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Key things to help you everyday

Eight steps to good, fair decision-making

The role of a Village Professional can at times feel like walking a tightrope.

In the broadest terms, the basic role of a village manager is to deliver, or facilitate the services promised under the operator’s contract to residents living within their community. Gosh, if only it was that easy!

In reality, every day Village Professionals are balancing residents needs and expectations against legislative and contractual agreements, sometimes in the absence of clear parameters.

And as a result, Village Professionals often find themselves in positions where they have to make decisions – and big ones. 

In my experience, the Village Professionals who make the best decisions generally follow eight steps, which you can use as a guide. 

Here are eight questions to ask yourself before your next big decision.

  1. Is the answer in the legislation?
  2. Is the answer in the contract/residence agreement?
  3. Is there an organisational policy/position guideline around this matter?
  4. What will be the impact on the operations/budget?
  5. What will be the impact on the resident or other residents?
  6. Does this decision require further consultation with others?
  7. Common sense – does it pass the ‘pub test’?
  8. Does it fit in with the values of the organisation?
    (Be careful not to bias with your personal values here.)

When these steps aren’t bearing fruit, you may also consider:

  • Whether you may need to gather some further information; and/or,
  • Are there alternative positions/solutions?

One of the most important lessons in my career, after working on and in more than 200 villages, has been to make sure that my decisions are thoughtful.

I’m constantly asking whether I’ve followed due process, considered all angles, being transparent and can explain the why of my decision.

As a side note, I have also learnt sometimes my decisions may need to be reviewed or amended. Having the ability to revisit a decision (even if it eventually comes out the same) shows respect, and your residents will certainly appreciate it.

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Key things to help you everyday Latest industry developments

Have you heard about COTA’s Aged Care System Navigator?​

COTA Australia provides advocacy, information and services to all older Australia to promote, improve and protect the wellbeing of older people in our country.​

https://www.cota.org.au/

One of its recent initiatives is the Aged Care Navigator Service Trial.

This includes:

  • Assistance to contact My Aged Care
  • Help to fill out forms
  • Community workshops and information sessions 

Led by COTA Australia, the trial is designed to test different services and activities that may help people learn more about Australian Government-funded aged care services and how to best access them.

COTA has partnered with 30 organisations as part of the pilot and is evaluating 64 different Navigator trials across the country.

It’s a valuable resource for Village Professionals and your residents, and it’s available to older people, their families, friends and anyone else who wants to link with aged care supports.

For more information on the program and to share with your residents, click here.

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Key things to help you everyday

Microsoft Teams – An easy and essential village management tool

We were talking with Comwire IT the other day about our own IT setups and making everything simpler.

We agreed one of the best tools is Microsoft Teams.

It’s a software application to make your life so much easier in working with your often remote ‘team’? We love it and you will too.

It is built into Microsoft 365, formally Office 365, which most of us use (it’s in Microsoft Office Tools).

Microsoft Teams allows you to have a small window open on your desktop to send the equivalent of SMS messages rather than emails to your team members. So it is instantly visible and doesn’t require the formality of an email.

Think about these situations:

  • You simply want to ask if the gardeners have arrived
  • You have teams that may need to share or access resident or service provider contact lists when not onsite – send a Teams message
  • You need to collaborate on the formulation of a policy or would benefit from sharing the same document management systems – chat back and forth

This can all be done simply with Teams.

Like all technologies, there are some additional really good things that can be done with Teams.

The best idea is to have a specialist come in and review your systems and get you ‘match fit’ with your technology.

We are now supporting Comwire IT because they specialise in our sector.

They understand that technology isn’t your core business – people are.

It’s the tips that can make a big difference on how software works. Here is a one or two that COMWIRE IT gave us for Teams:

·       Creating a new line and bullet points in a chat message.

Need to create a new line of text in a Teams chat but getting frustrated when you hit the “return” key, it sends your message off to the recipient and you hadn’t finished your conversation?

Hold Shift key and press Return key, it will move you to a new line.

·       Need to create a couple of bullet points in your chat?

Simple shortcut is hit the ‘hyphen / dash key’ and then hit the ‘space bar’

Check out Teams today – you won’t look back.

If you need someone to review your IT system to make your life easier, check out Comwire IT.

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Key things to help you everyday Latest industry developments Things to watch

South Australian Retirement Village Act review discussion paper issued​

Late last week the Office of Ageing Well released the 52 page discussion paper as the next step of the Retirement Village Act 2016 review. 

