Yapster enhances operations in the care sector
Yapster enhances internal operations and ensures commitment to staff wellbeing of Askham Community Village.
Yapster and digital HR rota system Alpaka, integrated for Askham Village Community, a specialist rehabilitation and care group near Doddington, to keep staff connected in a time of social distancing and remote working
Webinar transcript
Fri, 5/15 11:30AM • 57:28
SPEAKERS:
Phillip Rodgers, Founder of Alpaka
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser, Operations Director of Askham Village Community
Rob Liddiard, Co-founder CEO of Yapster
[Note: this transcript was created automatically, using a digital transcription tool. It has been lightly edited for clarity, but may contain minor typos or inaccuracies.]
Phillip Rodgers 00:02
Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. At this time of day, we're up against Joe Wicks and Carol Vorderman on the TV. So we're especially grateful you chose us for your mid-morning lockdown entertainment. And normally, the host would tell you where the exits are or what to do in an emergency. But the only thing that might go wrong is that one of my kids slips their ropes and breaks in here during the call to bug me. So if the screen goes blank, that's what's happened. And we're using zoom, which is pretty cool - there's a chat feature, so you can submit questions at any time throughout the presentation. And we'll come to Q&A at the end as well. But feel free to use the chat at any time. We'll see the agenda in a second, but first off, if Aliyyah, would you like to introduce yourself?
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 00:50
Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining today. I'm one of the directors of Askham Village Community. We're a family business based out in Cambridge, in the East of England. I've been hands on in the business since around 2012. Prior to that, I was a consultant at Bain and company. I was only supposed to join Askham for six months but never went back to Bain, so have been working in the family business ever since!
Rob Liddiard 01:15
Hi everybody, I'm Rob Liddiard, I'm one of the cofounders of Yapster. We're a mobile messaging business. We specialize in working for organizations that have lots and lots of people that work in frontline roles - Deskless roles, now more popularly called key worker roles since we entered this COVID-19 world - where quite often 80% of people occupying those positions don't have a company email address. Organizations bring in our technology to connect frontline key workers to one another, to company leadership - and various other parts of the business that they might otherwise need to speak to but not be able to reach. We started working in the care sector for Aliyyah, with Phill, a few months ago. It's been a pretty exciting journey so far and I’m looking forward to sharing what we've learned together.
Phillip Rodgers 02:07
Okay, so it's my pleasure to be asked to take part in this panel. Rob's agenda says I have to provide some sort of welcome. So the subject is communication. And therefore, it's a little weird that I'm here. I can say for certain that Rob and Aliyyah are two of the finest communicators I've ever met. I'm convinced entirely of their authority on the subject. And I can't wait to hear what they have to say. But I feel like a bit of a fraud - because I'm a terrible communicator!
As a software developer, I'm insular and I have one ambition - and that's to build features that replace conversation. My clients need a button to request their time off, not a trip to the manager's office or a phone call. They want timesheets submission to be automatic, not handwritten or delivered with a question or an issue that requires both time and ears. So with enthusiasm, I'll annihilate communication and build anything that keeps people apart and working efficiently. I like to let software and data do the talking.
I wonder if that makes me miserable or dispassionate, or at least a terrible host for a webinar about communication, and its awesome power?
But, working with Askham Village Community and Yapster, I've realized that in my pursuit to destroy communication, I'm actually contributing to the opposite.
All the automation and buttons and features in Alpaka haven't removed conversation from the workplace. They're just helping to change it. When you take away inefficient problems, or processes that are bloated with contact and time, what you have left is space where those problems used to be and typically, people more sociable than me fill that space with a different kind of conversation. The space provides more time for genuine progress and connection in the workplace. Teams now talk about their work and not their jobs.
I don't know if the dictionary agrees, but my definition... I imagine that work is the pursuit of a common goal - and a job is what you have to endure to get there. So a job is all the bad bits like timesheets and lost holidays and not knowing what your shifts are next week. Take away all those and your work remains which sounds nobler to me. Anyway, an awkward segue to a short video of one of Alpaka's best features. Alpaka has made more than 75,000 timesheets. And if we estimate each person saved 15 minutes of writing and delivering those timesheets to their manager 75,000 times 15 minutes is 781 days. And that's just the timesheets. So what can Humans do with 781 days? Well, the ones I know, have spent that time caring for patients or doing anything except handwriting a timesheet. It sounds so wasteful. So one of the ways Alpaka can automate that kind of saving is with the clocking in and out app, and it's called Alpaka Presence.
Alpaka Voice-over 05:23
“If you are using Alpaka Presence to clock in and out of work, everything you need to know is in the web version of Alpaka. Sign in, hover over "me" then click "my presence", you will see your readings in a list. The best readings come in pairs. That is you clocking in and out. Alpaka will do its best to find pairs. The status is important. You might see reading status "stranded" meaning Alpaka thinks you have missed a reading and so left this without a pair. Alpaka also tries to work out if your presence reading match your contract hours, or time at work from our previous week. It marks these as pending while it does its best to find a match and mark it as complete if your times match your correct working hours. Your readings might also be marked for review, or with an issue, if your time at work was too long or too short, or can't be completed without someone making assessment. It is unlikely you can edit your own readings but your senior team members can. If you see a problem with your presence readings, you should ask their help to fix it. Presence readings will total and become your payable hours in this period.”
