Häuser zum Leben – Elevating Compliance and Learning in Elder Care with “EGON”

Häuser zum Leben (“Fonds Kuratorium Wiener Pensionisten-Wohnhäuser – Häuser zum Leben”) is Austria’s largest provider of senior care services, operating 30 “Häuser zum Leben” in Vienna, offering approximately 9,000 living and care units as well as 135 senior clubs all over the city with 1.5 million senior club visits. Supported by a dedicated team of more than 5,000 employees, Häuser zum Leben ensures high-quality care and a comfortable living environment for its residents.

The Challenge

The healthcare and elder care industries faces constant challenges in maintaining high standards of care and compliance. For Häuser zum Leben this highlighted the need for accessible, scalable training and compliance systems to keep employees informed and prepared in a rapidly changing environment. With employees working across multiple locations, in-house and external training required rescheduling of staff roster and planning in additional travel time. To face these challenges, the organization decided to implement e-learning courses and a learning management system to give employees easy access to training materials.

Additionally, as a key player in the elder care sector, Häuser zum Leben bore a significant responsibility for the well-being of residents in its care. This responsibility extends to ensuring that employees are up to date on compliance requirements.

The organization needed a solution that would:

• Enable access to training content through any device for employees working in different care homes
• Enable to create a low-threshold, unified knowledge transfer system across the entire organization to reach all our target groups.
• Strengthening the manager-employee relationship to better manage their employees training hours and support their progress
• Integrate seamlessly with HR systems to manage personnel data

The Solution

Häuser zum Leben turned to Totara to address these challenges, implementing “EGON” – a unified learning platform that supported both the mobile and remote work needs of its diverse workforce. The solution focuses on providing flexibility and ensuring easy access to training and resources for all its employees.

Key aspects of the solution include:

1. Fully Responsive Learning Experience

With the need for flexible training solutions, Häuser zum Leben required a system that employees could access from any company device. Totara’s mobile-friendly design allowed staff to complete training on their notebooks, tablets, and phones, ensuring they could remain compliant and up to date with their learning, whether in a care home or working from the office, using the system with the integrated company-wide SSO.

2. Accessible design of the learning environment and learning content

A key aspect was the accessible design of the learning environment. In this context, it’s particularly important to ensure that material is easy to navigate and easily comprehensible. Given the cultural diversity and the variety of professional groups at Häuser zum Leben, we rely on explanatory videos and microlearnings. These short, concise units make complex knowledge easily comprehensible and accessible, thus promoting sustainable skill development. With Totara Learn, we have created a learning platform that reaches all our employees and supports their professional development.

3. Compliance and HR System Integration

In the healthcare and elder care sector, compliance is not just important; it is a matter of safety and responsibility. By integrating Totara with HR systems of Häuser zum Leben, the organization could automatically manage course completion records. This ensured that training activities and relevant updates were easily accessible to both employees and managers.

4. Strengthening Manager-Employee Relationships

The ability to manage the completion of trainings and training hours through Totara’s reporting features strengthened the relationship between managers and employees. With visibility into training completion, managers were better equipped to support their teams, enabling them to provide guidance and ensure employees fulfilled their development goals.

5. Streamlined Learning Assignments for a Diverse Workforce

The workforce of Häuser zum Leben includes various roles across multiple departments. Having Totara in place ensures employees receive the training they need to perform their roles effectively and maintain compliance.

6. Compliance Management

Compliance is a crucial aspect of the organization’s operations. Totara’s features helped Häuser zum Leben effectively manage training and compliance data, ensuring all employees were consistently updated with necessary learning and meeting internal requirements for their roles.

The Results

Implementing Totara has helped Häuser zum Leben enhance engagement, streamline training management, strengthen manager-employee collaboration, and establish a scalable, long-term solution, with the following outcomes:

1. Increased Engagement and Flexibility

The mobile-first design ensured that employees had the flexibility to complete their training anytime and anywhere, providing them with the convenience to stay engaged and up to date with their learning, whether in a care home or working remotely. Easy access to training on e.g. company tablets also helped employees stay engaged and informed.

2. Efficient Compliance Management

Integration with HR systems and an effective overview of training hours allowed the organization to manage compliance efficiently across its network of care homes. With its visibility into education hours and completion indicators, Totara’s reporting capabilities, combined with custom reports developed by LearnChamp, provided managers with an overview of employee compliance. This enabled a more effective management of training hours, ensuring that all required education targets were met. In the event of a regulatory review, managers can present these reports as evidence of compliance.

3. Stronger Relationships Between Managers and Employees

Managers now have visibility in employee training progress, allowing them to offer guidance and support as needed. This transparency helps ensure that training goals are met. This, in turn, empowers managers to foster a more supportive relationship with their teams, enhancing employee engagement, motivation, and overall performance.

4. Scalability and Futureproofing

With the ability to scale training programs as needed, Totara’s flexibility enabled Häuser zum Leben to plan further and adapt to evolving training demands, including further plans for onboarding projects and the seamless integration of interactive learning paths. This scalability not only ensured Häuser zum Leben could meet emerging compliance requirements but also allowed the organization to remain agile in addressing future challenges. As a result, the training infrastructure remains robust, adaptable, and ready to support ongoing growth and development.

By implementing Totara, Häuser zum Leben transformed its learning experience, prioritizing seamless access across devices, and an easily accessible overview of online training hours for employees and managers, and an integration with existing HR systems.