The review is a requirement of the Act, which commenced in 2018.

The RV Act and its regulations, frame the operations of the State’s 534 registered retirement villages, housing around 26,400 people.

The review will consider whether the Act meets its intended objectives, including:

  • clarifying the rights and responsibilities of both operators and residents,
  • enhancing information disclosure requirements,
  • providing tighter definitions, and
  • ensuring sufficient consumer protection.

A two-part discussion paper has been developed to facilitate the review with stakeholders and community members encouraged to provide feedback on the sections that interest them.

The review will also consider other jurisdictions’ retirement village legislation to support the further development of best practice processes in South Australia.

A report on outcomes of the review, including community feedback will be provided to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing for tabling in Parliament later in 2021.

Director for Office of Ageing Well is encouraging all South Australians with an interest in this area to have their say here. 

Submissions close on Friday 26 March 2021 at 5.00pm (ACDT).

The DCM Institute team also encourages South Australian operators to review the discussion paper, interact with their industry peak body or other operators and finally make their own individual submission. 

Your voice will count!

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Things to watch

New Year means new opportunities for the village sector

2020 was one hell of a year, thanks largely to COVID-19. The good news is the sector responded in a way we should all be very proud of.

We hope the festive season was kind to your community, your team and yourself. And to our colleagues and communities impacted by the COVID outbreaks that were in lockdown over this period, please know our thoughts were with you.

Encouragingly though, interest in retirement living remains high.

In fact, data from our sister company Villages.com.au shows interest is in fact up 9% from the same time last year.

Over 4,000 people searched for a village on Monday alone!

The sector should be buoyed by this, and ready to hit the ground running.

While we don’t have a crystal ball, we at the DCM Institute believe 2021 will offer a range of opportunities including:

  • Operators further enhancing learnings and innovations developed thanks to COVID in 2020, working with residents
  • Royal Commission to outline and promote benefits of retirement living sector
  • DCM Institute continuing to expand tools and support, and aim for best practice operations across the nation

It is indeed an exciting time to be in retirement living.

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Key things to help you everyday Latest industry developments

Royal Commission spells out 2021/22 retirement village strategy

Those of you who have been following the Royal Commission into Aged Care will be aware that the Commissioner’s Final Report, and the much-awaited recommendations, are due. 

And the opportunities for retirement villages are exciting. 

The Counsel Assisting Recommendations from last November call for both the federal and state governments – at Cabinet level – to support what is essentially the retirement village model.

In particular, we’ve been interested by paragraphs 165 to 170 at the beginning of their 450-page report. These paragraphs state:

A key element of the strategy should be about encouraging older Australians to take active steps to preserve and maintain their own health and wellbeing in later life, with the Government supporting people to take the first step.

There should be an integrated system for long term support and care of older people and their ongoing engagement with the rest of the community.

This requires the involvement of all levels of government and establishing linkages between aged care and other relevant domains, such as:

  1. the broader health sector and welfare and community services
  2. affordable and age-appropriate housing

Such a system should be the focus of a National Cabinet Reform Committee on Ageing and Older Australians.

It adds: The State and Territory governments have a critical role to play.

As you can see, a case could be made for the Royal Commission endorsing villages as a solution for ageing well.

The Final Report is released on 26 February.

If retirement villages are recognised and endorsed as a solution for ageing well, the world can be a very different place for village professionals, and most importantly our residents.

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Key things to help you everyday

DCM Institute committed to supporting the sector in 2021

At the DCM Institute, we are committed to supporting both new and experienced retirement living professionals in your journey. We look forward to continuing to provide professional development activities that will reinforce knowledge, enlighten and stimulate different ways of thinking. 

In 2021 we plan to focus on key topics, including:

  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Valuations
  • Insurance
  • Asset Management

We will support many of our participants as you navigate the changing legislation and help you better understand the benefits of engaging in the national accreditation scheme.

We will continue to offer topics via our Knowledge Centre Portal and webinars for those in regional areas or those that like short bursts of learning.

We will also strive to engage with the sector and return to some form of face-to-face engagement throughout the year, restrictions allowing.

Help us help you in 2021 

To finish our first edition for the new year, we thought we’d put a call out to our members to let us know what else they want to learn about in 2021.

Consultation and engagement have always been key to what we’ve done at the DCMI Institute.

So, feel free to click the link below or reply to this email, and let us know about topics you would like to know more about or see discussed in the newsletter during 2021.

