, aids, therapists,
and everybody that's going out to take care of people
despite the threat of the virus.
So, thank you all.
- Mm-hm, yeah, well I suspect you are one of the few
that wears a suit and tie in social isolation.
- Yeah, well I felt I was talking to everybody,
and I always felt I could not put my coat and tie on,
but I do have my casual pants and shoes on,
(laughs) so you just can't see that.
- (laughs) So, how are you feeling?
- Well, this is a little bit of a surreal shock to us all
that this all came on so fast and so suddenly,
and has affected everybody.
And across the country, all of our clients, our staff,
the country and the world, it's kind of a world pandemic.
But, so I've been a little worried about people
and wanna make sure that our clients are protected,
all our nurses and our aides are all safe and protected,
our office staff, and I'm worried
about our communities responding.
I'm hopeful, because I have my "BAYADA Way",
and I do look in here, I always look for a little guidance
when things happen.
And I have up on the screen there,
"Work with a spirit of universal faith, hope, and love."
So, by showing love, trying to worry about people,
take care of them, I'm hopeful this will pass,
this will pass.
Ever that's been through the all pandemics through time,
it will run it's course, hopefully sooner than later,
and we just have to adapt, be safe,
and take care of as many people as we can.
But I have faith, I have faith.
And I'm actually deeply inspired and have gratitude
because of everyone's responding appropriately.
They're just trying to help others,
trying to do the right thing, and hopefully everybody
from BAYADA is a role model for each other
and for the community.
So, thank you, thank you very much,
I'm proud to work with everybody.
- Thanks for sharing that.
You described it just there in your remarks,
but is there any particular advice that you would,
as you look back on 45 years at BAYADA,
other types of challenges that we've faced,
and things that have helped you
or helped the organization navigate them successfully?
Any advice for us as individuals or as an organization?
- That's a good question.
Nothing this broad, but we've had individual cases
where it's been Hurricane Sandy
in New Jersey and New York was devastating.
Other isolated incidences per offices,
large multi snow storm, but nothing this long and this wide.
Each case, you just have to put the clients first,
take care of the employees, and just be well.
It's right in here, Dave, it's right in here.
"Be creative, flexible, determined,
"and get the job done for our clients," right?
It's not the time, this is like a fire,
you gotta go put the fire out, we'll worry about it later.
So just get to work, get moving, do something positive,
do something good, and things work out, things work out.
And so far, it looks that way.
I can't believe how we're able to communicate
by video now with each other.
It's kind of amazing, taking it to a new level.
So, we're being very, lot of people being very clever
and very innovative, so I appreciate that.
Just stay at it, stay at it.
- Great, thanks for sharing, thanks for joining us here
for the CEO daily update.
Everybody, we'll see you on Monday.
Have a wonderful weekend, be safe.