Phillip Rodgers 06:42
I said that the segue was awkward into that movie, but the movie shows what any member of your team would be able to self-serve in Alpaka. They don't need to communicate with their manager to do everything. They have just the right amount of autonomy to avoid the wasteful parts of the timesheet conversation. So as long as I'm aiming at the right kind of communication, I think I'll stick with my efforts to smash it. And I'll leave it to the real professionals like Aliyyah and Rob to fill that space with something wonderful. So I'll hand over now to the enormously communicative Aliyyah from Askham Village Community.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 07:23
Thank you Phill. I want to spend the next 10 minutes sharing a bit about Askham Village Community - pre Yapster and pre-COVID, I should say.
So, just by way of background, for those of you that that don't know Askham or don't know the cares sector: We are a specialist care and rehabilitation village in England out in Cambridgeshire. We've been operating for 30 years and it was started by my parents back in the 80s. And we've grown with the industry over the last couple of decades. The care sector is a highly regulated industry. We have to evidence and document and record everything that we do. And of course, it's all about people at the end of the day.
So Phill mentioned earlier about his mission in life being to take the people out of some of the communications that need to happen in the workplace. Our challenge and our approach has been to try and balance a person-centered approach with efficiency, so that we can continue to care and do best for residents. A big priority for us at the moment - and again, this is pre COVID - is around staff well-being, as our mantra at Askham has always been "if we've got happy staff, we have happy residents". So what can we do to make sure that we have happy staff? And really, that's all about: making sure they know what they're doing; they've got the clarity; they've got the support and all of that comes really from from communication.
Those of you in care will know the main drivers for the care business is occupancy. So how many residents are looking after? But also staff retention - how many staff are you bringing in new? How many staff are you having to train each time you recruit someone new? Drivers of staff retention typically are things linked to communication.
”Drivers of staff retention typically are things linked to communication”
How comfortable do I feel if I've got a problem? Can I talk to my manager? Am I happy at work that I'm being listened to, that I'm contributing, that my suggestions are being heard, etc, etc.
It's really with that in mind that our focus has been on communication. We are a 24/7 business, open every single day of the year and we have 250 staff across five homes, supporting 111 residents. What that means in reality is that at any given point, there will be around about 80 people working at Askham in different roles, be that nursing carers, domestic staff support, etc.
Of those people - so all those 250 folks - approximately 10% have work emails, which in this sector is the norm and it does mean that communications is challenging.
Let me talk you through the four main communication approaches that we've had prior prior to Yapster. Those who are from the care community will know these well:
The main form of communication is verbal. Every time a shift changes, nurses and carers will exchange information, they will talk about things they need to know, they will make sure they what's going on and what's happening next.
The second way of doing things is through memos, or posters. This is very passive, you've got written information that people have to absorb.
The third way is staff meetings. These typically happen once a month, once every two months, but usually in individual teams. Very rarely would we get everybody together - we try once a year, but it's not always easy with shift work patterns.
Finally, the fourth means of communicating is staff bulletins and emails that would go out - to non-work emails. But you don't know if they're being read, received, who they're being read by etc.
So that was our communications framework for many years, pre COVID and pre Yapster.
I think the key point here is that there has been a huge reliance on verbal communications, which is an imperfect form of communication. That doesn't mean it's not good enough, because Askham and many other Care Homes work very effectively on that basis. But I think it's certainly been a challenge. Specific groups that tend to get missed out by verbal communications are: the night staff, the bank staff who aren't in regularly, the people who only work weekends.
“Specific groups that tend to get missed out by verbal communications are: the night staff, the bank staff who aren't in regularly, the people who only work weekends”
Historically, it's always been very difficult to reach these people and reach them effectively. So that not only are the messages getting through, but the messages are being heard and being understood.
In terms of the needs, as COVID hit, it became increasingly important that we were able to send single clear messages to every single member of staff very quickly.
“as COVID hit, it became increasingly important that we were able to send single clear messages to every single member of staff very quickly”
We needed to find a way to do that as effectively and as efficiently as possible, and particularly in a GDPR compliant way. We all know that not all staff want their details to be shared with the rest of the team, so we were a little bit nervous around informal use of WhatsApp groups. So that was that was one need: to be able to get that single clear message to staff quickly. We needed to do it in a way that was inexpensive for staff and non cumbersome. Typically staff who work in care are varied in age - we have a lot of older staff members - but also people have very varied comfort levels with technology.
“We all know that not all staff want their details to be shared with the rest of the team, so we were a little bit nervous around informal use of WhatsApp groupS”
And then, from a regulatory perspective, obviously we needed to see who's read messages and make sure that we can we be certain that messages are being received and absorbed. At that point, Yapster entered our lives.
“from a regulatory perspective, obviously we needed to see who's read messages and make sure that we can we be certain that messages are being received and absorbed. At that point, Yapster entered our lives”
Rob Liddiard 13:49
Thanks, Aliyyah. Thanks, Phill.
So… It's very difficult to see to see anything good that's come out of this awful pandemic, but the very first time Phill introduced me to Aliyyah, she did say to me there usually are interesting innovations that happen in times of crisis.
“the very first time Phill introduced me to Aliyyah, she did say to me there usually are interesting innovations that happen in times of crisis”
The reason we have designed these slides in the order that we did - talking about Askham's world and their requirements first and then the Yapster solution afterwards - is they were developed independently.
