Dan Roberge:
Today we're going to be talking to David [Wilkings] and Cameron [Micules] from Niuz, and we're going to look at their employee engagement platform. Let's check it out.
How are you doing guys?
David & Cameron:
Pretty good, Dan, how are you?
Dan Roberge:
Pretty good, pretty good. So before we get into some more specific things about the Niuz platform which we're going to be talking about today, maybe um, one of you can give us a bit of an overview of what it does. Just kind of the highlights of the Niuz platform in general.
So what does it do?
David:
So, Niuz was created out of COVID and when all operators needed to communicate with their staff and they couldn't do it, most of the staff had either personal emails or text messages or they had group chats that weren't up to date. So we thought there'd be a better platform and we built Niuz from that.
We worked with operators to build out what they need and what they don't need. So we built a full mobile intranet on the back end with social feed posting on the front end stat can, like, they can comment, they can ask questions. The social feeds allowed for recognition, engagements, contributions, new hires, and new residents being brought in, and then on the back end the mobile app allowed for them to access everything and anything that they need, including links out to other platforms such as Maintenance Care.
So it's become a very usable kind of housing app and platform for frontline staff and management to use.
Dan Roberge:
Wow So now when the idea first came out, you said it, you know, it was during Covid and so what, what brought this idea out? Like what, you know, what was the spark that created, the initial concept?
David:
Mainly the pain points that operators were experiencing. Then, they couldn't communicate with their staff. Staff would show up to work only, to be told to go back home. There'd be new outbreaks or new Covid numbers and nobody would be updated or what's going on. And as we started looking into the industry we realized there was a real need for this.
Cameron:
The problem that they faced, Dan, the biggest problem was the lack of ability to send real-time information. Phone lists, it takes you an hour to get through 55 people on a phone list. You just can't get a hold of everyone. You can try sending text messages to text message groups, but if you don't have somebody's contact in your phone, it's just a phone number that shows up and you don't know who's responding, you don't know if people can actually see it.
Um, the difference between Apple And Android phones causes an issue with text messaging. WhatsApp groups were being used a lot. But again, it's an insecure platform to do that sort of thing and you don't even know if people are going to see the notification that you're sending. So to David's point, if I don't know that we're in quarantine and I shouldn't show up to work and I show up to work anyway, I'm going to be in a pretty bad mood and just be sent home.
Or if I show up and there's a requirement for me to have PPE on me and I don't have it, I didn't know about it, I got to go home and get it. That's just a waste of time. So there was a massive spike in dissatisfaction as a direct result of not being able to communicate in a timely fashion.
So to solve that problem, we all know how trained we are to see those little red dots on the app icons on our phone and just tap it. That's also trained us to expect short-form content to consume. It's not an email, it's not a video, it's a Twitter, it's a tweet, it's an Instagram post, It's something short form.
And that's kind of what we built Niuz to deliver a short-form piece of content that shows up on a mobile phone that people can tap and get to in an instant and it disseminates the information we need to everyone we need in seconds.
Dan Roberge:
And so the individual um, employees would typically download this app from the App Store, whether Android or Apple, onto their phones and ah, it would be their personal phones in most cases, um, I would imagine sometimes their company phones. But the interface to communicate to the staff is from a head office perspective they would send messages down.
Now is there also the ability for the staff to communicate amongst each other in that process?
Cameron:
We didn't originally build that function because we didn't want the water cooler conversation to happen in a virtual environment. The potential for toxicity exists at that level. And what we built into Niuz was the ability for people to comment and like on posts that come down from management, the opportunity for toxicity to come across in the comments does exist.
To date, we haven't seen it happen. When you comment on anything in Niuz, your name, and your profile image are associated with that comment. Everyone in the organization can see it. So it's very unlikely that someone that's kind of a nasty nelly is going to make a comment that everyone can see and everyone's going to know that, oh, that's the person that complains all the time.
Dan Roberge:
So you're not anonymous in that process, right?
