Rapid growth in distance education benefits business and individuals

This week is spring break in Oregon.

I happen to be away, taking a much-needed sun break in Hawaii.

But there’s no getting away from me, even though I’m not sitting at my desk pounding out articles this week.

And that’s the miracle of technology.

No matter where I am, I can make sure that some things still happen on time and for the intended audience. It requires some advance planning on my part, but it’s a pretty nice feature of technology – especially if umbrella drinks and sunscreen come with the deal!

I can communicate with you. You can read my communication when it’s convenient for you; neither one of us needs to be in the same physical space at the same time.

That’s one reason why distance learning is growing rapidly today. Last year, according to the Department of Education, 66 percent of 2- and 4-year colleges in the U.S. offered college-level distance education courses; over 11,200 programs were offered that were designed to be completed totally through distance education. Traditional classroom learning is not only inconvenient for many adults, it is not essential. The quality of many online educational programs is equal to, or better than, comparable classroom programs.

Corporations have grasped this benefit as well. Just-in-time training – available when the employee needs it to do his job, or when it’s convenient for him to learn – is clearly here to stay.

New-hire orientation training, with clear presentation of company goals and expectations, (and maybe a personal message from the President) needs to happen for each employee at the time of hire. Few of us hire in groups; fewer still can afford to provide this kind of training one-on-one.

Customer service training, skills training, compliance training – these are all more examples of instances where distance learning is appropriate; often even preferable.

It’s certainly preferable for the President of the company to be able to send out her personal message…while lying on a beach!

Training an integral part of building your team: a client comments

The following is a brief, unpaid testimonial about our staff training program, aQuire Training Solutions. We’re sharing this with you because our client, The Wilsonville believes so strongly that aQuire is a vital link in improving their staff retention. We know this is a concern and focus for many senior living communities, and we hope this gives you some ideas that you can use in your organization. And, of course, we hope you start thinking, “Maybe WE need aQuire!”

I’d like to guide you through our successful experience with aQuire Training, our training partner at The Wilsonville.

My name is Rodney Bruck. I joined The Wilsonville eight months ago as their Caregiver Recruiter/Trainer and Career Development Coordinator. I came out of retirement to apply a management education and 35 years experience as an investment/financial and insurance planner and assist The Wilsonville in their quest to be the cornerstone senior assisted living community in the Pacific Northwest.

Early on in my new position I uncovered many faults in the recruiting, training and monitoring practices being employed in our industry. They are the same poor practices followed by many companies: Shortcuts and lack of accountability and follow-up.

I evaluated the problems: high turnover, low productivity, high absenteeism, low morale, high workers comp claims for new hires, and too much time spent with applicants not suited for our industry.

I also noticed that our caregivers were inadequately trained in the key areas of their job description. Caregivers had a very minor understanding of their complete role. Their training lacked clarity and was ambiguous at best. They lacked the skills to perform their jobs.

As I looked further into the problem, I realized we were not utilizing and managing the complete set of tools provided by our partner, aQuire Training Solutions.

We, like many others, were playing the game without any rules or guidelines. WE were the problem. I set out to change that culture and bring to The Wilsonville a new set of parameters to best serve our residents, their families and our entire community as a whole!

To address these issues, we took our evaluation results (retention, job evaluations, workers comp claims, co-workers observations and, most important, resident satisfaction) and asked guiding questions:

• What was our "mission and philosophy" and were we achieving these goals?

• How could we improve in ALL areas of performance? Not just a few.........ALL!

I then set out to align our procedures to meet our goals, and aQuire Training was my first step in this endeavor.

First, I personally took every one of their courses to become a certified caregiver. I not only took the required courses, I took ALL of their courses available.

This not only helped me determine their quality of training, but also enhanced my credibility and built on my knowledge base. I recommend this as a sound practice for management.

Next, I completely changed our recruiting ads. They now state "You MUST be computer literate." This filters candidates, limiting the pool to only those who are able to process the training in a timely manner. We required prospective caregivers to demonstrate some basic computer skills in my presence (taking a sample course). I wanted to see how they handled the courses, the sample, game, quizzes, and the scored test. If I sensed, or observed, a major problem in this area I discontinued the interview. No need to waste each other’s time.

The results? In 6 months I've placed 13 new caregivers. 12 are still with us and performing at excellent levels. Workers comp claims are down 200%. Morale is at an all time high. Pride of ownership in our community is flourishing. Most importantly, our residents and their families are exceedingly pleased with our care and the professional quality of our staff. It has made all of us a much more cohesive team, proud of ourselves and our co-workers!

aQuire Training Solutions was a key ingredient in making this happen.

Here's my advice: Your communities will all benefit from a close relationship with aQuire Training and the excellent tools they provide. The Wilsonville is living proof of this.

Thanks, Rod!

Rethinking technology in today’s health care world

Remember the first technology boom in the 1980’s?

