Baptistcare – The Great Facilities Tour of WA
Background
Integral has enjoyed a partnership arrangement with Baptistcare for many years providing assistance in coaching, 360° surveys, meeting facilitation and executive team development. More recently, Integral has been invited into Baptistcare facilities in metropolitan and regional locations to offer facilitated discussions with operational staff who deliver residential and clinical care service within their aged care venues.
The Challenge
Aged care service provision has many inherent challenges: accommodating ongoing requirements for COVID-safe operations, enduring changes from the Royal Commission Investigation into Aged Care service Provision, always being prepared for forthcoming Accreditation Assessments at facilities and inherent staff shortages in the health-related industries in WA. These factors have culminated to put further significant stress on aged care facilities. Maximising staff engagement and input in this dynamic and often stressful environment is an ever-present need at Baptistcare.
The Solution
Integral was invited to begin offering workshops within Baptistcare venues across the state to enable staff to discuss and consider how they undertake their work. Beginning with a conversation on what they most enjoy about their contributions, these workshops offer a safe place for staff to identify what barriers prevent them from maximising their work input. It was also an ideal opportunity to stimulate an investigation on what techniques (within their sphere of influence) are available for them to overcome (or at least, lessen) these barriers.
These workshops have been energetic, engaging and thought-provoking and are specifically customised to the unique needs of the participating group. Tools or practices are shared with the participants and practice time is offered to enable them to “test-out” new ways of approaching their work. A collective “book of proceedings” is generated from each experience and these high-level ideas and participant responses are shared with facility managers for the potential of follow up and further exploration. A cumulation of ideas from across the state will also be shared with the Baptistcare Senior Leadership Group.
Integral took on the challenge to build a robust and customised approach using Baptistcare’s values and behaviours to underpin this development opportunity. Working collectively, Integral targeted workshop outcomes to support Baptistcare values, so outcomes from the workshops were relatable to the organisation’s culture and its vision for the future.
Integral was extremely conscious that aged care services have pressures and responsibilities associated with service delivery that means professional development interventions must be designed to maximise staff engagement and minimise staff absence from work. For this reason, these workshops were held on site and scheduled on dates and in times that maximised staff opportunities to participate.
The Results
Regularly engaging all facility staff in conversations on topics that matter to their work, is a significant step that Baptistcare has taken. Integral facilitators often personally witness a sense of jubilation in workshop participants as they participate in collective problem solving to their challenges and feel the power of support emanating from others within the workshop.
Inherently, these sessions demonstrate senior leadership group support toward these vital facility staff. In addition, this program has created a wave of energy and enthusiasm within these Baptistcare facility locations (as recognised by residential managers) directly supporting a more constructive Baptistcare culture in many locations.