Cameron:
Exactly. That's exactly it. Yeah.
David:
Dan. We have some operators that have a great culture and really trust their staff and they've opened that up to staff, to staff communications. They have their own social feeds. We have a chat functionality that's going to roll out very soon. So they'll be able to do staff chat to chat if they decide to turn it on or not.
But really it's um, for management to staff or management to their teams and then going back up, it'll be staffed to their manager staff to hr, the ed. And depending on the size of the organization, it's really the individual executive, directors or the champions of the platform are able to control and add all the information that they need for staff to access it.
Cameron:
About the um, personal phone question, we've heard this from a lot of clients and a lot of prospects. My staff, there's no way they're going to install a work app on their personal phone and they don't. And that's totally fine because we knew this was going to happen. We built Niuz to not just exist as a phone-based app, it exists in any web browser.
You can log into Niuz from a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, it doesn't matter. Um, a lot of our customers have a BYOD policy, bring your own device or no phones in sight policy, which kind of counteracts what it is we're trying to achieve. They do, however, have iPads and things at nursing stations.
They have dedicated computers and workstations at nursing stations. Each one of those can be logged into Niuz so that anybody that accesses that terminal or that app, that tablet, can access Niuz and get everything they need that way. So we're working around the resistance to install an app on my personal phone for frontline staff.
If they're at home, you can train or part of the onboarding process would be just log into Niuz in the morning before you leave just to get an update on what's going on. It's 30 seconds. They can log into Niuz from their laptop, check the Niuz feed, see if there's anything that's impacting their day and then they can get on with things.
Dan Roberge:
You know, one of the things that, like we've known each other for a little while and you know, one of the things I know about you is that we, you know, you know the industry very well and so some of these obstacles that you're identifying. Like, the staff doesn't want to put something on their personal phone or whatever it is that is sometimes quite unique to senior care.
In some ways. Um, but it is a true obstacle and you have to think about a solution. And you're in a startup environment right now, and startups always adapt and change. And so maybe talk about what is it like to run a startup and what types of challenges do you have and what's exciting about it.
The startup world is something that everybody talks about. The initial Facebook days and so on. Everybody lives in the same house, but these days it's taken on a new shape. But what is it like? What i a startup for you?
David:
So every startup is different. Every startup has its own culture and its kind of approach to things. We are 100% remote. It helps keep overhead costs down from that. It makes, a lot more efficiencies in terms of work and work hours and when people are able to complete the work.
The biggest factor that we kind of put forward is constantly trying to get feedback from the clients that we have. So almost all of our new capabilities and functionalities come from client requests. We hear enough of them, they are all around the same theme or function, and that's what we start to build and roll out for the existing clients.
And that's done nothing but validate, um, the needs that exist for other clients that don't exist, that aren't part of the Niuz platform yet. So when we tell them about new functionalities and capabilities rolling out, they almost always kind of like, oh, yeah, that'd be good, or that's a great feature, or, oh, I wish we had that.
And it's great to hear that feedback from them. And then outside of getting that great feedback and building those functionalities and constantly staying in touch with your clients, there's everything else that goes on with working in a startup. So you get curve balls thrown at you. You find out new requirements that you didn't know existed, and you're rushing to figure it out on a timeline.
You're managing, um, exposure and booths and travel, and there's none of that kind of team underneath you that supports all those administrative tasks. So you're managing all of that with your team and making sure everyone's aligned on the same page. And probably as with every corporation, hypercommunication is really the only way that you all stay informed and on the same page.
Dan Roberge:
Yeah, and it's, it's, um, cash flow and growth has to be timed with your marketing efforts. And your development efforts, and you have all these challenges. It's like you learn so much when you're in a startup environment because you're handling everything. Um, and so what kind of marketing has Niuz done in the last few years?
I know I've seen you at a couple of trade shows. What's the strategy for your team to get out there as you're ramping up revenue versus expenses in a startup environment?
