Emeritus Senior Living’s Best of the Best winning Designing Safety Education Programs for Today’s Workforce–But Wait, There’s More! program uses entertaining infomercials to make safety training fun and engaging.
ALFA 2012 Best of the Best Winner
Which would the average associate prefer to sit through time and time again: the standard, dry classroom lecture on safe ergonomic practices in managing resident transfers, or a fun infomercial on same?
Emeritus Senior Living has decided to take a different educational path for certain safety messages–and, instead of presenting them in the traditional or boring way, is using a format based on an infomercial that helps all employees with message retention. “Our industry has employees who have been, anywhere from five to 20 years, doing the same job, but also we have an influx of younger employees wanting to help take care of our elderly population,” says Bruce Majors, national director of safety and loss prevention. “The challenge is, how do we get the attention of our younger workforce plus our older workforce in a format that has a strong safety message but yet keeps the attention of everybody?”
More than $150 billion in consumer products are sold in the United States through infomercials, according to tapebeat.com. Emeritus uses the attention-grabbing shtick of an infomercial to essentially “sell” safety practices to employees. Emeritus’ insurance provider, Chartis, underwrote the production costs and helped write the script.
That said, the infomercial avoids gimmickry on the aspects that count. It films real employees helping with resident transfers in actual Emeritus senior living communities, and incorporates best practices in adult learning, such as requiring periodic pauses in the DVD to practice/demonstrate what they are being taught with the help of an instructor. “Unless the employee can show the skill, you don’t really know if the skill has been comprehended,” says Majors.
Feedback on the infomercial has been very positive–helping, for instance, to ease the transition of 170 acquired communities into Emeritus’ culture and practices in 2010. The percentage of employee injuries caused by the assistance and transfer of residents decreased from 41 percent in 2010 to 32 percent last year.
Emeritus has since released a “Transfer Belt” infomercial, and is expected to release another DVD that addresses “Slip/Trip/Fall” education this year.
The above best practice was recognized as an ALFA 2012 Best of
the Best Winner. Do you have a best practice, product, service or
solution at your community or company that is advancing excellence in
senior living? The Call for Nominations for the ALFA 2013 Best of the
Best Awards will begin in November. Visit ALFA.org/bestofthebest to read more best practices.
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