Innovation Projects: Homing in on the right problem

1. Recruitment - Care workforce recruitment and attraction - enabling care home providers to better recruit staff

2. Retention - Care provider capacity building - enabling care home providers to develop, upskill and increase the value and motivation of their employees

3. Effectiveness - Care provider operational effectiveness – enabling care home providers to improve service delivery, scheduling and commercial impact

4. Wellbeing - Care patient improved experience – enabling care home providers to improve customer experience and improve customer satisfaction

Each month we spotlight one of the projects, describing how Care workers, entrepreneurs and experienced change-mentors are collaborating to develop transformational and pragmatic answers to realise opportunities in care.

The intergenerational workforce

Problem statement

With each project, the teams’ first task is to collaborate to define their problem statement that is as a jumping of point to co-design solutions that are relevant, applicable and scaleable across the care home sector.

Andy explains why this is critical to successful innovation:

John Mathers, HWL advisor and former CEO of the Design Council, met the team mentor and entrepreneur to explore their project and its proposition.

Watch the interview

1. Why are you excited by this opportunity?

Shain: “Importantly, we’ve met with Bandrum from an early stage. We’re not just vendors trying to sell technology, rather we are working together to understand the issues which technology might address.

A team that brings different perspectives to the situation – a nice rounded group, getting on the ground to really understand things.

It’s a six-month project overall…initially getting the stats and the knowledge behind the industry and really getting to know the Bandrum team. Now it’s about focus. We’re creating a ‘Problem Statement’ initially – the important thing is to build trust so we genuinely work as a partnership.

2. What do you think will be your biggest challenge?

Andy: “We need to understand the holistic world in which we are operating. We know that technology can help to solve human problems but the key is in understanding the problem.

Too often teams dive into looking for solutions before they truly understand the problem. That’s why we spend as much time developing the ‘Problem Statement’ so that we can really, together, start to think about the solutions.

Ultimately the intention is to make sure we are all aligned on what we see as the outcomes. Also, can we learn from Bandrum and develop ideas which can be taken across the sector.”

3. How will you measure impact?

Shain: “Understanding – and agreeing - the measures we can impact is vital right from the beginning. If we can solve probably the most front-line problem that they have – the issue of recruitment and retention – we can build a platform which will enable us to address many other problems.

We want to get change which is measurable and which will last.”