Cameron:
We're trying to focus mostly on grassroots marketing stuff and referrals first and foremost. Um, as you know, we can say whatever we want about how great, how beautiful our baby is. It's the audience that actually has to recognize that, yes, this is a beautiful baby. Congratulations. Um, the challenge has been, as with startup mode, getting adoption to the level that we want to see with our customers and then having them turn around and say, this is what we've seen as a direct result of using Niuz.
And I think this sort of factors back into the challenges that we're facing and the problems that we're solving for our customers. Everyone we talk to says, I've heard our communication sucks. Okay, but how do you quantify that? Like, what's the business metric that we're trying to change by improving communication?
If you play this all the way down the chain, it turns into a retention problem. If I'm unhappy at work because I don't feel appreciated, because I don't feel included, because I don't know what's going on, I'm going to be looking for something else. So if you can improve communication, you can improve job satisfaction, which improves the retention rate.
What we're trying to do then is go back to our customers that are using us, the early adopters, and ask them to look at, have we actually changed that metric for you? Have we positively impacted that needle across the board? Yes, but it's not at the level that we want to see yet because we don't have 50,000 user organizations with a, uh, 33% turnover rate that have changed that to 15%.
We're seeing it, but our customers are small enough now that they're not necessarily competing for the same job postings that other, larger organizations are. They've got a smaller community and people sort of come in and sort of stay where they are. So from a marketing perspective, my job is to get as much customer evidence as possible.
That's the golden. That's the holy grail of marketing for startups. We've done this for this customer. We can do the same thing for you. So we're slowly getting those metrics now, which is great. We're getting some fantastic feedback from our clients, but it's not to the level yet. That positively proves we're going to move this business metric for you.
We're getting there. We know that it does work. There are reports and studies all over the place that I've shared through marketing that talk about this sort of thing. Now we just want to make sure that we can prove it to our customers. We are. But again, it's slowly getting there.
David:
Yeah. One of the examples, Cam, we've had clients that uh, have been able to build the communications and get shift coverage and work with their own teams to the point where they don't have agency staff in their homes anymore. And you know, during COVID and all operators were experiencing that and that challenge and that's a huge win, especially for a smaller single, uh, owner-operator or small multi-facility over owner-operators.
Getting that cost under control is a massive impact to their bottom-line frontline staff agencies.
Cameron:
We've seen reports that are showing they're charging up to 250% of what a full-time person would cost them on an hourly basis. So that's two and a half people for everyone that I lose that I'm spending on, which I shouldn't have to spend on.
So if we can build a way that prevents. Or reduces that turnover rate. We're helping them save 150% or 250% of their uh, staffing cost month over month.
Dan Roberge:
And that's a direct hit return on investment that you can point to, uh, just right off the bat. I think that'd be kind of the biggest win for somebody. I mean you're talking about 250%. That's a huge amount. The uh, senior care industry has gone through a lot of changes since the pandemic.
And one of the things that um, I've heard a lot is about staffing and now different departments are different. Um, like on the maintenance side it hasn't been hit as bad apparently, but you know, the care staff for sure has been difficult to find. Um, and so obviously staff turnover is a big issue for, you know, you want to retain staff and so if a tool can help them do this.
But also what are like some trends that you're seeing just in general in the senior care industry, um, that you think are happening now or going to be happening and that um, maybe the Niuz app can help in that way?
Cameron:
I think one of the biggest things is the change of old guard. Um, we're seeing that the frontline care delivery staff is reaching the age-out phase. A lot of them are choosing to retire. Um, Dan, it's a little bit earlier than our generation is reaching the point now where they're the senior directors of care and they're looking to retire.
The newcomers coming into these positions are the Gen Ys, Gen Z's. They're used to having apps, they're used to having immediate information transfer. They're used to engaging with something in their hand to get the work done. Despite the fact that nursing by and large is trained. If it was not written down, it didn't happen.
