Recruiting the right educators- it’s not child’s play

Australia’s early education and child care industry is booming, driven by factors such as the movement of women back to the workplace after giving birth. The opportunity, this has presented to child care services did not go unnoticed.

ABC Development Learning Centres buckling in 2008 opened the market for new providers.

In 2010 there were around 5900 long day care centres nationally. There are now well over 6800, according to the Melbourne City Institute of Education.

However, providing quality early education services is not playing around, as many centres are discovering.

On average only around 62.7% of child care providers across Australia are meeting the national quality standards. South Australia sits well below the average at only 47.9%.

In order to provide high quality services it is crucial, centres recruit and retain exceptional educators and carers. 

There are ways your child care facility can ensure you have the right people for the job:

•   Develop a recruitment policy

This should clearly articulate a service’s staffing needs and stipulate your selection criteria clearly.

•   Communicate the position requirements

Working in early education is a lot more than liking children and being able to change nappies. Being responsible for a human’s early development is a demanding profession and the required beliefs and knowledge to succeed in the field need to be explained and identified in the applicant.

•   Hone your advertising strategy

Take advantage of all advertising channels at your disposal. Whilst paid opportunities are often worthwhile (child care publications, newsletters and newspapers) often the most effective methods are through community circles or mother’s groups where the interaction is immediately personal.

•    Hand-pick your staff

Consider how the applicant will uphold your service’s current philosophy. Will they be a brand ambassador?

•    Conduct induction thoroughly

Establish an induction procedure which includes the introduction to children and families, the service’s practices and routines and the service’s progress to meeting national standards.

Written by: Claire Dowler

Claire Dowler is a Senior Conference Producer with Akolade. She recently graduated with a double degree: a Bachelor of Journalism and a Bachelor of Media and Communications Studies majoring in International Communication. Claire minored in sarcasm and puns.

A ballroom-dancer who collects salt and pepper shakers and volunteers for animal rescue, you might say Claire has eclectic interests.

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Tackling the staff shortage in aged care

Looking after older generations should be priority. They are the ones who’ve served the country, raised the younger generations.

According to the 2016 census, Australia’s population is getting older and living longer. As a result, the Productivity Commission estimates that the aged care workforce will need to have grown to around 980,000 workers by 2050.

Sadly, working in aged care is seldom a lucrative job and companies in the sector often lack adequate staff.  Not only is it difficult to attract staff into the sector, but organisations also struggle to retain employees.

As Australia is a multicultural country containing many nationalities, there’s great demand to reflect this within the workforce to ensure staff are able to meet the consumers’ cultural and language needs.

It appears especially important that staff can speak the birth language of the consumers, as many older migrants revert back to their mother language as they age.

But as Australia’s aged care sector are struggling to attract staff, many organisations are looking into how they can support staff through engagement strategies and providing professional development opportunities.

Looking after our older generations should be made a priority, and the job, one that’s sought after and lucrative for its development possibilities. 

Mimmie grew up in Sweden and first came to Australia as a backpacker after high school. After travelling around the country for two years she returned to Europe and pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism in London. But the longing for Australia and the sun became too strong. After having worked for some time in the media industry, Mimmie decided to make a change and swap the news for conferences. She now gets to do what she loves the most, meeting new people and keep learning about cultures and issues while producing conferences on current topics.

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Pushing IIoT predictive maintenance forward: two challenges to overcome

There’s no doubt the Internet of Things (IoT) is moving quickly to the front lines of industrial maintenance reliability and asset management. Communication between machines and human technicians, enabled by wireless technology and connected devices, is fueling a shift from preventative to predictive maintenance. But while the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) groundwork has been laid, and it’s projected to be a $151 billion market by 2020, the revolution is still young.

Gartner’s special report, “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies,” points out that all new trends follow a similar growth pattern, and IIoT is no exception. While there’s a lot of excitement about the potential to apply data-driven algorithms to large data streams from industrial assets, IIoT is heading into the trough of disillusionment. Two major challenges must be overcome to push IIoT predictive maintenance technologies up the slope of enlightenment and spark mainstream adoption and success.

Challenge 1: 

Poor Data Quality

Big data went through its own hype cycle, but is now more firmly grounded in the realization that merely collecting large amounts of data is insufficient to achieve meaningful insights. For IIoT predictive maintenance, the data challenges are twofold. Firstly, it’s difficult to obtain high quality, labeled data from industrial machines to begin with. Secondly, it’s even more challenging to then apply that data to provide human engineers and technicians with relevant and actionable condition-based maintenance insights.

Gathering large volumes of raw, unlabeled data is relatively easy, but when attempting to build learning algorithms for IIoT predictive maintenance platforms, the algorithm is only as good as the quality of data labeling (i.e., assigning each piece of data a useful tag or label that makes it somehow informative and useful). Building databases of high quality, labeled data is a much more technologically challenging and time-consuming endeavor.

