HepSA Working Remotely

Covering the Distance

How COVID has affected our work at Hepatitis SA

In February 2020, as the likelihood of the COVID-19 pandemic hitting Australia was increasing, Hepatitis SA started planning. What would our service provision look like, in the event of COVID-19 cases increasing in South Australia and restrictions being put into place. Each team was tasked with brainstorming how the changes would impact on their work, and how each team would adapt to restrictions, which at the time were largely unknown.

A planning meeting of Hepatitis SA staff was held in early March 2020. Staff who work at the Hackney Office met to discuss what the next 6 months might look like. While much of our work can continue away from the office such as resource development, report writing and future work planning, other services like the Hepatitis Helpline, Clean Needle Program (CNP), as well as workforce and community education, were areas which needed to be thought through. As the CNP, Admin and IT Support required staff to be in the office, it was agreed to have a roster of skeleton staff attend the Hackney Office to ensure continuation of these programs. We amended the processes in which clients would collect their equipment, ensuring there was a 1.5m distance between the client and staff member (see p13), as well as additional cleaning of surfaces. As is usually the case, the phones would be answered by staff onsite and any Helpline calls would now be transferred to the coordinator of Hepatitis SA Helpline & Support Services, who would be working from home. Our IT and communications system had to be “pivoted” to accommodate staff working from home. Take-home equipment had to be prepared for people who needed them and registers set up to track them. The question of internal staff communication was discussed and software to substitute face to face interaction was trialled and set up. While the education team very nimbly adopted an easyto-setup software so they could continue delivering their sessions (more on that later), a Google account was set up for staff to share files remotely. Meanwhile, work began on setting up an integrated organisationwide communication and file

sharing system that could also be used for video meetings. Organising our magazine mailout was a challenge as key staff members were working from home. In a great show of support, staff from all program areas volunteered to help. The Information and Resources team reorganised the process, printing out mailing labels at home and delivering them to the office. On-site workers took delivery of the magazines from the printer and sorted them into manageable lots, which other workers took home to pack and label before returning them to the office for posting. Amazingly, the remotely organised and socially distanced mailout was completed in the same time as our old-style mailouts. The biggest challenge the organisation faced was our regular internal meetings and our workforce and community education. Previously several staff had used various video conferencing platforms for meetings, but no one had hosted a meeting, so how the various platforms worked from a host point of view were unknown. The Education Team got straight onto testing a variety of platforms to see which would be the most userfriendly from an educational perspective. After a few failed attempts and many laughs, it was decided that Zoom would be the best choice of platform to learn in the short space of time available to us. Our Zoom account was set up and the promotion of our new way to educate South Australians was sent far and wide. Initially we were sceptical as to whether people would take up the offer of education via an online platform, but after a few days the requests started to come in from metropolitan organisations, and also services in rural and remote areas were making contact. The process of delivering an education session via Zoom was an interesting one at first. Some groups of participants did not have their cameras on, so it felt like talking to yourself for an hour or so. But as our confidence grew, we were able to get some interaction from the participants through the chat function in the program. The education team intend to continue using Zoom as an educational platform moving forward. It wasn’t only the Education Team who began using Zoom, other Hepatitis SA teams started using it as a way to stay connected and virtually see each other while working from home. Hepatitis SA has also been using Zoom for our internal staff meetings, as well as participating in larger network meetings across the sector. A notable

fun component of Zoom meetings has been the addition of the family pet as meeting members. Hearing a dog bark in the background as the post is delivered, or a cat climbing across the computer when someone is talking has definitely made for some interesting times. The Hepatitis SA team have loved meeting each other’s pets, even if it has been over a computer screen. All in all, we have all learnt to adapt to the changes the restrictions imposed, and we plan to continue to expand the remote working methods we have developed so as to complement our regular activities when they resume. If you or your team would like to organise an education session via Zoom, please contact our office on 83628443 or education@ hepsa.asn.au . See the back cover of the magazine for more details. v

Jenny Grant