Well, with the advent of EHR electronic health records and you know, companies like Point Click Care, which you and I know very well, um, they're changing that paradigm. They're shifting the importance of paper documentation to digital documentation. Old staff still struggle with that, they still struggle with adoption. New staff, no problem.
You get an app for that. Yeah, please let me do that because it's easier and faster. So as the new generation of care delivery staff come into place, we've got a solution that they're accustomed to that they would expect to have available to them. And it's massively cost-effective for the organization to implement something like that.
David:
I was just gonna say you basically took the words out of my mouth. Uh, you know, the younger generations that are coming in the government's having a huge push with nursing training and adoption, uh, to get into these facilities and these positions. They want something that's easy, that's familiar, that's fast.
They don't necessarily do all their work while at home. Sometimes they want to be able to access it when they're at home. They have time to read documents... Not to say that some of the old guard aren't willing and able.
Cameron:
And they totally are. They totally are.
David:
But, um, statistically there's always those slower adopters that are used to doing things a certain way and don't necessarily like change.
Cameron:
There's resistance that comes with the front care, um, staffing generation. But I will say to continue with the mobile app side of things and the youth. David hit the head. Um, where I want to be able to access what I need from wherever I need it. Getting back to the little red icons and having an app in your phone, if I'm on the subway, if I'm in line at the grocery store, if I'm just driving around with my boyfriend, whatever it is, I, um, know I can check my app for something quick and easy to digest.
Um, if I've got to go to the dentist and I need to know what is my insurance coverage? Well, Niuz can allow that person to access that documentation for whatever their health care coverage is or their EAP plan through a login process that's built into Niuz. So tap into Niuz, tap into the mobile intranet side of things, and then I can access what I need to while I'm en route so I don't have to worry about what was that paper.
I got to print that thing off. There's no way you're going to find it on SharePoint. SharePoint doesn't work on a mobile phone. Like it's. There's a resistance, there's a barrier to get to the information that I need that exists in traditional software. And we've broken that barrier. We've changed that dynamic dynamic to make it.
Everything can be accessed on your phone. And that's exactly where this new level, this new generation of staff wanted to be.
David:
And we're making it easier and easier as we start to integrate with more platforms. More scheduling, time and attendance, payroll, even maintenance platforms, um, any education platforms. It's just going to get easier and easier for staff to access what they need.
Dan Roberge:
Yeah. So tell me more about that. That's kind of where I was wanting to head here is like, what are some of the specific, uh, tools within the application that you can use and integrations that you're trying to, that you have or trying to achieve and why they're important.
You talked about a couple already. Uh, I know for example on the maintenance side with our Maintenance Care software you could uh, submit let's say a maintenance request if uh, you notice something right from the app. And that's an easy way to kind of get to that information. What other things can they achieve through the application itself?
David:
So they have access to companies uh, like Surge Learning, they can have that on their phone, they can log into it, they can access the link for the login page immediately. Same with Orca Education. We're working with them to make it available. But clients can just set it up on the mobile Internet right now just by adding the link and making it easy for staff to access.
The problem that we run into is we know some staff don't remember their login passwords or their usernames or their phones haven't saved it for them or they can't remember how to get into there. So we're slowly working on solving those barriers to get them easy access to those platforms.
But it's time and it's resources and uh, the companies are eager to work with us but it's a process.
Cameron:
We're looking, David said too, looking at staffing and attendance, applications working to build bridges with them, uh, payroll, um, HR is systems, um training, uh, Maintenance Care, um, there's a number of other things, nutrition systems, um, dynamic menu systems, everything and anything that happens inside of an organization, inside a healthcare building that staff needs to understand what's going on.
We want to be that bridge for them so that they don't have to remember nine, or 10 different logins. They don't have to have these things memorized. They could just go through Niuz and then in the back end of Niuz the management can set up the configuration between I'm going to take this person's sign-on and pass it over to that application as credibility and then they can access what they need from there.