My background is I was a lawyer originally, for my sins. I didn't enjoy it very much and so I went into legal software and in the course of that got wind of the fact that half the economy ran on WhatsApp. As a young lawyer I'd always had access to a smartphone and software products. So I didn't realise that 2billion of the world's 3billion workforce didn't work at desks and often didn't have those tools. I thought "oh my God, GDPR is coming and this is gonna be a nightmare for HR litigation and other risks. We better create a company-controlled alternative." We built originally for retail, then hospitality [and now care]. What you can see up on the screen here are the features we’ve built over the last 5 years.
Ok, so I'll just draw your attention to the little icon on the bottom on the right hand side - systems integration. We've been partnering with Alpaka since the beginning of this year. But originally, when we started working for brands like Caffe Nero or Next in the retail space, or Krispy Kreme or Wagamama in food service, all of those organizations had underlying HR platforms that they had already invested in and therefore didn't want to create a separate administration burden for managing any sort of communication network. The Yapster product that we built for those organizations was always designed to sit on top of their existing HR system.
When Phill and I met, I realized that Alpaka had built not just a HR product, but a much broader product that was increasingly - under Aliyyah's stewardship - being customized for the care sector. We'd be able to take the work that we've done for Wagamama and others and carry it over for Aliyyah's benefit, to connect her people.
“When Phill and I met, I realized that Alpaka had built not just a HR product, but a much broader product that was increasingly - under Aliyyah's stewardship - being customized for the care sector. We'd be able to take the work that we've done for Wagamama and others and carry it over for Aliyyah's benefit, to connect her people”
So that's a bit of a backdrop to Yapster - how we got started, why we got started and why integration was baked into the platform - that hopefully helps to explain the connection between Yapster and Alpaka. It's all about making sure that when you add a new user to your HR system, Alpaka in Aliyyah's case, that user then exists in your other complementary systems, including your mobile messaging - or as we call it - your social leadership platform.
What that then means is unlike something like WhatsApp - you see here, the icon on the top left of this slide, where I would need to know the personal phone number of everybody that's in my WhatsApp group in order for their name to be associated with any messages that they send - we actually don't need to reveal colleagues’ individual phone numbers, and colleagues don't need to have each other's numbers to be able to connect with each other, because that Alkpaka data links those people in an address book and new people that join Askham then automatically flow through from Alpaka to Yapster to be in the mobile staff directory.
Of course, if they left whether that's to go to a competitor, God forbid, or to maybe do something else in a different industry, rather than being awkwardly sitting in those WhatsApp groups getting continuing commercial, or maybe even patient content they shouldn't be receiving they're exited automatically from the Yapster group because they've been retired from the underlying how Alpaka HR data. So the core of the system is this integrated mobile address book that comes from Phill's underlying system or another HR system.
“The core of the system is this integrated mobile address book that comes from ALPAKA's underlying system or another HR system. colleagues can THEN speak to each other one to one or in groupS”
Then what that means is that the colleagues can speak to each other one to one or in groups. So that might mean that they need to be able to speak to each other on a whole site or a whole team basis. As Aliyyah mentioned, you may have a 24/7 operation but people clearly don't work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I know it might have felt like that since COVID-19 blighted us all, but people of course will typically work a 40 or some hour working week when the business is running much longer. So there will be ongoing communication and conversations happening across teams and departments. And what Yapster enables those employees to do is pick those conversations up and put them down as it relates to to their group through the working week. That then brings us on to intelligent muting the icon over on the far right of the screen. Because we're a system that enables people to speak to whole locations or whole role groups or collections of individuals, it could potentially be intrusive.
Anybody that uses WhatsApp on a personal phone for work purposes will understand what it feels like to have your boss constantly popping up in the place where you also talk to your spouse or your best friends. It can actually be quite intrusive. And not only is it a personal data risk, it actually undermines the employer brand and employer promise if you're a caring employer.
“Anybody that uses WhatsApp on a personal phone for work purposes will understand what it feels like to have your boss constantly popping up in the place where you also talk to your spouse or your best friends. It can actually be quite intrusive. And not only is it a personal data risk, it actually undermines the employer brand and employer promise, if you're a caring employer”
So we have this feature called intelligent muting that enables colleagues that are maybe participants in a urgent care group or a given location to say, "Well, okay, on weekends, I actually don't want my Yapster notifications going off because I know I'm not working for the next few weekends". And we allow the user to automatically determine when our mobile messaging product is going to interfere with their their time, which is something that consumer messaging products would never do. Then we've got some other cute little features like in app translation to facilitate discourse between colleagues where English might not necessarily be the first language.
“[THROUGH INTELLIGENT MUTING], we allow the user to automatically determine when our mobile messaging product is going to interfere with their their time, which is something that consumer messaging products would never do”
We also have in-app polling to enable companies to do things that they wouldn't necessarily need to do in a consumer messaging products, which will typically be involving frontline colleagues in meaningful decision-making. When you then go on to make a decision and impose it on colleagues, which is the sort of old school style of leadership, they're much more likely to accept the decision that's been made - because they feel like they were consulted and involved. But it was done digitally and at scale, meaning that it actually sped up rather than slowed down decision making for leadership. It's both more inclusive, but also quicker and real-time in terms of getting things communicated out and done.
