Acteon wins Peer Award for ‘Excellence in Technology for People and Performance’
Acteon Communication and Learning and HC-One were awarded the 2013 Peer Award for ‘Excellence in Technology for People and Performance’ for their innovative programme aimed at helping the UK care home operator deliver kind care for residents and relatives.
Other finalists in the ‘Technology for People and Performance’ category included AEG, owners of The O2 Arena, and Virgin Media.
“It’s an honour to have our work with HC-One chosen by our peers in business as impactful and insightful,” said Matthew Borg, a managing partner at Acteon. “HC-One does important work – critical work – in caring for the elderly, and it has been a privilege to work along side them in helping to develop their people.”
HC-One specialises in Dementia, Nursing, Residential and Specialist Care, with homes throughout the UK.
HC-One, a dynamic new business of 15,000 staff, was faced with huge challenges of staff development and engagement. Acteon helped HC-One put an exciting new blended learning programme called ‘Touch’ at the heart of business transformation. One year after its launch, HC-One people have completed an impressive 280,000 training courses across a blend of e-learning and face-to-face programmes; staff engagement survey results are soaring and other measures of ‘kindness’ are improving.
Vince Cable, UK Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, said the Peer Awards are effective in highlighting this type of important work.
“The Peer Awards are a great celebration of what can be achieved by businesses when ideas are developed and shared,” Mr. Cable said, “and when a business focuses on its wider responsibilities rather than taking a short-sighted view that the bottom line is all that matters.”
“We have set ourselves the goal at HC-One to be the kindest care home operator in the UK,” said HC-One Chairman, Dr. Chai Patel. “To us, kindness is not just about our values and behaviour – of course, that is very important – but kindness is truly reflected if we are providing people with the best quality service as well. And the best quality service is provided through giving people the competence, the knowledge, the skills so that they can deliver to the promise of kindness through giving the best quality care.”
A close partnership with HC-One’s senior management team and internal communication has been critical to the programme’s positive impact, according to Dr. Patel.
“New programmes, new ideas, have a habit of falling on fallow ground if you're not careful,” said Dr. Patel. “And what helps with Acteon is that they actually help us with the overall programme – not just creating the package – but they help with the communication around it and the follow-up so that the programmes, the ideas, the initiatives actually embed in the organisation.”
Cambridge-based Acteon and HC-One have also been selected as a finalist in two other major industry awards in seven categories, including ‘E-learning project of the year’, ‘Excellence in the production of e-learning content’, and ‘Best use of e-learning to ensure compliance’, and Training Journal’s 'Best training programme’.