Names reflect values and mission

When I travel around the country talking with caregivers and care providers, I am frequently reminded that names are important.

In some states, calling yourself a PCA means something entirely different from the Personal Care Aide acronym we use in our caregiver training certifications. While most states know exactly what a CNA is, in Washington State they call it an NAC (nurse aide – certified).

And then there is our name. We get introduced as the people from “A – choir” (“do you guys sing?”) or get missed altogether when someone googles us with the “c” as “Acquire.” (Just FYI: Emails addressed to me with the “c” in the name “acquire” won’t make it into my inbox.)

So why do we spell our name funny? Why the small “a” followed by the capital “Q”?

When we first started our company we hired a branding consultant to help us select a name. We wanted something unique and memorable, as well as something that reflects our values and mission.

At the time, we were using a course development engine called the “Q” system, so we needed to incorporate the prominent “Q” into our name. We also wanted to focus on the outcome of using our online training program: growing stronger skills and a more successful organization.

We loved the idea of helping people “acquire” skills. We loved the emphasis on the “Q” in the word, too.

Today, although we no longer use this course development engine, we still feel strongly about our big “Q.”

Now, however, our “Q” stands for just one thing: Quality.

When a senior care organization selects aQuire for their online staff training system, they are investing specifically and intentionally in building their team. Yes, they often save money, as our monthly per employee rate can run less than ½ of what a one hour inservice costs, not to mention trainer prep time, record-keeping and over-time for make-up attendees.

Yes, our clients get 10 times the benefit of offering their typical menu of one inservice each month, as we provide over 80 courses (nearly 100 hours) – unlimited access to employees – on a very wide range of topics.

In the end, though, adding an online training program does require an investment in the one thing we are passionate about: Quality – the “Q” factor to your organization’s success.

It’s important enough to us that it’s not only in our name – it’s the only thing BIG about our name!

Solving challenges together

It’s been a tough environment the past year. My friend Mark sent me a link to a map generated by the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care Industry (NIC MAP) that shows how challenging it has been for senior care operators in some markets. The census trend from the peak to present has shown a loss of 390 basis points in the 31 largest metro areas – from 92.8% occupied in the first quarter of 07 to 88.9% in the fourth quarter of 09.

For companies operating small groups of properties that experienced this census decline, the pain was real and tangible.

For my friend Mark, it caused him and his partners to change from, as Mark puts is, “a great operator with a marketing department” to being “a lead-generating machine that is also a good operator.”

In the end, Mark and his company will be stronger, more focused and will thrive, but the last year or two have been genuinely tough.

Like Mark, many senior care companies have had to examine their operational costs and systems. They have had to streamline operations while not cutting corners on quality care and maintaining compliant record-keeping and training. Perhaps, like we did during the 1980s in my own communities, they have looked at reallocating dollars into marketing – building that “lead-generating machine”, and away from some of the softer functions of administration.

It’s been interesting to me that while many companies have been challenged, our company, aQuire Training Solutions, has experienced record growth. Mind you, since we’re a company less than four years old, records are easily shattered. But experiencing growth at all in these past couple of years is something to be treasured.

One thing is clear to me: the folks who are signing up for online training programs now are the folks who understand that building a “lead generating machine” means delivering even better services than ever. It means taking advantage of this positive hiring environment and as well as focusing on creating an engaged, vital workforce – and giving them the tools to succeed. It means giving caregivers – typically the lowest paid members of the team, yet the ones who truly deliver what you promise – a sense of affirmation and empowerment by offering them way more than a mandatory training inservice program.

Today we received a call from a large multi-location organization who wants to implement e-learning across their locations, but can’t afford the basic cost to do this. They asked us to think creatively with them to find a way to at least get them started – corporate-wide.

That’s the kind of challenge we like! It’s the kind of partnership that we thrive on, and I guarantee we’ll sharpen our pencil and make a plan that will work in your budget. If you’re committed to providing online learning to your team to build, strengthen and enrich them, we can help.

Because at the end of the day, no matter how worn out and trite the phrase it still is true: we’re all in this together!

e-learning: invest wisely

I don’t know about your organization, but January can justifiably be called the dead month in ours – usually.

This year was different. We had the busiest January on record – a huge surprise to me, considering the state of the economy and, more importantly, the state of most business owners’ outlook on the economy.

What’s going on? It’s simple: e-learning is hot.

When I read that exact same opening line in my favorite e-learning blog, I thought, “It isn’t just at our company – e-learning is hot all over. Who knew?!”

This blog’s author is my favorite for a good reason: he writes clearly and concisely, with lots of illustrations and examples. That’s why today, I’m sharing his content verbatim, with a link to his full blog at the bottom.