Challenge 2:

Fragmented Technologies and Human Operations

Because industrial maintenance software platforms, sensors and operations are currently highly fragmented, it’s a challenge to fuse sensor data (e.g., signals based on vibration, temperature, power consumption, etc.) with actual events or maintenance activities that humans carry out on machines.

Many existing condition-based maintenance solutions, such as vibration analysis via a handheld device, require sampling and diagnostics by human technicians going from machine to machine. These contact-based methods can fall victim to producing biased, one-sided results depending on the location of the sensor and the experience of the technician, and aren’t constantly monitoring and sending alerts in real time. Other non-handheld sensors with “smart” monitoring capabilities require complex integrations, training and retrofitting of old industrial assets.

The challenge is to bridge the gap between human maintenance engineers, sensors and enterprise resource planning and monitoring software. IIoT is helping to change this, but so far in the hype phase, IIoT predictive maintenance solutions have mainly consisted of software to analyze data collected from sensors designed and manufactured by third parties. In many cases, users and implementers of such software solutions don’t control the sensors or the data origins. Therefore, they are very exposed to garbage in, garbage out scenarios where false-positive alerts rule and maintenance teams eventually ignore valuable alerts as they are trained to distrust the outputs of such systems. Industrial machine data will only be as good as its worst sensor and it’s impossible to identify which sensors are good and which are bad if they are not properly controlled, installed, or built in tandem with the software that’s processing the data inputs.

Solutions

Much of the data quality challenges will be addressed by new, deep learning algorithms that mimic the learning faculties of the human brain and can be used to build more accurate predictive models. These deep learning models will be able to apply insights from previously labeled data to new, unlabeled data so both predictive and prescriptive analyses will become even more accurate over time. It’s only with optimal predictive models that any array of connected hardware devices can provide maximum return on investment (ROI) and benefit for decreasing human errors, reducing downtime and increasing average production.

To overcome the challenge of fragmented technologies and operations, maintenance engineers and technicians will need to start relying on classic signal outputs, such as vibration, temperature, power consumption, etc., as well as new smart sensors, such as deep learning, powered, airborne acoustics. Such sensor inputs will increasingly play a larger role in IIoT predictive maintenance. Engineers and technicians have, of course, always diagnosed machine problems simply by listening to them. However, humans can’t be physically next to every machine at all times during operation and also have a hard time filtering out other noise interference present in harsh industrial environments.

The Future

Today, there’s a rising global demand for industrial automation systems as companies work to optimise operational efficiencies. As industrial manufacturing and production become more automated, there will be an increased need in the future for predictive maintenance technology – both hardware and software – that helps keep equipment running at optimal performance and identifies problems in real time before machine failure interrupts production and causes costly unplanned downtime and replacement of damaged parts.

IIoT and deep learning will play a big role in the advancement of predictive analytics and overcoming these two major challenges of data quality and the gap between humans and machines. IIoT and deep learning also will be critical to help get passed the upcoming phase of disillusionment and create more mainstream adoption of IIoT predictive maintenance solutions.

Akolade's Industrial IoT Summit being held on the 20-22 September in Melbourne, will further examine the current challenges facing Industrial IoT.

Written by: Nicolas Verbeeck

Nicolas was born in Belgium and became an expert in consuming excellent beers, chocolate and waffles. During the winter period you can find him on a hockey pitch and in summer he loves to go for a swim or a surf. In 2013 Nicolas was wondering what the beers, chocolate and waffles would taste like in Australia and never came back. One reason… the weather. Nicolas obtained a masters in International Politics and tries to use this background to produce excellent conferences at Akolade.

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4 ways social media can bring quick wins for government

As governments around the world navigate increasingly complex political and economic environments, it’s more important than ever that they leverage new technologies to engage citizens, attract new talent and deliver services more efficiently.

While there is clearly an appetite among citizens for more personal forms of engagement with government, the public sector is often considered behind the private sector when it comes to digital transformation. A recent Accenture study found that 85 percent of U.S. citizens expect the same or higher quality government digital services as they do from commercial organizations. Despite this, 40 percent of citizens remain unsatisfied with digital government. Digital transformation in government has become a political yardstick globally.

In Australia earlier this month, the Labor party challenged the Liberal-National coalition government over the lack of progress in digital transformation initiatives, and in February, the U.K.’s Government Transformation Strategy for 2017 to 2020 came under scrutiny due to concerns about the digital skills gap in the public sector.

In the U.S., the Trump administration is proposing a $1 trillion investment in digital infrastructure over the next 10 years that includes provisions that would elevate digital services to the same level of importance as physical infrastructure like roads and bridges.