Way easier said than done. Obviously the multi-factor authentication protocols, the challenges with um, security issues and everything. We're working through all those things slowly but surely working through them. But the ideal state is Niuz becomes the first and only place the staff needs to go in order to know what to do for the day or what's going to impact their shift.
Dan Roberge:
I was going to say one of the things that too that when we uh, because you know I was part of some conversation initially when you were conceptualizing some of this application and there was a talk about surveys within the process. Is that something that's, that's, that you're still working on?
How's that looking in it?
David:
No surveys are available. We have many clients that are using them. Um, they can, you can have as many surveys as you want. You can uh, open surveys for certain dates and times, close them, reopen them later on. You can publish them at certain dates and times. So surveys are a great tool.
We have a lot of clients that are using them. You can uh, set dates and times for them to get published out. You can open and close them, you can control who sees them. So if you have surveys for certain staff, type or management, you can make sure that only those individuals are accessing the survey and using it correctly.
Then we also have suggestion boxes. So some clients are keen to get very unfiltered feedback, so they use the anonymous option. Some um, want to know who said what so they don't get as unfiltered. But there are lots of tools within the platform that the clients are finding, utilizing, and experimenting with.
We get emails with questions on Kate, can I use it for this? Could I try this? And we're finding out that clients are using the platform in ways that we never even imagined, which is fantastic for us because we can see the creative capability that the clients are using to modify and mold it to their own uses within their organization.
Dan Roberge:
And so are you, uh, who's the primary person at the location that typically takes, um, you know, takes ownership on interacting with content, uh, and building content and you know, building those surveys? Is there, is it hr, is it uh, you know, the, the Director of care, like who is the person that typically takes ownership?
David:
So it's really interesting. It depends on the client, it depends on the size of their organization, it depends on the culture that already exists. Some executive directors are, you know, deep in the weeds. They're right down into it, they're owning it, they're sending out the surveys. They want as much information as possible.
They have a great relationship with their staff and they're able to have that one on one. Some larger organizations, just because it's impossible to get that granular with every single site. They have individuals like staff development coordinators or learning engagement coordinators or they'll have, you know, the administrative assistants and the EDs.
They have kind of a team that supports the platform and keeps everyone engaged and informed and up to date on what's going on.
Cameron:
Yeah, typically the way we've got it set up Is, um, although there's. We ask that one person be the one throat to choke. When it comes to what goes into and how Niuz is managed, it does come down to a team effort. IPC — Infection Prevention Control Coordinators — will have access to it as managers, um, executive directors, docs, dons, administrators, owners, all the way up to CEOs and CFOs, depending, again, on the size and scale of the organization.
Um, you have direct control over who can do what in the app, which is another great feature of that. The app is. We're so flexible right now. Basically, anything in the app is customizable. You can change what goes where, who sees what, what it's called,and how long it exists for.
Um, you can create as many social feeds as you want, Niuz feeds as you want. The sky's the limit of what we can do with the tool. And that enables our customers, again, depending on the size of the organization, to configure Niuz the way that they need it to work, which has been a real benefit for a lot of them.
We have some customers that have thousands of users, we have some customers that have dozens of users. And the way that you set up the organization is going to be dramatically different depending on the size and scale we're flexible enough to accommodate.
David:
I wanted to go back to integrations really quickly. Part of the reason that we're looking at, uh, partnering with all these companies is, and even companies like Welby that are resident-focused with their events and coordinators, and you can pull that information and you can share information about new residents are coming in, or little facts and features about them, or, you know, their favorite things, or a little bit of history.
And staff can see that when they come in, they're aware that there's a new resident. They know where they are, and they can engage with them immediately with something that they know is relevant to that residential. And it just makes that resident experience a little bit better, uh, each and every day.
Dan Roberge:
I can definitely see that. And what's the typical onboarding process and timeline for if somebody says, I want to get started? How does your team take action and how long does that process take?
David:
Again, it depends on the size of the organization, but we can get up and running in as little as two hours, two weeks, or a month. It also depends on how much capacity they have to do kind of homework on the platform. So we can do a full suite setup and have all the documentation sent to us.