“E-learning is hot. And for good reason. If done right, it can produce great results by decreasing costs and improving performance. Also, unlike a one time classroom session, the elearning course is available for others. This includes the static elearning course as well as any ongoing conversations in networked communities.

E-learning Supports the Organization’s Goals

• Improved training costs. Producing learning content is time consuming whether it’s online or not. With elearning, each time the course is accessed your return on investment improves because you are dividing the fixed production costs by number of uses. You also have savings through decreased travel, reduced material, and hopefully improved (and more efficient) performance.
• Decreased material costs. Let’s say you have to train how to arrange equipment in a sterile environment like an operating room. If you had to use the real environment, it would be costly. Even setting up a fake environment has material costs and labor. By creating the environment online and letting the learner practice, you never have to worry about the costs associated with set up, use, and clean up.
• Increased productivity. Because elearning is not bound by geography or time, you can control training’s impact on production by training people during down times. In addition, with the current economy, you’re asking people to do more with less. So elearning is a great way to give them the tools and skills needed to enhance their performance.
• Standardization. You may have a great facilitator, but that’s no guarantee that the courses are presented the same across sessions. Elearning allows you to create a standardized process and consistency in the delivery of content. It also compresses delivery time. I’ve combined elearning courses with facilitated sessions. Elearning delivered consistent content. Live sessions were interactive case studies that applied the information.” 

Want to learn more about the benefits of e-learning? Read the full article at the articulate blog.

Webinars- when and why

Allow me to take a minute to talk about webinars.

One big webinar company has been sending out emails on a weekly basis lately promoting “E-learning – fast and free.”

Read the fine print, and what they’re really promoting is using the webinar technology – gathering a group of participants around their own computers, while a presenter in another location talks – as a way to train.

I think it’s a great way to train – we use it ourselves for new client implementation training. It’s fast, it’s convenient, and – yes – it’s cheap.

But is it e-learning? Is it an improvement on the traditional classroom approach to training, let alone asynchronous, professionally developed e-learning courses?

Yes, it saves time and money gathering a far-flung team together.

Yes, I can sit at my computer and watch a PowerPoint as well as I can fly to Milwaukee for the same PowerPoint presentation.

But here’s what I do when I’ve registered for a webinar and am participating from the comfort of my desk: I check my email; I write notes to myself about tasks I need to get done; I scan through the stack of stuff on my desk.

What I can’t do is make eye contact with the speaker. I can’t nod, encourage, laugh; interact.

I can’t easily raise my hand; ask questions or clarify points.

In short, I can’t get very engaged in the whole process.

Sometimes, that’s OK, especially if I’m following instructions for navigating a website or creating a new product of some kind. I’m engaged enough just watching and trying to keep up.

At other times, though, it’s a missed opportunity – to engage, connect and grow.

I’ve venture to say that webinar training works best with the most intrinsically engaged employees – and worst with those least intrinsically engaged – usually, our hourly frontline folks.

So it you’re looking for a quick, cheap, easy way to say, “Oh yeah, we provide e-learning for our staff,” think hard before you head the webinar way. You may very well be systematizing a training approach that disconnects rather than connects; that disengages rather than engages.

Year in review

We’re off to a great start to 2010 at the aQuire offices! If you would, indulge me in a quick look back at 2009:

• We finished the December 31 deadline for additional content for our online CNA course on – you guessed it – December 31st! Funny how artificial deadlines come and go but the real deal somehow gets met. We also ended the year with a great influx of new training partners who provide the lab and clinical components of this online CNA training course: hospitals, private career schools, community colleges and nursing facilities. We achieved some great community partnerships, too, enabling unemployed individuals living in remote, rural areas to get their CNA training, the first step to a career in nursing.
• Our in-home care component has become one of our busiest business units yet. The growth of this phase of care is simply phenomenal. Fortunately, most providers know how vital it is to send only well-trained caregivers into the homes of their clients.
• We officially launched our own licensed online private career school, the Institute for Professional Care Education (IPCed). While we currently only offer a Certification in Marketing and Sales in Health and Senior Care and our Personal Care Aide Certification, many more programs are in development. We’re very excited about the coming year, especially about creating Personal Care Aide Certification programs that mirror our online CNA program, with community partnerships for skills and work experience components.
• EasyCEU.com, our professional continuing education website, continued to grow even as the economy didn’t. We heard from many, many administrators that having an affordable, accessible option simply saved their license this year – and that’s nice to hear!
• aQuire’s staff training program grew significantly as more and more assisted living providers joined in the technology revolution. I received an email just today from an assisted living caregiver who had just finished her first ever online course. She was so impressed, and enjoyed the course so much she took the time to write a thank you email. I know what kind of an effort this was for this individual; my profound thanks went back to her for that simple, but highly meaningful act.