I won't dwell on the GDPR compliance stuff, but we're ISO270001 certificated. We have to be. Everything that's in Yapster is secure to the customer - the data belongs to Aliyyah, not to us - we just look after it for her. And the idea is to create a safe, secure business network that feels like a playful consumer, easy-to-use mobile system. So I think I probably took my my 10 minutes there Phill, so if you want to click on we can talk about the more interesting stuff of of how this actually is affecting care, employee outcomes. So here we go.
“we're ISO270001 certificated. We have to be. Everything that's in Yapster is secure to the customer - the data belongs to Aliyyah, not to us - we just look after it for her”
So I because I probably spoke too long on the the core of the Yapster product - I obviously get excited about what we built and the fact that we found this wonderful new application and this whole new world that, frankly, that all of society is looking to to protect our most vulnerable at the moment - I wouldn't look so much down the left hand column. But if you just take a few moments to read the sections on the right and Aliyyah, if you wouldn't mind diving in, that'd be great. Particularly the second point, I think your insight is richer than mine, because you really taught us about this. The first point, I've just reiterated about GDPR compliance, I glossed over it in the last section, so I'll just make it slightly more explicitly: even if as an organization, you haven't asked your colleagues to build personal communication networks, they very likely will have because you've got engaged people that want to talk to each other. And if you haven't made a company sanctioned alternative available, they'll use those networks. Whilst they might only talk about each other's leaving drinks and things that are trivial, there's a very good chance that if they're highly engaged, caring colleagues, they'll begin to talk about things that relate to work. If you're in the business of caring for individuals, that means there's a pretty good chance there'll be talking about individuals. From GDPR and a wider information security perspective, clearly, having a controlled network to allow them to have those conversations is staying on the right side of those data lines. So, Aliyyah, the second point about the CQC is much more your space than mine.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 23:20
“One of the reasons why we were quite keen to go with Yapster is around the KLOE's of Responsive and Well-led”
One of the reasons why we were quite keen to go with Yapster is around the KLOE's of Responsive and Well-led. Those of you in the care community will know these are huge. And the 'responsiveness to staff' piece was something that we were really keen on thinking through - staff wellbeing, particularly in light of the climate that we're all in. We wanted to make sure that we could easily demonstrate - not just for the purposes of CQC, but also because it's what staff need - that we can respond to questions, to new policy changes, etc, etc, as quickly as possible, so that no staff member would ever be in a situation where they didn't know what was expected of them or didn't have the latest guidance. Also, the Well-led KLOE is all about culture. This is all about open leadership and access to managers. With Yapster, even in an environment where the managers aren't necessarily always on site and even the board aren't always on site. I'm not on site. My mother and my father, who are very hands on with Askham in normal circumstances, aren't available, but with Yapster they can easily be messaged directly by any member of staff - and staff members have been doing that, which is great. And so we’re now very, very aligned with with those two KLOE's in particular.
“We wanted to make sure that we could easily demonstrate - not just for the purposes of CQC, but also because it's what staff need - that we can respond to questions, to new policy changes ETC, as quickly as possible, so that no staff member would ever be in a situation where they didn't know what was expected of them or didn't have the latest guidancE”
Rob Liddiard 24:52
Thanks. Thanks, Aliyyah. I obviously couldn't have said that better myself. But it's been fascinating learning about this and seeing how our pre-existing technology just coincidentally had an operational overlap, such that it delivers really important regulatory and care outcomes - that has been pretty amazing. The last four points here, I won't spend too much time on because I think they are really important, but they're not necessarily unique to this sector and I think it'd be nice actually to move on and talk about some things that are more sector and Askham specific. So you can see the points here. I've already talked about work-life balance and protecting data privacy. One of the things I didn't talk about is the burden on your local leaders.
So one of the things that was really important to us at Yapster is when we started the business, we thought it was all about GDPR compliant messaging. It turns out what it's really about is it's about this thing that we call 'social leadership'. When people hear the term leader they often think 'very top of the pile hierarchical leader' but leaders appear all over organizations. You can be a leader - you can have the characteristics of a leader - and be the most junior person in an organization.
But the leaders that this has the biggest impact on are site-level leaders that are typically incredibly committed both to their organization and their mission if they've chosen to work in something like care. And when they think about their mission, they usually think about doing the right thing by their residents - their clients. And every piece of administrative work that they have to do - which might include re-communicating communications to colleagues, right, that is a part of the local site-level leaders job - might feel like admin if it comes at the expense of being able to be with clients in a given home. And so what Yapster enables them to do is to include their colleagues in conversations if they want to start them but they also can make those colleagues accessible for skip-level leadership - so Aliyyah I don't know if you're going to talk about being able to communicate directly with the front line in addition to your home level leaders? - but of course, in a WhatsApp world or private consumer messaging for them to be able to make their teams available to you, they'd have to retransmit a message, or if they were going to use those consumer tools, they'd have to manually administer the groups so that their people were there for you to reach them. It's the most low level administration you can do. It's exactly what Phill talks about when he talks about Alpaka, avoiding - allowing people to focus on high-quality communication and actions and not low quality actions like administration of consumer messaging groups. And then similarly there, the last couple of points: we've already talked about silos, limited company oversight.
