How Dimence Groep makes employees digitally skilled

Dimence Groep is a healthcare organization active in East Netherlands. With over 3,000 employees across seven foundations, they are committed to providing mental health care, social services, and well-being for around 50,000 clients and patients each year. Software applications play an important role in delivering these services, so it is essential for Dimence Groep to support employees in their use.

At Dimence Groep, there is a strong focus on providing support to employees in working with software applications. Employees do not always possess the required digital skills. As Head of Information & Automation, Rene Rust is an advocate for supporting employees when it comes to digital skills. Regarding the importance of software applications, he says:

“We primarily work with an EPD (Electronic Patient Record). This means that all care-related information is processed in one software application, which in our case is User. Additionally, there are other software applications that employees interact with daily. I believe that every employee deals with at least four software applications on a daily basis.”

Before SelfGuide was implemented, Rust was already aware of the importance of instructions to support employees in working with software applications. However, the way these instructions were created and their quality often left much to be desired. Typically, instructions were made in many different ways, resulting in a large collection of PDF files and instructional videos. Additionally, the formatting and quality varied widely, often because many different software application managers created instructions in their own way. After a positive initial impression, Dimence Groep concluded that SelfGuide, as a tool for quickly and easily creating instructions for software applications, met their needs.

Application manager and SelfGuide ambassador Alexander Dijk acknowledges that digital skills in healthcare are a significant issue that deserves full attention. He refers to the importance of the platform “Digivaardig in de Zorg".

“In the healthcare sector, mental health care (GGZ) is quite an interesting case. I currently place great value on the best practices offered by the Digivaardig in de Zorg platform, but there is little available information specifically for mental health care. It feels like we are pioneering, and we are actively using SelfGuide in this process.”

Within Dimence Groep, an initiative has emerged to research digital skills across different teams. The goal is to investigate which basic skills employees need to perform their work effectively and which learning resources are suitable for that purpose. Dijk expects that SelfGuide will therefore play an even larger role in the organization.

Meanwhile, Rust and Dijk are working to encourage the use of SelfGuide among employees. First, they excitedly engaged all software application managers responsible for creating instructions for software applications within Dimence Groep to actively use the tool. According to Rust, the existing standard instructions for Office 365 also played a significant role in this

As more and more instructions for various software applications became available in SelfGuide, attention shifted to actively promoting its use among end users. Rust emphasizes the importance of having someone like Alexander Dijk designated as an ambassador to ensure the success of SelfGuide's usage. Dijk adds:

“Through our Intranet, we often direct staff to SelfGuide for IT guides. Additionally, more application managers and colleagues from the service desk are referring employees to SelfGuide for questions about actions in software applications. This way, more links to SelfGuide are being created, and its usage is growing.”

According to Dijk, creating and editing instructions for software applications using the recorder (for recording instructions) and the editor (for editing instructions) is perceived as easy and accessible. End users also find the platform user-friendly. Dijk notes that employees typically access specific instructions through a unique URL shared with them via the service desk or intranet. They can quickly see how to perform an action within a particular software application:

“The strength of SelfGuide lies in its ability to explain actions in a simple manner. You can easily guide someone through the steps. Additionally, you can create more comprehensive user guides and link from an instruction to a file or website with more information”

Plans for the future

According to Rust and Dijk, SelfGuide will continue to play an important role in the future. Within Dimence Groep, the number of software applications for which specific instructions and user guides are available in SelfGuide is continuously expanding. They are also exploring other ways to benefit from the platform. Rust shares:

“We have the ambition to specifically use SelfGuide for the onboarding of new employees. This way, we can quickly ensure that employees can easily find the platform.”