Switzer Home

Overview

The Claud Switzer Memorial Home provides relief and welfare for older people within the Kaitaia region.  Established in 1950, it has grown from 15 beds to 72, and has 70 staff.  The vision at Switzer is to provide leadership in the care of older people, and a range of services for their changing and diverse needs.

The Productivity Challenge

The challenges for Switzer include:

• Finding ways to organise their physical environment and workforce structure to respond to the growth in demand for their services.
• Reducing injuries to staff and residents caused by manual lifting of patients.
• Retaining staff, which is made difficult being in a rural location and managing capped levels of funding.
• Finding suppliers to service equipment in a rural location.

The Productivity Achievement

The management team has focused on measuring what matters, in consultation with staff, and found that financial performance, staff retention, morale and participation have all definitely improved.

• Enabling staff to participate in decision making builds commitment to policies and practices.
• Staff are often the best people to identify improvements in work practices.
• Teams work best with a shared sense of purpose and people develop cohesion when they can have fun.
• Developing strong networks can maximise opportunities and lead industry development.
• Collaborating with stakeholders enhances organisational learning and builds strong communities.
• Innovative thinking helps to overcome problems caused by remote location and increases organisational effectiveness.
• Strong relationships with residents and their families are vital for achieving Switzer's vision.
• New equipment changes the way staff approach tasks, thus requires training and patience.
• It is important to advocate the benefits of new work approaches as staff need encouragement to change work practices.
• Timely measurement of the benefits of new processes is vital for calculating the return on investment.
• Investment in new equipment can be done incrementally.

The full Switzer Home productivity case studies are available as HTML and PDF

• Encouraging Innovation and the Use of Technology [HTML]
• Encouraging Innovation and the Use of Technology [PDF, 2 Pages, 1,800kB]
• Networking and Collaboration [HTML]
• Networking and Collaboration [PDF, 2 Pages, 590kB]
• Organising Work [HTML]
• Organising Work [PDF, 2 Pages, 548kB]