Obvious Choice won the People & Culture category in the 2021 Future of Ageing awards for their approach to training as conducted with Anglicare South Australia.
Background
Anglicare SA has a highly skilled dedicated workforce capable of delivering exceptional quality care to consumers living with dementia. In 2020, AnglicareSA delivered two dementia care online learning modules as part of its annual continuing professional development program for aged care staff.
‘AnglicareSA has worked with Obvious Choice for many years, and personally, I have worked with them across different industries. James Stack and his team are the elite professionals in the Learning and Development contemporary learning space. They offer tailored, value add solutions and are always across best practice. Their research into how individuals and teams learn is quite groundbreaking, and they offer practical options based on this research and their experience’.
Sharyn Osborn Executive General Manager People and Culture.
Little and often using Forget Me Not microlearning app
To help employees continuously build their dementia care skills AnglicareSA worked alongside Obvious Choice to innovate with a ‘little and often’ learning delivery approach. Over an 8-week window, employees were nudged with 5-minute dementia care scenarios. This provided Carers extra practice responding to virtual consumers who were displaying signs of delusion, agitation, aggression or at risk of wandering.
Employees got enormous value from a few minutes of learning each shift and reflected “the small bursts of training were a real-time saver” and the repeated practice attempts built their confidence. The ‘little and often’ approach trialled at AnglicareSA is backed by neuroscience and HR research by Josh Bersin on optimal training delivery techniques for the modern worker.
Easy and Convenient
All staff found learning via the Forget Me Not microlearning app easy and straightforward.
Rather than roster employees off to attend classroom training sessions or retake the 30-minute online learning modules, AnglicareSA encouraged employees to find 5 minutes during their shift to learn on their mobile phone.
Personalisation
The microlearning experience was designed to meet employees where they’re at in their journey to dementia care competence. When employees struggled with virtual consumer scenarios, rich adaptive feedback helped bridge knowledge gaps. Retrieval practice, a neuroscience process that provides employees with multiple opportunities to practise how to respond and deliver safe, quality care to dementia consumers, led to increased employee confidence.
Employees who demonstrated competence the first time they encountered a scenario were stretched with a variant scenario a few days later. In this way, each employee’s journey to dementia care knowledge mastery was personalised. Some Aged Care staff were able to master the scenarios in a couple of weeks whilst others took a little longer. Personalisation meant people who needed more practice were able to move at a pace that matched their current competence. This adaptive learning is not possible with traditional online learning modules.
Actionable insights to impact
By upskilling employees with microlearning and innovating with learning analytics, AnglicareSA were able to provide more coaching opportunities for frontline Carers on dementia care.
Obvious Choice Managing Director James Stack said the transformation to a microlearning app with powerful analytics makes it easier for aged care providers to continuously develop staff and quickly close knowledge gaps.
A key business benefit of using the Forget Me Not microlearning app is getting analytics on what staff know and don’t know about dementia care. Unlike Forget Me Not, traditional online learning doesn’t show us what staff originally knew or didn’t know or how they mastered dementia care knowledge over time.” he said.
This analytics provides insights for senior clinicians and Residential Managers to provide extra coaching and mentoring to staff who need more support.
Where to next?
On the back of the Dementia Care microlearning campaign, AnglicareSA plan to rollout cultural safety training using Forget Me Not. Frontline staff think the Forget Me Not App would be super good for nearly any clinical scenario or a range of other skills too.
Register now for a free demo!Sponsored by Obvious Choice