The other problem with using consumer messaging products is that if something bad happens on them, technically it's the responsibility organization, but they don't have any safeguarding features because that's not what they were designed for. And again, it then makes it incumbent upon everybody in the organisation to be super vigilant about trying to check that nothing bad is happening in those networks. In Yapster we have got reports offensive functionality which again enables colleagues to really quickly do the right thing, but not in a hugely time-sapping or depressing way.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 28:27
So… there's a question in the chat around the WhatsApp situation...
When Phill first said to me, “I know this chap called Rob, he's got this great platform. I think you should look at it”. I was genuinely in two minds.
This conversation happened very, very early on in the in the lockdown period, if not just before I think we officially went into lockdown. And I was in two minds - I could see the value in having a private Askham-specific messaging platform that was GDPR compliant and all those great things. But I was also balancing that against knowing that my staff were not the most comfortable in the digital space and it was already a time of high stress. There were lots of queries coming forward and lots of 'what if?' scenario planning etc.
But then, equally, we were also all receiving a lot of articles in our inboxes, which you probably were as well, about clear and decisive leadership through a crisis and how, you know, crises can really be a burning platform for change. And we thought, you know what, 'let's just do it. Let's just let's just try it'.
I have to say, it was the best decision we made at the start of this lockdown, other than not letting visitors onto site, of course. One thing that made it really, really straightforward is that it was really easy to implement and I come back to this Alpaka integration point, because we had Alpaka already in Askham we already had a very clear set of data where we knew who our staff were, who was in what teams and it was all aligned, which meant that essentially, Rob's team linked into Alpaka straight up within - I think it was - half a day, Rob, your team had set up Yapster such that the teams were already in conversations with each other.
We had one single news feed, which was an ability for us to broadcast to the whole team. And then we had already got your WhatsApp chat equivalence kind of set up. So the nurses were in one group, the carers were in another group, the domestics were in another group. And then we could also add, move, create cross-team groups if we wanted to. It was very, very straightforward. Within an afternoon, it was all there. And I think that was because we had the Alpaka integration that Rob mentioned earlier, that happened, you know, pretty much instantly. So that was the first thing I think that was that was a real win. The second thing is that it was super easy to use. And so again, with any new thing, getting staff on boarded, staff training, I mean, it's a nightmare for anyone that works in care you'll you'll be familiar with this, but there was no training needed. Essentially, every staff member received a text message with a link. And they click the link and it was basically job done. You know, they just have to put in their email, put in their phone number, so not even an email address, put in their phone number, and set some sort of password. And then away they went. And it was really, really, I cannot even stress how simple it was. That was my biggest worry was how are we going to get all the staff on boarded? And I think we got, if I'm not mistaken, Rob within, I think 24 to 48 hours, we had about 50% of staff signed up already.
“within, I think 24 to 48 hours, we had about 50% of staff signed up already.”- Aliyyah Begum-Nasser
Rob Liddiard 31:32
Yeah, that's true. Though, I should add a sort of disclaimer for people watching that and getting excited. That is also a reflection on your on your culture and the fact that people genuinely wanted to talk to each other. Our job is to make sure there's no friction - but in terms of then there being conversations that they want to have... that's all you Aliyyah.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 31:49
OK. Well, I'll take that credit, but certainly the system wasn't a barrier. Let's put it like that. The system definitely wasn't a barrier in that sense. And, and very, very quickly, it's become normal parlance. So we have Daily managers meetings now managing the COVID crisis situation. And you know, in those meetings, it's, 'well, let's just send a yap', 'let's just make sure staff know this'. 'Let's get this out'. So it's become, in a very short space of time, quite embedded in what we do. So we talk a lot about celebrating successes, we talk a lot about the positivity and the importance of positive communication. And, and for workplace comms, typically, things end up being transactional, things that you need to know or things that you need to action, and an example of how we've been able to sort of also communicate things that aren't necessarily imperative for people to know, but have been really really useful as we had a little bit of a, I was on a radio program, and following that one of our relatives, one of the relatives of a resident wrote into the radio show, and basically saying some lovely positive things about our staff. That letter got read out on the radio. So I wanted to - just in terms of creating a digital community - I wanted to share a few specific scenarios. But I think the first thing I'm going to do is actually not around the COVID situation, but really much more on how the speed and the ease with which we can now communicate means that messages are going out to the entire staff team that otherwise wouldn't have been communicated.
“How the speed and the ease with which we can now communicate means that messages are going out to the entire staff team that otherwise wouldn't have been communicated.”- Aliyyah Begum-Nasser
Now, normally, I don't know how we would even been able to share that with 250 staff, and it would probably not have made the cut into the next staff bulletin. It may have gone on Facebook, it may not have done, but it would have been something very challenging to share. Within a day, we'd had it up it was on the Yapster news feed and staff are already engaging with it, you know, listening to it again, you know. These little little things make such a big difference, particularly in a crisis environment. And so I think it's just demonstrating how easy and quick it's been to, to share some of these things.
And coming back to the the focus of the of the situation around crisis and COVID. Again, anyone that's familiar with the care sector, or actually the national press will know, Government guidance for care homes has not been straightforward and not been forthcoming. And I think that's where Yapster has come into its own from really a safety perspective. Because it's enabled us very quickly to update staff on infection control policies as they change. So we recently had the change in use of facemasks to sessional use. And, you know, again, within half an hour of us receiving that guidance from one of our care provider associations, it was out with staff, we shared a video we showed them how to do it, you know, it was all very, very, very, very easy. And what that also meant is that staff who were not on site or not due to be working for three days, but wondering what this means for them, it could be addressed really, really straight really, really quickly. And what we've also seen actually as a result of that is that staff then are asking intelligent questions, because they were able to get all that information quite quickly. And again, it's that responsiveness individuals are reaching out for support and assurances, off the back of those things. So that's that's one thing, which has been huge changing policies and implementing that quickly.