But ultimately the best way for them to learn the platform is to work with them to build the foundation, build all the different resources that they need, the social feeds, the user types, and then they can go in there and they can add the documentation themselves, they can modify it, they can create the surveys, they can make the post, they can change the user permissions.
And as they get really familiar with the system because it is very user-friendly and it's kind of intuitive in a lot of ways, they just start running with it. And I have uh, onboarding meetings that get canceled because they're like, oh, we're good, we don't have any questions.
And we always have one final touch point before we launch out to all the staff. Fix any little issues or cobwebs and then it's good to go. So very quick. It's very easy, very intuitive and we can be as helpful or involved or uninvolved as the client needs.
Cameron:
We built this system, uh, Dan, so that it's if you can use Facebook or Instagram, you can use Niuz. It really is literally that simple to do, um, adding users. David said that we'll bulk upload all users for um, our customers right off the bat. Um, we'll help them define, uh, user roles that make sense for the organization.
Will help work out what their mobile intranet could look like with the custom containers or buckets or tiles if you want that they're going to push all their documentation into. And literally, David said it's a two-hour call to walk through the management staff how to do what they need to do in the back end, the front end side of things.
It takes no time at all to teach anybody. It's 30 seconds worth of "What do I do here? Tap that. Oh, I get it." And then off they go.
Dan Roberge:
So tell me a little bit about your backgrounds, each of you, uh, and kind of the role you play in the company right now and why your background and the experience you've built is perfect for what you're doing now because you're involved in so many things from marketing to design to finance to uh, every support.
So how did you learn all this stuff?
David:
So my background's all over the place. Um, when I was in school I actually worked in long-term care facilities and various different roles. So I have a pretty good understanding of what the needs were like what the experience was like and how the home kind of ran.
And from there I ventured out into other industries. I got a black belt in Lean Six Sigma for operational efficiency. And uh, that allowed me to grow into a kind of business architecture at IGM Financial and really focus on the user experience and the design of what new platforms or applications or technology was being rolled out and how that affected the different levels of the end users within that uh, that uh, were going to be touching that technology.
So that uh, gave me a bunch of experience and capabilities to kind of mold those two together and apply it to Niuz in terms of the application and that usability and, and what they actually needed for the application instead of building a whole bunch of stuff that maybe wasn't useful to the operators.
Dan Roberge:
That's my favorite part by the way, like is you know building software is like just figuring out what is the user experience going to be like what makes sense, you know, thinking it's like almost like you're a filmmaker, you're the audience shouldn't tell you what the story is, right?
You know what's going to entertain them and so you make a movie accordingly. If they tell you then there are no surprises. And in a way you're building software, you're kind of doing that process all the time is figuring out what have they not thought about but that we can build for them that's going to be useful.
And sometimes it's feedback but Sometimes it's coming from you. So that's always my favorite part of the process.
David:
Yeah, absolutely. Because you're behind the scenes and you can see how everything connects from what they're using and you can build those bridges that they wouldn't have thought of or eventually they would, but you can just do it more quickly.
Dan Roberge:
Yeah, absolutely. How about you, Cam?
Cameron:
Uh, jeez. Long history. Um, I'm much older than you guys. So Dan, you and I met, I think it was in 2004, wasn't it? When I started with PointClickCare, employee number 35 with them as the graphics guy and the marketing guy. Um, we had 35 people at the time, employee number 35 with them.
Um, I stayed with them for about 17 years cumulatively. Um, two seven-year stints with a three-year sort of uh, freelancing thing in the middle of that. Um, so I grew up in the long-term care technology side of things. I've spent dozens of hours inside nursing homes across North America.
I've been to every trade show. I understand the lingo. I've been involved with the UI, the UX, the development of PointClickCare, as well as the implementation of things. Um, spent all those years doing marketing stuff for PointClickCare. But also in and amongst that time dealing with a bunch of different vendors like yourself, Dan, like Maintenance Care, like CareWorks, like Staff Easy Care or Staff Schedule Care.
