Aveleijn provides care, support, and treatment for people with intellectual disabilities. To simplify internal processes, Aveleijn chose Nedap Ons® as its new Electronic Client Dossier (ECD). The implementation of SelfGuide proved crucial for the successful adoption of the system.
For over 55 years, Aveleijn has provided care, support, treatment, and advice to children, youth, adults, and seniors with intellectual disabilities or low social skills. With eighty locations in the municipality of Berkelland and fourteen municipalities in Twente, the organization is firmly rooted in the region. Aveleijn is an integral part of the local community and helps clients understand society as much as possible, enabling them to participate positively. With the implementation of a new ECD, Nedap Ons®, Aveleijn aims to further improve internal processes. It is essential to optimally guide employees in using the system.
For Aveleijn, two key needs were decisive in the decision to adopt Nedap Ons® as the new ECD: higher user-friendliness and reduced administrative burdens. The ultimate goal was to free up more time for employees to focus on clients. As an ICT advisor, Mara Kremer was closely involved in the implementation of Nedap Ons®:
“Instructing and guiding employees during an ECD implementation is crucial, but it is also a significant challenge. At Aveleijn, we want to do this in a way that suits our employees.”
Insufficient support for employees during an ECD implementation can lead to fear and resistance towards the new system. Aveleijn was determined to prevent this.
Lessons from previous ECD implementations led Aveleijn to approach the implementation of Nedap Ons® differently. One key conclusion was that primarily internal employees should be involved instead of external parties who would later disengage. According to Mara Kremer and her colleague Marloes Brokers, this insight also pointed Aveleijn toward SelfGuide:
“We wanted to create high-quality instructional material ourselves. However, we didn’t yet have the desired tools for that. Without proper tools, creating our own videos and PDFs is time-consuming and error-prone. The simplicity and speed with which you can create and maintain instructional material with SelfGuide is truly impressive.”
The project plan successfully integrated the creation of instructional material using SelfGuide. Afterward, Aveleijn employees praised the fact that the instructional material was produced by their own team members with knowledge of the organization.
Aveleijn distinguished between the hard and soft aspects of the ECD implementation. The soft aspect relates to motivating employees and explaining the choices made, while the hard aspect describes how the ECD should be used at the most basic level. Mara Kremer explains why having internal instructional material is crucial:
“Often, during implementations, you hear that a new system is very easy to use. In practice, we see that an implementation can lead to fear and panic among employees, which we want to avoid!”
From the very beginning, employees were involved in the ECD implementation, and investment was made in creating internal instructional material. The improved support for employees resulted in the service desk receiving hardly any questions. Additionally, enthusiastic feedback is coming from various locations about the new ECD and the instructional material created.
Aveleijn's new approach, focusing primarily on internal employees as project participants and utilizing their own training materials as key pillars, proved to be highly successful in practice. Mara Kremer explains that SelfGuide was essential to the project approach:
“Without SelfGuide, we would likely have only had an introductory video for employees. Now, we were able to develop a complete methodological circle with links to relevant instructional materials. Employees found the format of the instructional material in SelfGuide accessible and user-friendly”
The methodological circle was developed by internal employees according to Aveleijn's vision, which makes it particularly powerful. For Aveleijn, it is essential that employees experience job satisfaction so that they can provide the best care for clients.
Due to the successful ECD implementation, SelfGuide is now being applied more broadly within Aveleijn. For example, with the help of instructional material in SelfGuide, 800 new phones were distributed smoothly, and questions about the client portal CAREN are addressed through the dynamic help card "Stappenplan CAREN''.
In the future, there are plans for SelfGuide to be used for even more purposes, such as: instructional materials for AFAS, integration with the LMS, and training for onboarding.
