Turning panic to confidence
The people we have in our training sessions come from all walks of life. We recently had a session that included someone who was leading a team of support care workers, let’s call her Kate. The team Kate leads is made up of six care workers the average age of which is over 55, Kate herself being over 60 years old. From a digital confidence perspective, Kate and her team still have their training wheels on.
The session we had was a 3.0 hour face to face session. Right after the half way break, Kate shared “before we start again I just want to thank you for the care and respect you’ve shown in how you deliver the training. You realise we are not all at the same level in terms of what we know and don’t know, and yet somehow you create a safe and positive environment so we can all learn at our own pace.”
Once she got talking, Kate then told us a bit about the work environment her and her team experience. “With the constant changes in technology we all feel a bit overwhelmed and I know many of my team panic when they have to do the tasks required on the technology we are now expected to use. The result is that they avoid the task, get behind on them and that creates even more anxiety which leads to burnout and wellbeing issues”. We can see Kate really cares for her team and is empathising with their experience. Remember, Kate herself is still learning hence her being in the session with us.
She explained, “we had a whole new system rolled out recently. They decided to train one of the team as the champion and we could ask her when we had questions. All good until she left and now everyone is asking me the questions.” She went on, “for many of my team when we are in the field we are alone and have to try and work through what to do. That’s why this training has been so useful. I feel more confident about how to approach coaching my team and help them feel more independent to ‘troubleshoot’ rather than ‘panic’.”
Kate was part of our Training for Care Workers program which empowers healthcare teams through enhanced digital skills.
This is not a new story though - so many times we hear from care workers that their organisation has rolled out a new platform for administration, communications or case management. The training they are given is minimal and often a ‘one size fits all’ approach. That confuses us. How will the organisation get the return on investment they are targeting if they don’t have the adoption rates on these new platforms they forecast? We also see from vendors the assumptions being made about the level of digital skills that the users of the system have - as you heard in Kate’s story that’s not always a reality. Meeting people where they are and taking them on the digital learning journey is a key part of building their confidence and competence.
There is also a real disconnect when new platforms are introduced. Speed of roll out is often the focus, equipping the users of the platform an afterthought. That’s why in our training with clients in this context, we focus on the system and also building the participants’ digital confidence more broadly. This means they can apply the learning to the tasks they need to do on the platform as well as get more from their devices both in their work and personal lives.
Situations like this are where YourLink can help care providers. We’ve seen it countless times and have experience in how to tackle it. So give us a call if your organisation wants to support the Kate’s within your organisation and the teams of care workers.
Contact Richard Scenna, Director by email richard@yourlink.com.au or phone 0408 742 743.
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