I do. It was the first time I starting thinking how we could leverage the power of the internet to improve senior care. At the time, I couldn’t image how that could happen, but the seeds of my current company – all online – were there, even in those early days of trying to figure out how a very personal, hands’ on service could in any way be improved by use of technology.

A lot has happened in the past 20 years. We’re now into “web 2.0” – defined by many as the use of technology to enhance social relationships. It’s also an age where we don’t assume that the latest website fad will take off like a rocket and be worth billions instantly; rather, we know that building a technology or web-based company takes the same kind of effort, focus, product and pricing work that any new company demands. Some of us are a little nostalgic about the wild valuations of websites…but I digress.

As senior care companies, it’s a good time to look at what technologies we use, and what we should be thinking about using, before another 20 years rolls by and we’re hopelessly behind as an industry.

Let me start with what is nearest and dearest to my heart: online learning. If your company isn’t currently using an online training company for at least some of your training, you’re missing some incredible advantages. You’re missing the reach of the web – into people’s homes, offices, worksites – throughout the world. You’re missing the opportunity to standardize your company’s training programs, quickly, easily, painlessly and affordably, company-wide.

One of the coolest features of the internet is the amount of content that is available, and how easy it is to find. You can research your competitors, your mom’s diagnosis and latest prescription, or your idea for a new business name as quickly as you can type it into google – spelled correctly or not. When you find a page or website of interest to you, you can email the link to a colleague on the other side of the world – and he can instantly go to the exact same site, seeing exactly what you’re seeing.

You may not remember the days of photocopying and snail mail, but believe me, it’s a new – and magical – world in comparison!

Whether you’re looking at corporate policies and procedures, or company-wide customer relations training, using the internet as the foundation of disseminating this information is just smart business today. It’s not revolutionary; it’s basic.

Another area of technology that we’re becoming involved in relates to finding – and hiring – the best and brightest. We never intended to start operating a “job board” but we needed a conduit to get applications for a state-wide program without requiring individuals to come to our office, fax or mail us a paper form. I must admit, we’re finally learning how to use less paper, and starting to ask ourselves “can we do that electronically instead?”

It’s a short stretch to electronic job applications. It’s a wonderful stretch, too. Many of you may have found how much fun and effective Craig’s list is for job postings. Post a job and start getting resumes in your email in-box within minutes. Review resumes, ask for more details via email and get a step of the process done – without ever picking up the phone. On our last hire, we even used a website that lets people upload their PowerPoint projects (free) to require all applicants making the first level cut to submit a work sample. It was free, cool, and gave us tons of information about the applicants before ever speaking to one. We trimmed a pool of 30 qualified applicants to 8 finalists before ever talking to one of them. We conducted 7 interviews (one dropped out) and hired one. Two others will likely do project work for us, too, before the year is out.

I’ll never go back to paper applications now that I know how much easier, faster, and effective it is to use the electronic approach. We’ll be rolling out the rest of our e-application website and offering it to you, free of charge, within weeks. Here’s a no-brainer. Won’t cost you a cent, and will save some trees (and, more importantly, some time).

Community management, records management, data management solutions exist and should be as much the norm as using QuickBooks or equivalent is to bookkeeping. If you’re still using ledger paper and a #2 pencil for bookkeeping, you’re probably wondering why you’re behind the competition; the same will shortly be true if your staff are writing care plans and progress notes by hand.

The world of business, especially in the realm of senior and health care, is changing so quickly. This current recession will likely spur even more changes, even more quickly. Where we can identify current “best practice” using technology, we better implement them now.

Then we might just be ready for whatever “senior care 3.0” brings.

Challenges bring innovation

Challenges bring innovation.

We should be ripe for a lot of innovation, if that holds true in this particular stage in history as in the past.

Here’s one area where we’re involved in offering an innovative solution: providing pre-employment training to individuals who have lost their jobs, making them job-ready to work for you, the senior care provider.

The challenge: one of the highest rates of unemployed workers in the US in decades.

The innovation: offering unemployed individuals an opportunity to gain a hiring advantage in the workforce by pre-training them for jobs providing care to seniors.

The result: employers (like you) can hire individuals who have proven computer learning skills (a plus for the world where computerization is spreading to every day tasks in caregiving) AND training that proves their knowledge base at a higher level than the unskilled, untrained (but willing) individual. An added bonus to you? You may be able to use documentation of their pre-employment training to fast-track the person into their jobs, avoiding the time and expense for new employee training. Orient them to your organization and to the clients in their care, and they’re job ready, quickly, efficiently and at a lower cost to the employer.

It’s a small step in solving a huge, national challenge. But if it fast-tracks the individual into needed positions in senior care businesses and saves you, the provider, time and money, it could be a small innovation that works.

Want more details on how this could work for you? Contact one of our client services staff today!