awards case study
The kindest care H
C-One is the UK’s third largest care home operator, providing specialist care to
over 10,000 residents in 248 locations throughout the UK. It is also a relatively new business, created in November 2011
as part of the rescue of care homes formerly run by Southern Cross. The very public demise of that operator left HC-One the legacy of poor management and a disengaged and disillusioned workforce of 15,000 staff. It was also faced with the challenge to step up to the new focus of regulators on compliant actions in practice, and to step up quickly.
The executive team was driven by a vision that it wanted HC-One to be known for delivering the kindest care in the UK and it also understood that learning and development (L&D) would play a leading role in achieving its goals. Alison Innes-Farquhar, head of people development at HC-One, led a comprehensive review of L&D as part of the creation of the new company and quickly established that e-learning, as part of a blended learning approach, had the potential to support the transformation of the business. But it would be a big ask as significant barriers had to be overcome. HC-One has a people-focused, care-based working environment. Its staff have relatively low levels of technical literacy and many have negative attitudes to the use of technology in care work. In addition, the technical infrastructure was very limited. But those issues did not deter the organisation. To help understand and respond to these complex needs, a stakeholder working party of 20 colleagues from across the business was created to guide the development of an appropriate e-learning solution. The outcome was the Touch programme. And the company’s approach to implementing Touch certainly delivered. From a regulatory perspective, Touch has met its target to increase certified compliance rates from 20% to 85% within 12 months of launch and staff engagement scores have risen by an average 9.7% against the Gallup 12 Criteria that measures employee engagement. In fact when over 4,000 staff responded to the question: “What is the best thing that HC-One has done for you in the last year?” The answer came back loud and clear – training. Learning innovation delivered well is delivering great results to HC-One, so what can we learn from the approach that they took?
Aligning learning to business, business to learning From the very outset, a set of guiding principles was established. The first was to move from a culture of ‘training for compliance’ to a culture of ‘learning to deliver the kindest care’. This meant capturing the vision and values of the new business and embedding them throughout the learning experience. Touch has always been part of regular briefings to the board and other senior and regional managers and is regularly evaluated for impact on learning experience, learning outcomes and key business metrics. Chai Patel, the chairman of HC-One says Touch demonstrates the leadership team’s ongoing commitment to the programme: “Through Touch, we’re linking company and individual aspirations to achieve a transformation in the businesses.”
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Laura Overton reports on how a blended learning programme played a key role in transforming a care home business
HC-One and Acteon won gold in the E-Learning Awards in two categories: l Best e-learning project – private sector l Best use of e-learning to ensure compliance with external regulations or internal policies
Transforming training – beyond the basic blend One of the core principles underpinning the design of the programme was to “To move beyond the module, using the most appropriate channel to meet the business need.” HC-One worked closely with Acteon
Communication and Learning to ensure that Touch delivered a wide range of mandatory and specialist learning to all colleagues using a blend of channels that creates a rich and dynamic learning environment. The Touchstone LMS allows learning managers to blend and collate these learning resources as required to meet specific learning needs.
Each element of the learning solution was carefully crafted:
l 24 e-learning courses. These underpinned the solution and these were heavily peppered with real world case studies and branching scenarios together with interactive questioning to prompt engagement.
l HC-One TV. Bespoke video-based learning, presented by and featuring HC-One colleagues at a range of locations were used as standalone resources and embedded within more structured e-learning courses.
l Touchstone pictures. Short and high-impact animated mini movies often using amusing and arresting themes and simple game formats were designed to reinforce critical attitude or behaviour messages, and act as teasers to introduce new courses.
l Blended offline activities. Touch e-learning courses have linked offline activities that help learners localise key messages in their working environment. Homes use these activities as the basis of guided supervisions and observations. Conversation cards help managers have guided conversations around key themes.
l Peer-contributed content. This uses video and podcasts to capture and spread insight from colleagues.
Developing a culture of learning Another guiding principle of Touch is to embed learning, rather than just provide training. Early stakeholder engagement revealed that HC-One had inherited a culture where “training is training, but what we actually do in the workplace is different”. Building competent compliance meant overcoming this divide and linking learning messages to the real work experience. This was done in a number of ways. For example, course content is mapped to the requirements of the regulatory bodies and then extended for HC-One’s specific requirements by internal subject matter experts (SMEs). Case studies
In a people-oriented business, online learning, delivered well has resulted in colleagues who have been reinvigorated and empowered to deliver the kindest care
e.learning age february 2014
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