Using DVD's to Enhance Orientation and Staff Training - Lutheran Aged Care Albury

Everyone knows the importance of bringing staff, particularly new staff, into contact with organisation leaders to emphasise organisational values, mission and strategic directions. We also know how difficult this can become as the organisation grows. Geographic isolation, high staff turnover, increasing services can be factors that limit the opportunity of busy Board members, CEO's and other executive staff.

Whilst nothing is likely to ever replace face to face contact with leaders, other strategies can be used to enhance or reinforce the messages given to us at staff orientation days and meetings. One such strategy could be the Lutheran Aged Care approach of developing a specific DVD for all staff.

Chief Executive Officer, Brian Elliott, and his team at Lutheran Aged Care understood that staff orientation days are busy days that ask employees to absorb a great deal of information and this sometimes means that messages can get blurred and information lost. It was also realised that if for some reason an employee could not make their scheduled orientation day then vital messages about the organisation could be lost until the next orientation day could be scheduled.

When considering these issues it was realised that most if not all employees these days have access to a home computer and if not the ubiquitous DVD player and so Lutheran Aged Care decided to write and produce their own DVD that could be given to employees at the time of employment. They are able to take the DVD home and watch it at their leisure to gain first-hand knowledge about the organisation. The DVD covers the following areas:

• History of the organisation
• Size and extent of services, residential and community
• Discussion about modern trends in aged care
• Pastoral care and links to the Lutheran Church
• The importance of supporting staff - our services are our staff
• Importance of staff development
• Supporting staff outside of work, mentally, physically
• Salary packaging
• The importance of having fun at work
• Messages from the service managers - a brief insight into what each service does. Putting faces to names.
• Role of the volunteers
• The last message from the CEO stresses that Lutheran Care provides people with their last place of residence and although clinical care is important the importance of lifestyle cannot be underestimated and that each and every person in care is an individual, a fact that must be understood and respected by all Lutheran Aged Care Staff.

CEO Brian Elliott explains the history of Lutheran Aged Care Services

A great deal of thought was given to the look and feel for the DVD. The Lutheran team considered that it needed to have a `homelike feel'. All in all something that conveyed the right messages without giving the impression of grandstanding and or wasting money.

Another important factor is that because the DVD captures the names and faces of current managers it has the potential to become out of date very quickly. Designing the DVD to appear seamless yet provide for "cut and paste" segmentation was critical. Consequently if a manager leaves Lutheran Aged Care a simple new `two minute' segment can be re-shot and inserted.

The video was made available to staff in November 2008 and anecdotal evidence suggests that staff both enjoy and find the DVD informative. Whilst the DVD is not the only contributing factor, results from the QPS Employee Satisfaction Tool indicate significant improvement with the Information and Communication section jumping from 71.2% in 2008 to 76.8% 2009 for the Yallaroo High Care facility.

Following the initial success of the DVD it has been decided to add in a new topic to cover use of the call bell, telephone and in house fire alert systems.