By Sam Gourley
Well guys, with all the harping on of needing to be good with communication, I'm ashamed to say my latest company blog is 2 months late. I just realised the last one I wrote was in May.... sorry guys, I have been crazy busy! Here are a bunch of memes that will hopefully make up for my lack of good communication.
Welcome to New Staff
We are so stoked to welcome Els, Jess and Sian to the TA team, wonderful to have you guys, we hope you are settling in well and are enjoying your time with us so far!
Also a warm welcome to Felicity Fucher who has recently joined our OT team. Felicity has just seamlessly fit in to our clinic team and seems to be loving her time with us. Many of you (particularly TAs) will get a chance to meet Felicity in the coming weeks and months as she starts doing TA supervision.
Farewell to Leaving Staff
Unfortunately because my blog is so late, some of our work family who have moved on recently won't see our well wishes in this blog, but a special shout out to Rach Anderson and Kim Smith who have recently opened their own OT service in Meridan Plains we wish them well and look forward to keeping close to them as external community referrers to the TA program. Some of you will be lucky enough to keep contact with them as many of their clients have been transitioned to their new business. We wish them all the best.
We also said goodbye to Iyesha who has headed overseas to do some nannying! We hope she has a wonderful time over there.
Results of Staff Satisfaction Survey
In my last blog I shared the link for our Q2 staff satisfaction survey. I'm ashamed that I haven't given you guys any feedback on this one (although I have briefed the OTs with some things relevant to them in particular). We had 19 members of the team complete the survey, thats 47% of us. I'd love to increase this number on the next one guys, staff satisfaction is really important to us and 47% is a decent sample size for 40 staff. But I would love to hear from each of you how we can make the company better and I promise that I read and consider every single comment and piece of feedback. Next time I'll try to give you guys more reminders via email and our facebook group.
Here are some key takeaways:
93% of you love your work and are excited to go to work each day (marked Strongly Agree or Somewhat Agree).
88% of you feel that you are progressing in your career at a rate your happy with.
94% (all except 1 person) feel that their pay is fair for the work they do.
100% of people who responded feel their manager is supportive and helpful in assisting them to do their job.
84% of you feel that your job is challenging in a way that helps you grow without being overwhelmed (the other three respondents responded with 'neutral').
Our most loved PD activities in order are: 1. Clinical Supervision, 2. PD Night, 3. Peer Supervision, 4. One-on-one informal conversations, 5. Group Supervision and 6. Personal PD activities.
84% of you feel optimistic about opportunities to advance your career in this job (2 people responded 'neutral' and 1 person with 'somewhat disagree')
94% of you find that your peer supervisor, senior Therapist or senior TA help you solve problems and maximise your effectiveness.
100% noted that the Administration and Management Team are understanding and responsive to your needs.
Comments and Feedback in the last section:
There was 14 responses to this section, they were all excellent feedback but there is too much to note here, and so here are the highlights:
Communication amongst the team has improved (except for my company blog obviously...) and quite a few comments reflected that things had significantly improved in this area.
Frequent and repeated praise of Zoe in particular (we know she is pretty special)!
Frequent PD opportunities are great for those who are attending.
Documentation is hard to keep up with and sometimes can stretch into unpaid time (I hear you, we have all been there, I would make sure that if this applies to you, speak to Zoe or I and we can give some tips and strategies for keeping on top of documentation so that it doesn't stretch into unpaid time).
Suggestions of changes to make to OT processes in particular (which we have recently actioned in response to this feedback).
We will do another survey in October, so if you missed out on giving feedback that will be another chance - but of course you can always send your feedback in an email to me and I will make sure its attended to right away (hoping this next meme doesnt apply to us)!
PD Nights
We hope you guys enjoyed our recent couple of PD events, July was Carla Anderson (Psych) which I missed but heard raving reviews for! Also, Dr Atwoods PDA online webinar for Aug, always great to learn from the best!
We have scheduled PD nights for the remainder of the year and this is how they look (Make sure you keep an eye on Cliniko as dates may change):
12th September - Interventions for ADHD - Hosted by Tayla Gesch (OT)
10th October - Interventions for Supporting Young Children - Hosted by Rach Birthisel (OT)
5th December - Interventions to Support Toileting Independence - Hosted by me!
We are looking at potentially moving PD night to bi-monthly next year, just to hopefully enable more people to plan ahead and make it for those nights (there seems to be a core group that make it, and others we don't get to see very often). Open to feedback on this! It is a great, free opportunity to refine your skills so please try to make it if you can.
Btw: When I was 10 (and still had black hair and my voice hadn't broken yet) I played Danny Zucco from Grease in a school musical... It didn't go well and I still have trauma to this day like 27 years later! The memory came back to me when I saw this meme lol.
Changes to Supervision for TAs
Pretty soon we will be looking at adjustments to supervision between OTs and TAs to make this more time efficient. These are in process but we will let you know what the changes are as soon as they are finalised.
Kindred Kids Update
Thanks for hanging in with us on this rollercoaster! We are currently in the final stages of negotiation for this centre in Redcliffe (yep same one we were going to buy before). We are really optimistic that its all going to go through but hey this is what rollercoasters are all about! FYI, we are chasing someone to join our Kindred Kids program who we can train up to become an Early Intervention Practitioner, with the goal of them taking over the Sunny Coast Bridging program next year. This is a great opportunity but the candidate needs to have a relevant undergraduate degree (allied health, primary education, early childhood education), have expirience with kids on the Spectrum, keen to do some intensive training, and also are available for full time work. If you guys know anyone who might suit this, please pass on my email address. We will probably start advertising late this week or next week but I would much prefer to hire from within our own networks, so if you guys know someone, send them my way!
Christmas Function
Please save the date! November 17th from 3pm at Cotton Tree Park. We have a catering company who are going to do a massive grazing platter and we will arrange some music and we can enjoy an afternoon together. It will be nice and laid back! BYO drinks if you like, but if you do also BYO a strategy to get home without driving lol.
Anyway guys that's us for another company blog. Thanks for all you do to support your clients and the important work we are doing, we appreciate each and every one of you and that you are constantly going above and beyond in your work. Look forward to checking in with you again next month!