“And so again, having a tool where you can say to 250 staff, don't worry, everything's fine, has been, you know, gosh, I mean, I don't know what we would have done if we didn't if we didn't have it. So that's, that's the second one is just addressing the humans.” - Aliyyah Begum-Nasser
In a non COVID. world, I actually would say, this is going to be equally useful, because you can see in Yapster who's read the message and who hasn't. So those of you again in care thinking about value of this in a non crisis basis, we would be looking to use this to update on changing policies, you know, even going forward because it is very, very methodical in terms of how you can see who's read something and who hasn't. And the second value that we've seen in this is really around addressing rumors and worries. So the media has not been our best friend in the care home sector in the last little while. And if you're working in care, and you're reading about the number of deaths and care homes going up and up and up, or if you're reading about the government not supporting care homes, you're just - I mean, would you come into work, I wouldn't - and so we've been able, again, through this platform, to very, very quickly put to bed, some rumors, put to bed some of this miss-information and make sure that staff do have the facts and not just the media stories at their fingertips. We had an interesting sort of flurry of yaps a few days ago when, you know, masks... the date on masks, depending on which which way you use the date, it might appear expired, or it might not appear expired, and suddenly, in this very emotional sensitive world, you know, suddenly it's panic. And so again, having a tool where you can say to 250 staff, don't worry, everything's fine, has been, you know, gosh, I mean, I don't know what we would have done if we didn't if we didn't have it. So that's, that's the second one is just addressing the humans.
And the third one is around training and skills. And again, this is one that I think will outlive COVID in quite in a significant way. Being able to in a world where we can't be in the same room, be able to transition our management of skills and competencies into the virtual world in a way that staff feel comfortable. So running quizzes, sending out reminders of policies or reminders of best practice, and looking out for tips, sharing phone numbers that if people need mental health support. Some of these things that I think again, you always know in your teams who will respond to who won't respond to an email or to a poster. But in this format, we're getting a very, very different pool of the staff that are responding to those kinds of things. And it's helping us to make sure that we can demonstrate that even in this world, competencies are not being dropped, training is carrying on, etc, etc. We typically also annually would run a full team meeting for all of our staff. And that's something again, we weren't able to do because of the social distancing rules. But that's to Rob's point earlier about this, the Social Leadership, and it was never a skill that I thought we'd have to develop, but it's certainly not part of the skills for care management, induction standards. But it's it's something that myself and my registered managers have all had to get very comfortable with very quickly. So sending videos out has become, you know, something that we just have to be comfortable with. And that's been that's been brilliant.
So around the start of our year, which was April, you know, there was the change to the minimum wages, there was all the questions that came around that, there were the loyalty bonuses that we would normally do for staff who haven't been off sick, there's the, you know, all of these things that needed to happen. And we were able to still applaud staff, celebrate staff in a in a visual way and which we otherwise wouldn't have been able to do. And then finally, I come back to the celebration of successes, I think, you know, being able to very quickly applaud staff, either on an individual basis, at a team level basis, or as an organization can go a really, really long way. And it's not just coming top down.
Yesterday evening, I had a message for one of our lead nurses that went to the whole of the company with a statistic that she's read somewhere around the number of people who have been recovered and discharged from one of our local hospitals, and, you know, it's that kind of narrative changing that kind of social leadership, which I think has been enormously valuable, and to protect staff well being and help ensure that they're seeing all sides of this horrible crisis. So... that's... Yeah, that's, that's really where I would end is just how it's enabled us to celebrate, to celebrate successes. And in that way, so I'll stop. I'll stop there. I can see some questions come through. And let me just have a quick look...
Rob Liddiard 39:34
I sort of said that, you know, Aliyyah, one of the things that's been coolest about this cross industrial innovation, there's loads of things we're learning from you that we expect to take back to some of the top consumer service brands when their world sort of reawakens. One of the things has been really fun in the opposite direction is, so many of those organizations have had to adopt some of these slightly, almost like political skills that skills, you'd think of being taught to politicians to communicate at scale. I guess if they're trying to rally two thousand restaurant staff around a particular brand and style, you can see why they perhaps had to acquire those digitally enabled social leadership skills sooner. It's been interesting for me that I guess I just assumed that that was applicable in all all quarters of the deskless economy. And it's been fascinating to learn from you that it perhaps isn't so prevalent in your world. And that in turn makes it all the more remarkable that many natural practitioners have emerged in your organization.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 40:39
It's been brilliant. I mean, one of the pictures on the slide, it just went away, but we've got a banner, which said 'superheroes work here'. And which went up and so it's a physical thing. You would only normally see it if you go to work, but obviously we've got about 10-12% of our staff off, you know, for various reasons, childcare or off sick, and those people would also get that celebration because it went out on Yapster and it wasn't even it wasn't even any of the managers that sent it out. It was one of our maintenance folks that sent the picture out. And you know, and it's just, it's great. It's, it's been, it's been really good at sort of strengthening the community within the staff team.
