The fourth quarter of 2006 brought a stark realization. Although my colleague and I were working hard to update and deliver the annual mandatory courses for our long-term care facility, the reality was that only thirty-five percent of the over 500 employees of the facility were attending the classroom courses. Up to twenty-five class sessions per month were being scheduled to cover the three shifts. Adding more classroom sessions per month did not seem to be a reasonable approach to impact the attendance rate. There was high frustration with the state of affairs and it was obvious that a different solution was needed.
An administrative intern made me aware of a trade journal article describing an on-line education program through Upstairs Solutions. The article described a problem situation similar to the problem being faced by our organization. I was impressed with the results achieved in the author’s organization and decided to do further research about on-line education programs.
After several months of due-diligence research, Upstairs Solutions became the top candidate to provide an on-line education program for our organization. The course offerings were of high quality, the computer requirements were compatible with our organization’s computer system, and the cost was reasonable when compared with the cost for doing internal classroom courses (and when compared with other on-line course services).
The Upstairs Solutions program was initiated in March 2007 with eight courses mandated to be completed by all the staff by December 2007. The majority of the staff completed their work by December. There was a small number of individuals (11 individuals, six of whom were part-time or on-call) who were tardy in their completion. Within the first few weeks of January 2008, 100% of the staff completed the eight mandatory courses. This was an exciting accomplishment!
During the implementation of the Upstairs Solutions program, several lessons were learned:
- Changing the oversight of the mandatory education program so the Department Heads share responsibility for managing completion of the courses is a more effective process than having a 2-person Staff Development department manage over 500 employees.
- The instant availability of management reports through the Upstairs Solutions database significantly improves management of the course work and decreases recordkeeping time.
- Employees gain control of their learning opportunities and can complete the work at their convenience.
- Employees develop pride in their accomplishments, whether it is in the fact that they were able to learn the basics of computer use, or in the fact that they completed all the required work before the deadlines.
- Internet access to the courses provides an opportunity to complete the course work outside of the work environment, if an employee chooses to do this work at home.
Overall, utilization of the Upstairs Solutions programs has met the mandatory education need for our facility in a very positive and efficient manner.
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