In 2010 we will see many new partnerships that will open doors of learning and career growth to many, many people across the globe. We’ll see our school in Fiji continue to grow; and expand our reach throughout the US.

Personally, I’m looking forward to an excellent new adventure, helping create a new family caregiving resource site along with a high-powered team based out of New York City. I’ve grown to love visiting Manhattan (especially the food), and am truly honored to be a part of this very exciting project.

I’ll keep you posted with my journey in the coming year if you’ll do the same. Drop me an email and let me know what’s new – and exciting – with your company. We might as well keep each other company while we head into a new year – whatever it may bring!

Hope at the holidays

At lunch yesterday a colleague of mine commented, “I think 2009 will go down in history as one of the hardest years ever; possibly even harder than the great depression.”

I thought, at first, that this was a massive overstatement, but as she went on to talk about the sheer number of individuals affected, the loss of jobs and homes, I began to agree. It’s been, undeniably, an incredibly hard year for many, many people.

We’re lucky, most of us in the senior care business. We may have faced a declining census or more families reluctant to make the change, but overall, we’ve had a relatively easy time of it. We’ve continued hiring, adding staff and programs while other industries have been shutting doors after decades of service.

As part of a project one of my employees is doing during our own holiday lull, I spent a few minutes this morning reviewing comments our EasyCEU and aQuire clients have made to us over this past year. The comments included many like these:

These are the best on-line course I have completed!

Course content is REALLY useful.

I love the ease of great online courses for completing my CEUs.

I think these online courses are much more valuable than sitting in a classroom for 8 hours!

I have used many vendors for CEUs but I found this one to be the most useful!

I loved doing my EasyCEU course and will take more of these courses in the future.

I love that I can take back what I’ve learned to train my staff in better care.

Our aQuire clients shared comments from their team, including, “I’ve never taken an online course before. I didn’t know I could do it. I learned so much about caring for people.”

Needless to say, these messages affirm our team’s efforts this year and give us the intangible reward of knowing that our work makes a difference.

Often, just a kind word or two has the power to encourage, support; energize. We promise to pay forward what you’ve given us this year in the coming year.

Together, maybe we can make the star of hope shine just a little brighter.

Hope for a better year next year for those who have faced the loss of a home or job.

Hope for a chance to continue to make a difference in the lives of the people we serve and the people who serve with us.

Hope for genuine warmth in our homes and families today and always.

Wishing you and yours all the joys – and the hope – of the season,

Sharon K. Brothers, MSW
President and CEO
EasyCEU and aQuire Training Solutions

Engaged or battened down?

It’s cold – darn cold. And I don’t just mean outside; it’s cold inside, too, in a lot of places.

We’ve been interviewing for an executive level position in our office the past few weeks. We’re talking to great applicants; highly qualified for our work and probably much more. Some of them have been looking for a position for months. When we mentioned to one that we didn’t know if he would be able to work for what we could offer he said, “The answer to that question (without having any idea what you pay) is yes.”

These applicants keep hearing the same story: “We’re hiring at a much lower pay rate this year. We can only afford to pay you about half what you made at your last job.”

Baby, it’s cold out there.

I get it. We just hired a couple of people at a pay level lower than we hired for the same position two years ago. We got highly qualified people, too. They’re happy for work; we’re happy to have them for a price that fits into our super-snug budget.

But I’m going to be watching our budget and making adjustments – fast – the minute it looks like its changing. I don’t want to lose good people. I don’t want to lose the forward progress we’re making in growing our company.

What I really don’t want to see is the senior care business sector get another black eye if the economy improves and we lag behind in taking good care of our employees. We know the words – and the concepts behind them – of employee empowerment, engagement, actualization.

BusinessWeek’s online Debate Room posed the debate earlier this year: “The recession is no time to worry about employee engagement. Pros and cons?”

On the pro side, (Concentrate on the business, not the workers), the commentator remarks, “You’re in this fix because of lack of engagement, right? …The real disease is poor management – and that’s you, bucky…Employee engagement is about having a well-run enterprise based on consistently applied value. Do that, and engagement follows.”

On the CON side, (Con: workers need a morale boost), the commentator notes, “Employee engagement will hit historic lows in the coming years and cost employers billions in lost productivity – and cost consumers in the form of a more frustrating I-don’t-really-care-about-you customer experience…Should you worry about employee engagement? Do the math. What if all employees in your company were engaged and willing to give the company 15 minutes of discretionary effort each week? The ROI would astound you and the improved customer experience just might make the difference between surviving the Great Recession and thriving in it.”

What’s your opinion?

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m just guessing that your actions are demonstrating your opinions clearly to your employees right now.