We’re always keen to hear from you.

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Key things to help you everyday Things to watch

Village sales are booming, but now’s no time to be complacent​

The DCM Institute team regularly speaks with village professionals around the country, and we’ve been pleased to hear about the strong sales cycle experienced by many in the sector.

Some operators have reported as many as four sales per week, and many now have no vacancies.

This is great news, and supports results of a study our sister-company DCM Research conducted with Australia Online Research (AOR) from March through to July.

The study identified 43% of people aged 60+ are feeling an increased sense of vulnerability as a result of COVID, prompting 20% to reconsider the suitability of their own home.

This is a huge opportunity for retirement villages.

Complacency creeps in

While a strong sales market is a good thing, there can be some negative consequences.

It’s so easy for a sales team to fall into complacency when things are going well, and disciplined practices we implement in harder times like follow-up calls and engagement activities can easily fall by the wayside.

One of the biggest mistakes a village can make is to stop looking for process improvements or ways to engage new potential residents.

Let’s not forget, it takes potential residents up to an average 18 months to make a final decision.

So even in the good times, it’s vital to keep momentum going. 

Lead management

One key area to focus on is lead management.

Recent research indicates up to 97% of prospective clients start their search for a village on the web. Many of these people will visit your website several times before making an enquiry.

It’s worth considering how you engage with prospects who are spending time on your website, and how this knowledge may then benefit your sales process.

When a prospect enquires on a website, we collect general information – name, phone, email address and timeframe to move, for example.

This is helpful, but what if we could gain a deeper insight into the prospect?

Give a little, get a lot

The use of gated offers, the opportunity to download an e-book, interview, checklist or research, not only helps prospects make their decision to contact you, but it positions your village as the expert, and sets the tone for a helpful, transparent relationship.

You can also use this to collect further information such as housing preferences, locations of interest and hobbies/interests, to get to know the prospect on a deeper level.

This insight is gold to salespeople.

It lets them build rapport quickly and importantly provides an opportunity to tailor service and engagement activities to each prospect.

Furthermore, if a sales person is able to see the number and type of interactions a prospect has had on the website prior or during their engagement it allows them to prioritise and add further value to the client’s journey. 

Always be on the lookout for opportunities

Whether the market is booming or bust, we should always be looking for opportunities to bring the client to their decision sooner and aiming to create strong, engaged waitlists.

Investment in these types of lead management strategies always pays off.

Even when the times are good, it’s the one-percenters that count.

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Key things to help you everyday

Christmas is coming, but will your residents’ parcels arrive in time?

After the year we’ve had, it’s fair to say plenty of us are hanging out for Christmas.

With just seven weeks to go, we thought it was worth researching the postal cut-off dates to make sure everyone’s parcels arrive with plenty of time to spare.

This year we’ve set a few reminders, and it’s worth sharing these dates with your residents who might want to send parcels of their own.

Australia Post guidelines

Sending within Australia:

Send Parcel Post by Saturday 12 December 2020.
Send Express Post by Saturday 19 December 2020.

For sending letters within Australia this Christmas, standard delivery timeframes apply.

Sending internationally:

Delivery dates to send your Christmas parcels and letters overseas are listed below. Circumstances can change rapidly, so these dates may be subject to change. Also, note that time in customs is not included in our delivery time estimate and is outside of Australia Post’s control.

Recommended final sending dates for major destinations (Standard Post):

USA, Canada, UK, Europe: Monday 16 November 2020

Most of Asia: Monday 23 November 2020

New Zealand: Friday 27 November 2020.

You can find more information on the Australia Post website here, but as is always the case with this sort of thing it pays to err on the side of caution!

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Covid-19 Key things to help you everyday

What’s ageism got to do with it?

The COVID-19 pandemic has unfortunately shone the spotlight on some of deep-seated ageist attitudes towards older people.

As village professionals it’s important to understand how we can offer support against this.

Next month, the DCM Institute will be running a session on this very topic with Jane Mussared, chief executive of COTA SA, and Mike Rungie, Director of the Global Centre of Modern Ageing, joining us for the discussion.

As a prelude, we recommend tuning into an upcoming session from Every AGE Counts.

In what is bound to be a great discussion between Ashton Applewhite and Jane Caro, this session will cover the impact ageism is having in today’s society and what we as age service professionals should be doing to minimise it.

The session takes place on Tuesday, November 24.

You can learn more here.