From overseas workers to student volunteers, the aged care workforce is truly diverse, posing both challenges and opportunities. Melinda Ham reports.

Nasreen Sultana emigrated from Bangladesh to Australia eight years ago with a teaching qualification, but decided to get a job in aged care to have more flexible, part-time hours to look after her young child.

“I am a role model, an example of what anyone can do,” Sultana says. “When I came here I had no experience.”

Since then she’s achieved a certificate III and IV in aged care, passed management and workplace assessment courses, all offered at her work-place.

Sultana splits her working week at Baptist Community Services’ facility in Marsfield, between roles as an aged-care supervisor and as a workplace assessor.

She says she values her working environment highly: “I really like it. It’s a homely residence where people are loving and caring towards me and I care for them too.”

At aged care facilities across Australia, managers face the challenge of supporting and motivating employees like Sultana, who come from diverse ethnic, educational and skills backgrounds.

Baptist Community Services employs a total of 3600 staff and 1000 volunteers across its 20 residential aged care facilities in NSW and ACT, and June Heinrich, the company CEO, says BCS has many strategies to keep its numerous employees engaged.

Because it is a registered training organisation, its trainers provide free in-house training to any BCS staff member to increase their specialist skills and further their careers. Qualifications are offered in areas including aged care, management and home and community care.

Celebrating the special achievements of staff, regardless of their age or education, is another way BCS tries to be inclusive and make everyone feel valued, Heinrich says.

“We have inspire certificates – anyone can nominate a peer or a manager who’s done something special, beyond the call of duty,” she says. The winners also receive a $100 non-cash reward.

To mark the 65th anniversary of the organisation, the BCS executive is also travelling to every one of their 20 facilities around the state.

“We’re on our 13th leg now and in each place we have a staff barbecue, we cut a birthday cake and we have a celebration. We are celebrating our local staff in each location be it Parkes, Wagga, Dubbo, Forster or Alstonville.”

Heinrich says that having a multi-cultural workforce is one of BCS’ greatest assets. “Having staff of different backgrounds is an advantage because it reflects the nationalities that make up Australia and our clients; in many cases if a client doesn’t speak English then a staff member can translate for them,” she says.

At BCS Marsfield, Sultana says they have a multicultural day when staff bring dishes from their national cuisine to share. Those staff from non-English speaking backgrounds also make presentations to the residents in the aged care facility, showing cultural items and talking about their home-country.

Staff at her facility come from countries including the Philippines, China, India, Africa and Sri Lanka while the residents also come from many of the same countries. “The staff and residents all really enjoy it,” she says.

Meanwhile, in Victoria, Epworth Health, Melbourne’s largest not-for-profit healthcare provider with five specialist facilities, has its own ways to cater for the varied needs of their 2100 nurses and keep them happy.

Louise O’Connor is the director of nursing at Epworth Eastern in Box Hill and part of her balancing act is ensuring her staff from non-English speaking backgrounds feel welcome.

In the last year, Epworth Eastern has hired over 100 nurses from overseas and O’Connor says that she carefully deals with their cultural acclimatisation. Many don’t have significant support networks to turn to and can feel socially isolated she says.

“The biggest thing is often not their clinical skill but to communicate and develop relationships with the other Australian-born nurses,” she says. “Sometimes they say so-and-so was rude to me and when you hear the story it may seem reasonable enough but then in their culture that is not acceptable.”

Combining staff with different qualifications and experience levels with others returning to the workforce after a long absence, is another challenge she faces.

“We need to get the baby boomers communicating with the Gen Y. There are differences across the generations but we need to get them to work together,” she says.

To develop everyone’s skill levels and build team confidence, Epworth Eastern has a state-of-the-art simulated ward training environment. The computerised simulators are so life-like that they even blink their eyes and appear to breathe, O’Connor says.

“The exercise ensures that new graduates and also the older generation practice their skills in a safe and supervised environment without working under an acute fear of the unknown that something might go wrong at any time.”

So far 80 staff have gone through the simulation training program – which is still in its pilot stage - with great results.

O’Connor also bridges the generation gap by getting her staff together in different departments for morning and afternoon teas so they can meet each other socially and not just under work conditions.

“We want to touch the individual,” she says. “Everybody is different but even if you are young or old you can have a positive relationship with the other people you work with.”

O’Connor’s main mantra is open communication. She says she tries hard not just to breeze through the wards saying hello, how are you? to all the nurses she meets without really listening to their replies.

“We know that there is a battle for talent so we want to attract the best talent and keep those people with us by addressing all their needs,” she says. “We want them to know we are passionate and supportive of them.”

Devaki Santhosh, an Indian-trained registered nurse who was out of the workforce for 15 years before she came to Australia, has experienced many of the issues in her three years at Epworth Richmond that O’Connor deals with. “The place we work fosters a real closeness because you depend on each other,” Santhosh says.

“The other nurses have really helped ease me back into the workforce. They also knew I didn’t have much support and when my son fell ill, one of the senior nurses cooked dinner for me and my family. I wouldn’t change the people I work with for the world.”