How your choice of system can impact your workforce and business goals
Many businesses in the aged services industry are currently considering how they will walk the tightrope to find a balance between embracing new technology and upskilling an already overwhelmed workforce.
The Technology Skills Shortage
There are many technology solutions available to support aged care businesses across clinical care, human resources and payroll, client management, finance, and reporting and analytics.
These systems have some obvious benefits, including meeting the ever-increasing number of compliance obligations. Shifting business processes from being archaic, manual and sometimes overly complicated to instead reflect best practices, resulting in increased efficiencies, is also an important outcome.
On the flip side, technology, while familiar to some, can be very foreign to others. With a workforce made up of people from diverse regions, backgrounds and educational experiences, the level of technological skills across the aged services industry varies widely.
The Correlation Between Skills Shortages and Business Goals
We work with a range of software vendors at Kx2 and one of our partners, Ceridian, a global provider of HCM Cloud Software, has some great insights on skills shortages in their 2023 Executive Survey: The power of mobilising the boundless workforce.
The survey responses highlight the growing complexity crisis that is being faced by businesses across many industries. While it can be said that all of the workforce challenges highlighted in the survey are extremely relevant to aged care, the important takeaway when it comes to incorporating new technologies is that it adds yet another layer of complexity to an already challenged workforce.
What Can Be Done?
The aged services industry must engage in some new strategies to land in a position where they can gain the benefits of updating their systems and processes to meet best practice and compliance requirements without negatively impacting an already limited pool of overwhelmed workforce resources.
According to Ceridian’s survey, a focus on “proactive upskilling and reskilling” will be vital, with 32 per cent of respondents in Australia and New Zealand identifying technology skills as one of the most lacking in their organisation.
How to Beat Resistance to New Technologies
In our experience, Kx2 has seen that choosing the right fit software that is user-intuitive and has a simple, visual-based user interface is key to getting user adoption in industries like aged care.
Generally, software providers are rising to meet these needs, but it’s the ones going further by providing innovative, tailored benefits that contribute to improving the workforce’s personal situations that can really make a difference in transforming technology resistance in your organisation.
New offerings across various human resources and payroll software platforms, such as allowing staff to draw down on a percentage of wages as soon as they finish an approved shift, earning cashback rewards, and real-time shift payments help put money in people’s pockets faster – an ever-increasing need with the current cost of living pressures.
Attracting and Retaining Talent
A partner we spoke to recently, indicated the uptake of these personalised benefits is small but growing, with this provider seeing around 10 per cent of employees currently using their innovative offering.
The flow-on effect should result in attracting and retaining a workforce who are then willing to take on the technology learning expected across the organisation, in order to access these personal benefits.
It’s possible for businesses to gain the benefits of implementing new technologies in harmony with upskilling their workforce, so long as part of the strategy considers what your workforce wants and needs.
In the current economy, anything that helps reduce the cost-of-living crunch people are feeling will be well sought after and should attract those who are willing to learn how to tackle technology to gain access to those benefits.
Which Software is the Right Fit?
Differing levels of technological skill sets across the workforce in the aged care sector can make it challenging to achieve user adoption of new technology.
Businesses in the industry risk ongoing turnover if this aspect is ignored.
But where do you start and what do you look for? Reach out to us at Kx2 Management Group to get help with finding the sweet spot for your organisation – your workforce and your business will thank you for it.
Karen Keynes (KK), Co-Founder,
Kx2 Management Group www.kx2mgtgroup.com