Rob Liddiard 41:13
I know there's some more questions in there and Phill likely will have some some also. I can see him moving gingerly around there - so I think the Wi Fi connection is fine now. I have just one quick question, if you don't mind me jumping ahead of some of the group because we're ahead of time. So I think we can. Is there something in the people that you recruited? Is there something in the Askham values that meant that they were more likely to be capable social leaders when you put a platform in their hands? Did you recruit for extraversion? What is it? Or do you think it's just - do you think, basically, - other organizations would find similar sort of superstars in their own workforce, or do you think you've been particularly lucky on that front because of something in the recruiting profile that you adopted?
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 41:59
I'd love to say that we've been been particularly lucky. But I have to say I think these superstars exist everywhere. And I think it's them finding their niche. But I think one thing particularly at Askham that I should highlight is: it's always been one of our values that we are a community. It's in our name Askham Village Community, it's our top value in our, in our set of values. And I think that's really helped. But that also meant that when this crisis hit, or in other situations where there are things that ripple through a community that are negative, it can go both ways, right? Because everyone's so tight knit. So one small thing can make a huge positive impact or negative impacts. And so I think it's that kind of relationship that we try and build within the teams, within the staff, which is that we are a community, having a platform like this, I guess, strengthens that and supports that, and enables us to make sure that that communication within the community is you know, as effective in all in all ways. Linked to that, there's a question about what's next for Askham in our comms and engagement plan? Great question. Yapster will form a key, a key part of the comms for Askham. Internal comms has been a challenge for many, many years. And I think with this, we've really been able to sort of make a real step change. What I would love to be able to do, and it's something that Rob I know we talked about very early on, is being able to bring in relatives and or other professionals that we engage with into that same community. And what that looks like, whether that could happen, you know, I, you know, it's it's for us and Rob, and with Phill's support as well, to sort of figure out what that might look like. But I think it's how can we make sure that not only does that staff community remain very tight knit and supported, but that we can, you know, all members of the Askham community can participate and be part of it.
Rob Liddiard 43:46
That's really good. I've seen Rizwan's put in a question here on "Yapster versus WhatsApp, Alpaka versus other systems?". I think probably I've already overrun my time on Yapster versus WhatsApp and other consumer apps. So Phill, do you want to say a few words about 'why Alpaka?'
Phillip Rodgers 44:02
Um, well, I'll try. So am I online - can you hear me?
Rob Liddiard 44:07
We can!
Phillip Rodgers 44:07
[ANSWER LOST BY TRANSCRIPTION]
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 45:14
Can I can I add to that, Phill? I think having had the experience of working with you over the last few months, we have, I would say Alpaka has evolved enormously over the last few months, to directly to meet Askham's needs. So we're coming back to the responsiveness point that we were talking about earlier. I think we've been we've seen an amazing amount of responsiveness which I can't - I wouldn't ever - I mean, every other software supplier I've ever engaged with, everything comes with a bill or change request or timeline. And this has just been I mean, we've been sent it feels like we've been developing it together in many ways. But the staff have all fed in, there's been a lot of direct input and the speed of responsiveness has been amazing. One example I'd like to share is just when the crisis and when the lockdown started, we were just about to roll out, clocking in and clocking out, and the whole point of clocking in clocking out was you had a mobile phone, you put in your PIN number, press enter, and away you go. And now obviously, in an infection controlled environment, that's not possible because you've got a single device, and you know, the risk of that would be would be enormous. So within I think, 24 hours, Phill had a plan, which was people could wave a card in front of the device instead of having to touch the device. And then within a few days, we had printed cards that Phill delivered to Askham for every staff member. I don't know of any other organization that would respond in that way so effectively, and so quickly.
Rob Liddiard 45:24
Yeah, I mean, from from the Yapster perspective, one of the reasons we were so excited to, to partner and integrate with with Alpaka is we really focus on Social Leadership, direct communication, communication between between work teams and it's all about unstructured human communications primarily. In this world, there's a there's a huge need for structured communications also. And in structured communications, the more that you can automate, in order to remove the administrative burden that I talked about earlier, the more time you give to colleagues either to enjoy their lives, or to be undertaking work that goes directly to patient value. And so... I'm not gonna spend too long on it because I'm just making the same point you already did earlier. But like what's so cool for us about Alpaka's responsiveness and willingness to build operational features, is it lets us focus really clearly on social leadership and communication, knowing that we've got this increasingly deepening link and these increasingly sophisticated integrations to allow people to hop between our type of communication and the type of communication that Phill specializes in that's different but no less important And we couldn't be as responsive as Phill is to those operational edge cases because it's fundamentally not what we do. We've got our hands full competing with these global consumer messaging products. I can see there's a few more questions here, mainly for you Aliyyah, I think. You're the star of this show!
