Being able to communicate efficiently is an important skill, but being able to managing staff communication effectively is a form of art which often takes years to master! It helps us to pass information to other people, express ourselves, navigate through tough times and understand other people’s perspective. Wherever you are or whatever you’re doing, you’ll need to communicate in different forms with people around you.
In an aged care organisation, positive communication when working with a people-centric approach for your residents is important. When your residents can communicate well with their loved ones, carers and lifestyle managers, they will be able to maintain their self-confidence, a higher quality of life and will be more engaged with the community.
Effective communication will also benefit your organisation as a whole by enhancing employee morale and productivity, helping to avoid mistakes, facilitate scheduling, increasing client satisfaction and strengthening the commitment of your organisation to its mission.
Here are our tips for improving communication in your aged care organisation.
Tips for managing staff communication effectively
Organisations that fail to have consistent, clear and open communication between staff members and management, often experience mistakes, low productivity, poor employee satisfaction and lower quality services.
The impact of ineffective communication in aged care can negatively affect a resident’s experience, and it can also contribute to a financial loss in the organisation’s facility as a whole. Here are four tips to ensure effective communication between aged care staff.
Assess Your Current Method of Communication
When working on a communication and engagement strategy for your staff, you need to assess your current methods of communication, what is working for your teams and more importantly – what is not working??
You can create a detailed list of the negative impacts that poor communication has brought out in your facility. You can also ask for feedback from your staff to know their pain points with your current communication methods. It’s important to assess the communication between all levels of staff.
After the assessment, your team creates an internal communications strategy. This is also an excellent opportunity to be an active listener to work with your staff members and get their feedback. And align your strategy based on what works for them. Giving your staff the chance to share their thoughts can create a positive relationship and boost their confidence in the workplace.
Give Your Aged Care Workers a Voice
Similar to what we mentioned above, when you give your staff a chance to share their opinions and show that you value their input, the communication between your teams will improve.
When each individual can express concerns, suggestions and personal feedback, they gain confidence in themselves and the whole team. And this may lessen workplace stress such as conflicts between your employees, employee turnover and absenteeism.
In Australia’s aged care industry, there have been increasing workplace issues in aged care facilities, including workplace stress, conflict with a colleague, conflict with a manager, alleged bullying, and loss of confidence. Situations like this often lead to employee’s quitting their role. It is estimated that the sector’s workforce will need to increase two or threefold before 2050 to provide care to an aging population. Along with the ageing population, the workforce is also ageing, and they will likely retire in the next 10 to 15 years. The decreasing numbers of care workers highlighted the looming crisis in the industry’s workforce, which was included in the Royal Commission’s final report last March 2021. They listed several recommendations for the government and the providers in the sector.
Streamline Internal Communications
In any aged care organisation, there are protocols set to ensure that the quality of care given to clients is safe and exceptional. That’s why it is crucial to streamline communication channels within your teams to avoid delays and lessen paper-based communication. In this way, your carers and other aged care staff can focus on delivering real-time and high-quality care to your residents instead of processing traditional methods of communication.
CareVision empowers aged care organisations and your teams to achieve this goal. Through a care worker app and the CareVision Management platform which is simple and easy-to-use, you can use it as your primary communication resources within your facility. It’s also easy to message employees in real-time when changes occur to promote transparency in your teams’ activities or tasks. This will improve employee trust and engagement that creates a positive community of carers in your facility.
Encourage Mobile Collaboration for Effective Communication Between Aged Care Workers
People heavily rely on mobile phones to work and communicate with just about anyone. So, your teams should be encouraged to collaborate and communicate using their smartphones that they can bring anywhere, too!
Care Worker Mobile Apps are developed to provide care workers with real-time access to Smart Scheduling, Travel Calculations & Route Optimisation, Live tracking updates, client data, submitting leave and even personal case notes from other care workers assigned to your client.
By using mobile phones to collaborate and efficiently communicate across the organisation and your clients, there is less time consumed doing administrative tasks and documentation processes that can now be done in a mobile solution.
Scale your organisation’s communication tools today.
If you’re looking for software or a mobile app to help you to streamline your staff communications, learn more about CareVision or you can book a demo here.