Like just dozens and dozens of partnerships and things over the years as well. So I've got an intimate understanding of the inner workings of nursing homes and long-term care itself. So I understand the challenges that our customers are facing. Um, I also have a background in storytelling movie making and video design.
So my ability to sort of take a look at um, as you just said too, understanding what the story needs to be, understanding what the pain points are and how we're working to solve that pain point for our customers and then actually show them how to do that. That's sort of where I exist.
So my role with Niuz is um, sort of the marketing side of things and the strategy side to work on who we going to talk to, how we're going to position ourselves, what do we need to say and how do we need to say it? But also working with the sales team on what are we hearing from the market, and how are they responding to things.
Here's what we should try to say next time. Um, working with David and the rest of the management team too on what the app looks like. Here's what we need, here's what we're hearing from customers that needs to go into it and here's why that makes sense for them and everyone else in the industry.
So I've got a long storied history with long-term care as we all do in this industry. Um, and I truly believe that Niuz is going to solve a massive problem that has always existed that no one seemed to come up with a right solution for to date. Um, and it is just that the real-time in your hand, fingertip access to information that I need in order to make a sound decision about my day or that's going to impact what it is I'm going to do at work.
Dan Roberge:
Yeah. So both very relevant experience for uh, a challenging but exciting product, you know, in an industry that I think needs it. Um, and um, you know one of the things I have seen clearly in our, and our uh, kind of growth has been the lack of communication amongst the staff with each other.
And um, I think that can help solve that issue. Um, where can people find information uh, about Niuz and what's the process like if they want to kind of get to know it a bit before they make a decision? Where do they go?
Cameron:
We publish David's address and phone number on the website, so just go to his.
The difficult part with Niuz is the spelling of the name. So Niuz.com n-i-u-z-dot-com, is the first and best access point for anything to do with the application. We've got a blog with a bunch of information on there and stories on um, how and where the application may be relevant to solving different pain points.
We've got an email cost calculator on there to help you figure out how much am I spending on email addresses that my staff aren't even using and then could I reallocate that cost towards adopting a system like Niuz? That solves more than just the email communication problem, but the information sharing, staff recognition, and retention surveys.
Um, we're also on LinkedIn. We go to trade shows all the time. We're at this Long Term Care conference. Um, we're at the Advantage conference. We're down in the States at leading age and ACA conferences. So yeah, you can find us. We're around.
Dan Roberge:
So is there anything else you want to talk about that is related to this that uh, maybe we haven't touched upon? What are your thoughts about the product and how excited are you about the future related to Niuz?
David:
I'm very excited about the future with Niuz. Um, you know, going down to the states and listening to the people that were dropping by and the challenges that they're facing. There's a massive need for this platform and it's very low cost. It can be spread out amongst different envelopes to fund it because the use cases can be so varied for it and the justification for it.
I applied um, at so many different reasons and then what's really exciting that I just recently found out is we have a lot of clients kind of reaching out, requesting demos through the website during uh, accreditation or investigations, uh, or they're just getting kind of, I guess more information from those individuals that are going to the home saying, oh well, your partner or your um, another operator in the area is using this platform.
You should check it out because they can go in, an operator can create an account for an accreditor when, I don't know, 10 seconds that accreditor can go in, they can open the app, they can see everything that's available to the staff, they can see everything that's available to the management, they can check off that it's all easily findable for them and then once it's done, they just delete the user out of the system and it's no longer needed.
Cameron:
The biggest part of that, Dan, is um, and again, great point David, the communication of the information sharing with things. When it comes to compliance and accreditation, there's a new regulation or mandate passed down by the Ministry. Happens all the time. I need to make sure that my staff knows the new expectations of them as of 8:00 am this morning.
