Silverchair Learning Systems

Americare

Americare by the Numbers:

Employees: 2,929

Courses Completed in 2010: 93,496

Compliance Rate, 2010: 92%

Client
For 30 years, Americare has provided Skilled Nursing, Assisted Living, Independent Living, and Alzheimer’s Care to seniors throughout the Midwestern and Southern United States. Americare operates 100 communities located in Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee.

Nearly 3,000 employees require training across Americare’s organization, and the company implemented online learning in 2007.

Challenges
Training methods and tracking varied by community. “Our Orientation was organized in a binder with various videos and supplemental handouts,” says Jean Summers, VP of Operations for Assisted Living. “We also had a monthly in-service guide with some guidance and a few memo pages, but we left it to the presenter to fill in the blanks.” Americare did track compliance, but it was done by hand and “spot checks” by the Operations Team. “We noticed compliance issues with training that were missed for a time period,” says Jean. Peggy Stanley, Americare’s Corporate Safety Director, also found training to be a challenge from a branch office: “We used packets with written post-tests. It was complicated to present and follow up on the results,” she says.

Steve Hatlestad, VP of Operations for Skilled Nursing, noticed that despite the effort put into training, the traditional method wasn’t interesting for employees. “Employees got bored and attendance was so-so at best,” he says.

Americare was also spending a significant amount on CEU training for Administrators and nurses, who traveled to conferences or association meetings to receive continuing education, especially those who worked in the more rural communities.

“With our ever-changing professions, we knew we had to improve our communication and education,” says Steve.

Results
Americare uses an innovative, employee-driven process when revaluating new initiatives. The Honor Club is comprised of exemplary employees from all levels and departments within the organization; the Club’s Administrators and DONs were the ones to research and promote the idea of bringing in Silverchair. “Their participation made the implementation and roll-out easier, with these individuals acting as champions for the system,” says Jean.

Once their system was launched, Americare saw positive results quickly. Jean says, “The system has worked great, and the best surprise was the ease of implementation! We were able to establish monthly in-services easily, with compliance growing each month.”

Americare Compliance Rates

Americare employees also enjoy the new way of training: “They love the ease of the system,” Jean says. “We had initial concerns over the use of the computer, but those have been dispelled. They can easily teach each other, and the new generation of employees love it.” Peggy, one of the skeptics regarding online learning, has grown to like the system as well. “I have been very pleasantly surprised by how easy it is and very happy with the results.” Employees also like that the system “allows maximum flexibility to get the required courses done at a time convenient for them,” Steve says.

Americare has also experienced savings related to CEU training; according to Jean, Administrators and DONs take about 6 hours of CE courses on Silverchair that result in a $16,000 savings per year. Americare has also saved about 1-2 hours per employee per month by using Silverchair instead of traditional in-services, multiplied by 3,100 employees. Employee orientation is now more streamlined as well now that information and courses are online: “Administrators now know that the new employee has the courses and information needed to begin their job,” Jean says.

Americare Courses Completed:

Americare also uses Silverchair’s Authoring Tool to develop their own custom courses; Peggy creates modules that assist with workers’ compensation programming, which allows her team to track compliance on follow-up training.

Conclusion                                   
Americare successfully used online to accomplish its goals of streamlined, consistent training and communication while engaging employees and saving time and money. Clay Crosson, Americare’s President and COO, is pleased with the growth that the system has encouraged: “It’s been a good solution for us,” he says.

Americare continues to use the system to accomplish other organization goals. “We’re continuing to look for new ways to use Silverchair,” Jean says. “For us it’s become an employee engagement tool from the first day of employment, each month with training, and now we use surveys and courses to help with reinforcement of our company values.”