Royal Freemasons’ Benevolent Institution in partnership with Macquarie University has been awarded an ARIIA grant for their project ‘Employee Burnout: Resilience and Recovery as Employee Retention Strategy in Residential Aged Care’.
This project aims to develop and implement a sustainable, multi-level, capability-building initiative in the residential aged care workforce to support managers and employees in recovering from burnout, leading to reduced employee turnover and ultimately leading to improved care for residents.
Implementation of the program's three key components will be documented for potential sector scalability: First, it will be co-designed with stakeholders with local and deep understanding of the issues in the sector. Second, in addition to the (a) resilience leadership training for managers to identify and support employee burnout and recovery over time and (b) employee burnout skills training, the project includes post-training innovative evidence-based (c) self-reflection strategies that have been proven to enhance and sustain the effectiveness of resilience training and (d) manager coaching to consolidate learnings. Last, the program is supplemented by embedded organisational practices to promote burnout identification and recovery for a healthier, more engaged, and resilient workforce.
This comprehensive approach incorporates factors that promote the long-term sustainability of employee resilience, resilience leadership, and hence reduced staff turnover. The project will improve the quality of care provided to residents, resulting in a better quality of life for both the aged care workforce and the residents they serve.