Well, if I got staff that don't work 8:00 am this morning, they're not going to show up until like next week sometime. There's no way they're going to see this information. And I don't care how many times you print this off and post it beside the elevator doors, the front doors, on the billet, and boards in the staff room.
Plaster it everywhere in your building. They're not going to see it because there's so much stuff plastered to your walls. It's just part of the furniture. They just walk by it and it goes completely ignored. Ask any ADPAC administrator about this, they'll say the same thing. So the challenge now becomes how do I make sure that my staff know about this and it's not going to show up a week later in a staff meeting.
I will have forgotten. It's last week's news. So next week staff aren't going to know about it unless I've posted that somewhere that that staff will have immediate access to and easy access to. So this feeds into now the mobile Internet side of things, but also the information sharing.
And then from the compliance perspective, anything I post in my Niuzfeed as a manager, I can apply a read confirmation request, which is huge. This is the compliance side. New mandates have come out by the ministry. You have to do this as of 8:00 am on Tuesday. Fantastic. Please tap here to confirm you've read this.
That becomes a report that I can then show to the accreditor who comes in, the surveyor who says, how many people know about this? I can show you exactly how many people know about this. And here's how I made it available to them. This is the checking off the boxes on their, their, um, survey list or their accreditation list.
You've made it available to everybody. You've made sure that everyone has seen it. And you've proven to me that you've done so done. You don't have to look for binders, you don't have to pull stuff off the wall, you don't have to worry about printing anything. All of that goes away because we've made it available in an app that works on desktops, on laptops, on tablets, on personal phones, on work phones.
Doesn't matter where you have the ability to reach everybody instantly with something important.
David:
Yeah, at a very high level. We've digitized the bulletin board and then everything else on top of that.
Dan Roberge:
I feel like you should have led with that because that seems like probably the most important thing out of everything in that compliance, uh, aspect of things. And, um, the reduction of liability and doing your due diligence as an organization to make sure everybody sees what they need to see and learn what they need to learn.
I think that's, that's uh, you know, very much needed.
Cameron:
I think it's, it's funny that you said that, Dan, and I think that from the storytelling side of things, right, this is the movie that we're telling. We start off by explaining there's a challenge. Communication is hard. Everyone agrees. Oh, and so is this. And so is this. We like to finish with that piece.
That's, that's the crescendo of everything, right? The biggest challenge that we face is accreditation and liabilities with things. I'm going to get sued or fined or I'm going to get a black mark on my record if I haven't achieved this level of information sharing, and communication. We solve that for you.
But we also do all this other stuff. One of the biggest success stories that we've seen from one of our clients, and is in their words, which is the most fantastic thing ever. Um, she is the wellness coordinator, um, and staff development coordinator for four different buildings in an organization.
Two long-term care and two senior living. Um, before Niuz, she would struggle with maintaining energy levels and culture and making sure that everyone was aware of what was going on. She implements Niuz. She starts to do the staff recognition element that we promote inside of Niuz, which is almost like a Facebook, Instagram-type concept where photographing a staff member doing something, writing a simple little blurb about how great they are, and sharing it with the organization.
She started to do that in a very short period of time. She saw the energy levels and the engagement levels of her staff shoot through the roof in every building. Because when they saw her walking in, they knew what her job was. She was coming in to take their picture doing something.
It became an internal competition for their staff to see who was going to get recognized the most just for doing what they do anyway. But now they're doing it with a little more pep in their step, a little more of a smile. It has improved resident engagement and resident satisfaction, family satisfaction.
Everything's gone through the roof because she's just started to take pictures of people doing what it is they do every day and recognizing them. It's just like, how much better a, of a story could you get?
Dan Roberge:
Amazing. Well, thank you, both of you. What I want to do is I want to touch base again. Maybe in a year we'll go back and review where, uh, the Niuz application has, uh, developed to, and the markets that you've, uh, that you've tackled. And um, you know, we can maybe touch base at that point.
How does that sound?
David & Cameron:
Absolutely.
Love to all.
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