Our People

The pandemic has significantly impacted many workplaces, causing staffing issues across multiple industries. The disability industry has seen many challenges with it becoming increasingly difficult to attract and retain suitably qualified staff.

Throughout the year MiLife-Victoria saw 26 staff from all areas of the business resign. Reasons for staff leaving included unwillingness to comply with the vaccine mandate placed on disability employees, as well as staff moving to other industries or competing organisations, or deciding to move to self-employment.

With many months of lockdown, support staff who were not rostered to support vulnerable clients were provided with various online training programs to upskill staff and maintain engagement and connection with the organisation.

Training included:

• Zero Tolerance – Human rights and you

• Zero Tolerance – Considering additional risk

• Zero Tolerance – Learning and Improvement

• Journal Training

• Health Reports

• Behaviour Support and Training

• PEG (Tube) Training

• Zero Tolerance – Preventing abuse

• Zero Tolerance – Responding to Abuse

• COVID 19 Infection control training

• Management of Complaints and Feedback

• Journal writing - observed behaviours training

• Incident Reporting

• Ethical Response

Throughout lockdown staff were sent a care package from CEO Amanda Youngs and the Management team as a thank you for their hard work and dedication. This was well received from all staff who appreciated the sentiment and the delicious goodies within the package.

A Step Challenge was held with staff during lockdown seeing staff from across the organisation spilt into teams from different areas of the business, set with the task of working together (albeit apart) to take as many steps as they could each day. Steps were tracked via an app and teams became quite competitive. The initiative certainly created a buzz and was a welcome distraction during a challenging time.

Over the course of the year MiLife-Victoria welcomed 24 new employees. There was a shift in the recruitment process which saw a more considered approach with coordinators taking a more active role and Human Resources taking a more supportive role. Having managers and coordinators look at recruitment through a different lens has led to hiring more appropriately trained staff who are a good fit for the organisation and the clients they are supporting.

Changes to the induction process have also been made with coordinators and managers providing an induction plan to new staff so they are aware of what they will be doing on each day whilst completing their shadow shifts.

The next 12 months will see the development of an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) along with a remuneration review which will be conducted by an external organisation. Both are exciting developments for MiLife-Victoria and will set the organisation apart from other like employers and will bring increased success in employee attraction and retention.