St Basil’s Homes (SA) in partnership with Griffith University has been awarded an ARIIA grant for their project ‘Developing and piloting a role matrix that empowers careers across aged care’.
Staff morale and stress are at an all-time high as workloads increase with more people accessing aged care services, and new policies are implemented to regulate aged care in response to the Royal Commission. At the same time, structured management career progression opportunities are limited. Staff at St Basil's have also called for a more effective distribution of their skills and experience at work.
Thus, our project develops, implements and evaluates a role matrix that allows for clearer role scopes and greater career progression opportunities across the workforce. This new matrix will unpack job tasks to release capacity across all roles in a safe manner, allowing for more engagement with residents at sites and providing more meaningful roles. Importantly, the matrix is underpinned by strong communication lines and a clinical governance process that is co-created with key stakeholders. The matrix will be co-designed with stakeholders (staff, residents and family) through workshops, interviews, and observations.
Once finalised, a four-month trial will be implemented and evaluated for its feasibility, effectiveness and satisfaction. If successful, an IT solution for housing and interacting with the finalised matrix will then be developed and implemented throughout the organisation.