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 48:17
I mean, the first one about how the rollout has gone. And I think it speaks to the fact that because the Yapster and Alpaka integration was there, that's what made it so effective. So yeah, our staff is what you know, you've obviously got a much bigger staff, Paul Adam, with over 3000 staff - ours is 250. And but it was quicker than I could have expected. It was within a few hours. Every staff member had a text message and it was all automated. So I think the key thing is, the integration to Alpaka meant that there was already a system in which every staff member had a name, a phone number, and some sort of job description or team allocated to them. And that's not a technical way to describe it, but that basically meant that it was, you know, all of that got picked up by Yapster organized and the invites went out. So I would say to anyone considering Yapster that I wouldn't think rollout should be one of the concerns that you have
Rob Liddiard 49:15
As long as they've invested in coherent underlying systems and organization of their data, which is why it's so important people think about this as a Yapster-Alpaka joint story. I think, the fact you had the foresight to invest in underlying systems and understanding that having people data with integrity would then let you innovate in other areas is what made it so so seamless. I mean, from a user perspective, our biggest customers from a user perspective is Next PLC, the retailer, we've got about 15,000 weekly active users with Next. The barrier to adoption, isn't the size of the workforce. It's the integrity of the underlying data and systems. And then do you have a culture where people like each other, want to talk to one another? Do you have visible leaders in enough parts of the organization to facilitate that discourse so that it's not just this cold technology that lands on someone's phone and then doesn't speak to them.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 50:11
Absolutely. Adam, your second question around tech abilities: I had the same worry with this before we decided to go for it. And particularly because at the time when we were doing this, we didn't want to put any more stress onto staff than there already was with the with the way things were working. And I have to say the fact that it's been embraced is amazing, because the way it looks on the screen, it's very similar to WhatsApp or even to the SMS kind of messaging that people would do, we didn't have to do any staff training. Staff members who struggle with elearning and logging into elearning haven't had a problem with figuring out how this works. It's been, in terms of abilities, it's intuitive in the same way as you would see with WhatsApp. It's been... there's a lot of similarities there. The question around email: this is an interesting one, Adam, we haven't stopped sending emails, we still do send emails to personal email addresses. But I think that the difference, it's a different type of communication. So to an email, it's obviously a longer communication. It's something that you read, but also, it doesn't go out as often. And the detail and the personality in it is much less. I think with this, it's much quicker, it's much more responsive, you get that kind of two way communication in a way that you can't do with emails. And actually, when I say two way, I don't just mean two way in terms of two people, but it can be one to many, it can be many to many, or it could be many to one. And whereas with emails, you can only really get that one to one approach.
Rob Liddiard 51:49
Aliyyah, when we when we do seminars on social leadership, we basically talk about there being three tools that are available to the social social leader. Social leadership's about influencing colleagues at scale using digital tools. It's not unique to Yapster. So whenever we talk about Social Leadership we say there are three tools. There's broadcasting to your community, there's reacting and commenting - that's allowing - they're communicating first and then you're echoing back and then the third is direct messaging. So there's we definitely wouldn't want anyone to come away from this thinking we're saying 'email is bad'. It's not - broadcast communications are good, it's just email is one vehicle for doing that. It's just Yapster's designed in such a way that you get the three parts, not legs, of social leadership all next to one another so that you can give this sort of enriched employee communication, engagement experience, that's all about the message and not about the medium.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 53:27
Yeah.
Phillip Rodgers 53:28
And Rob, check my numbers on this. But I believe that 90% of text messages are seen within the first five minutes of receiving them. And that's probably true for Yapster also because that's true. So I believe if you have a more timely need, and in a care environment, I guess you do have to know now that they have seen it or whatever. As you said, it's a different form of communication but the response is immediate, and then their own response to the information, it's in their hand, and they've dealt with it now. So I'll have to go and do the thing I've been asked to do because it's in my hand. It's why you get opticians appointments and doctor's appointments to your phone and not to your email, because an email is forgotten, later. In your phone, it's now.
Rob Liddiard 54:16
Yeah, it's true. I mean, that's actually one of the reasons that we introduced intelligent muting. So when we started Yapster, obviously, the instant messaging capability was the first thing. We didn't build intelligent new thing until later. And what we actually realized is the product, before we introduced intelligent muting, was actually quite intrusive, because of the awesome power of the text message. So now when you first log into Yapster you have to accept end user terms and conditions to protect everybody for data transfer and processing. The very next thing you do is set your profile picture and then your notification preferences. Because exactly that point Phill - it is a very personal thing, getting a push notification on a personal device. And so, with that power comes quite a lot of responsibility. [TRANSCRIPT LOST] [There's one more question about pricing, but we'll leave that for now and follow up when we circulate the video of this webinar next week] We can follow up those conversations and we can start getting to pricing. What I would say is we're so excited about what we've done with Aliyyah and Phill, we're really excited about what we think can be brought to Yapster by Alpaka, that we're going to agree a commercial arrangement where one of our platforms probably comes free on a bundle basis, so that organizations that are under cost pressure, as we all are, aren't forced to pick one or the other of us. We think it's really important that people take the solution on a bundle basis. And so we don't want to, you know, we don't want there to be any friction in that or any reason to not to not pretty much replicate the exact solution you've heard here today. So can't give you any numbers on cost, but we can promise you that it should be compelling. If you think the product that we've just described is the right fit for your organization. Forgive me guys, I did end on a sales pitch. I tried not to.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 57:00
It was inevitable.
Rob Liddiard 57:04
Brilliant. Well, I think we've exhausted the audience for Q&A. So over and out, I suppose - so we'll circulate this as a recorded message within within the next few working days.
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 57:15
Thank you, everyone, please stay safe and look after each other.
Rob Liddiard 57:18
Cheers
Aliyyah Begum-Nasser 57:19
Bye
Phillip Rodgers 57:19
Au revoir
