Owners, developers, regional managers, executive directors love technology. Too often line staff have the opposite perspective
Owners, developers, regional managers, executive directors love technology. Too often line staff have the opposite perspective and have the ability to completely sabotage the implementation of great technology that will help management and help them do a better job.
This is a universal problem not just a senior living project. I was recently talking to Paddu Govindaraj, the CEO and Founder of Carevium, a cloud-based senior living data management platform and Senior Housing Forum partner, about this very problem and he pointed me to a recent Harvard Business Review article titled Employees Will Use Tools They Helped Build.
The gist of the article is to that the single best way to get line and department head staff to buy into new technology is to make sure they are involved in the selection, development and implementation of new technology.
Emerging Technology
In chatting with Paddu he reminded me that when he first founded Carevium he knew next to nothing about assisted living, but lots and lots about technology. This gave him a tremendous advantage in that he had to completely rely on community and corporate staff to tell him what they needed, what they wanted and how it should work.
That was his starting point!
At every milestone in the development process they went back to all levels of the assisted living communities they were working with to make sure it really met the needs of the community. When it didn’t they changed it.
LivWell Health, another Senior Housing Forum partner, also mirrored this development process.
Existing Technology
Paddu spends a lot of time talking to other technology providers in our space and frequently he hears two kinds of stories. The first is where management selects and implements a new technology then imposes it on senior communities and line staff. He tells me that in every case the implementation is a train wreck.
Staff is resistant, they miss training sessions, they don’t remember things and they do things wrong. At the end of the day, the technology does get used, but rarely to its full benefit and inevitably it takes 2-4 times as long.
The Better Way
Carevium and other technology providers have found that implementation of mature products consistently work better when staff up and down the food chain have some ownership in the process of selecting, configuring and implementing new tools. Consistently when this happens staff “get it” and instead of fighting new technology they embrace it.
Steve Moran
