How intranets can support Care Homes
Some sectors have felt the full burden of the pandemic and one in particular, our care home sector has been on the front line. With ever changing guidelines to communicate to staff in order to, continue to provide the highest level of care for their residents and keeping in communication with resident’s families and wider community, the care sector has, amongst everything else, had its communications tested to capacity. Here at Sorce, we have seen a sharp rise in care homes needing to quickly implement intranets and this blog explores what the immediate benefits can be to help anyone in the care home sector.
Provide an easily accessible central location for updates
Our Engage intranet software can be accessed by anyone on any device. This is great for care home staff who can access key information quickly on their mobiles, tablets, laptops or other devices. When new documents or content are created, the person creating the document simply @tags groups or individuals and push notifications are triggered, meaning all staff receive a notification on their mobile.
To access the intranet remotely, users simply download an app through Google or Apple stores and pair their device with a QR code.
Instant access to important documentation
Engage integrates with Microsoft 365 and many other leading business systems, meaning all your staff can access and read documentation through your intranet without the need for Microsoft licences.
Intranets are also great at helping you create a secure document management structure and can store from a few documents to millions. It’s scalable to your business needs.
If working practices need to change quickly or there are urgent messages that must be read by all employees, you can set the document as mandatory read to ensure everyone reads it. This also gives you a record of who has read it. This is a very powerful tool that can be used in many other ways, such as helping to onboard new staff members remotely.
Help reduce and automate processes
Intranet forms can easily be created to reduce, improve, or automate daily business processes. Using intranet forms for health questionnaires, equipment, holidays and other everyday requests can streamline your processes, taking out paperwork and reducing the number of e mails with attachments. You can also report on these processes to get an instant overview and for compliance. A new form can be created in minutes to respond to a new need. We can show how this can make your business more efficient, freeing up staff time and help you create them so you can get started quickly.
Create a trusted consistent place for your internal communications
In many organisations, knowing where to go for the most reliable up to date information can be challenging as documents are stored in a variety of locations and there are lots of different communication tools for different parts of any business.
To be able to provide a trusted, central source of news, documentation and content and a place to post comments, positive news stories, feedback from relatives, videos, questions and chat about what is happening right now, is incredibly important.
Care for everyone’s health and wellbeing
These last 18 months has seen anxiety levels rise, depression and money worries for many. Intranets have been a lifeline, providing an area where all staff can go to access advice, support and chat with staff who can help. Our own health and well-being page is packed full of advice, videos, activities and tips on mental health and self development. Sometimes we can all just feel disconnected, but intranets can play a large role in bringing everyone together virtually.
Enable new ways of working
We have all had to adapt how we work and with an intranet that has so much to offer, some of these new ways of working will become the new normal for many organisations.
I hope this has helped highlight just how intranets and in particular our Engage intranet software, can help care homes. We have worked with many care homes and are happy to chat about how we can help you. You might also like to take a look at our case studies or intranet guides for further information.