Nick Sinai, Venture Partner at Insight Ventures Partners and former deputy CTO at the White House, is encouraged to see the Trump administration build on past efforts and continue to focus on IT modernization. “It vital that the federal government continues to adopt digital technologies that are making government simpler and more user focused,” he said. “With modern cloud-based software, government officials can create a more open and effective set of digital services that serve those that need it most.”

Despite Trump’s proposed investment in technology, government agencies still struggle with recruiting the right people for the job and procurement roadblocks when choosing software-as-a-service technologies. Globally, governments are facing debt burdens and shrinking budgets. The general government debt to gross domestic product for many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries exceeds 100 percent.

Even with these issues, there are some quick wins for government agencies -- all achievable by adopting a (relatively) new technology that most people already use every day: social media. By cleverly (and cost-effectively) rolling out a social media strategy, agencies can meet some of their digital transformation goals and produce a tangible return on investment that will deliver value in four ways:

1. Reduce wait times and increase customer satisfaction. Digital services will never completely replace in-person services in government. However, if agencies redirect funding from traditional call centres towards digital service delivery, they could cut customer wait times, improve response times, increase customer satisfaction levels and save both government and taxpayer’s significant money. New York City’s non-emergency NYC 311 service is a good example of this strategy. City residents are encouraged to file complaints digitally about potholes, damaged pavements, missed garbage collections, etc. 

2. Increase citizen engagement and awareness of agency mission. For government agencies to deliver digital transformation, they must prioritize solutions that help manage citizen engagement and service delivery. Their communications infrastructure must allow them to perform at the speeds the public has grown to expect.

3. Compete with millennial-focused company cultures to attract new talent. At the recent Government Social Media Conference in Dallas, LinkedIn’s Emma Nicolle and Kathleen so highlighted the hiring challenges government faces. Agencies are competing against the private sector for fresh talent and, where the private sector has adapted to suit the working style of a new generation, government has been slower to change.

4. Mitigate crises with solid critical response plans. Social media has become the medium through which word of crisis situations spreads like wildfire. A strong critical response plan, directed through social media, can be a mitigating factor in containing a crisis situation. Spending the time and resources to develop a communications plan before an event takes place can allow teams to be quick, nimble and efficient with their response.

By leveraging social media, governments can control costs, increase transparency, earn greater public trust and create more positive public sentiment.

Written by: Nicolas Verbeeck

Nicolas was born in Belgium and became an expert in consuming excellent beers, chocolate and waffles. During the winter period you can find him on a hockey pitch and in summer he loves to go for a swim or a surf. In 2013 Nicolas was wondering what the beers, chocolate and waffles would taste like in Australia and never came back. One reason… the weather. Nicolas obtained a masters in International Politics and tries to use this background to produce excellent conferences at Akolade.

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Not kidding around- Child care centres face new regulatory changes

Child care centres must operate under some of the most stringent regulations applicable to any sector, from the ratio of staff to children and the size of the rooms, to the meals served and play equipment used.

Despite these already strict regulations, the sector faces changes to the National Quality Standards, being implemented by ACECQA in October this year around Australia, with the exception of Western Australia who will undergo the changes in February 2018.

 Changes to the NQS include:

·         The requirement of approved providers of family day care services to hold a service approval in each jurisdiction where their educators operate

·         Approved providers of family day care services must ensure a minimum family day care coordinator to educator ratio of:

o   1:15 for the first 12 months of operation and at any other time at the discretion of the regulatory authority

o   1:25 after the first 12 months of operation.

·         The National Regulations to clarify that a risk assessment must be completed for all regular outings at least once a year

As demand for child care services grows and the industry booms, the regulations tighten to ensure the highest quality of services are provided to future generations.

Sydney’s inner west alone has a projected demand of 518 extra places in the Marrickville, Dulwich Hill and Sydenham areas as development occurs over the next few years.

Despite the growing demand for child care services, it is a complex sector to navigate and survive. Several providers including ABC Learning have already been forced to close their doors having become “unviable”.

Written by: Claire Dowler

Claire Dowler is a Senior Conference Producer with Akolade. She recently graduated with a double degree: a Bachelor of Journalism and a Bachelor of Media and Communications Studies majoring in International Communication. Claire minored in sarcasm and puns.

A ballroom-dancer who collects salt and pepper shakers and volunteers for animal rescue, you might say Claire has eclectic interests.

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Tackling the stigma of corporate communications

A well implemented corporate communications function in today’s volatile environment can be the difference between success and failure in today’s environment. Just look at Uber. United Airlines. Pepsi. And that’s just 2017.

More than a few companies have made the mistake of undervaluing the importance of powerful communication strategies. However, it could also be said that communications personnel are partly to at fault for being slow to adopt analytical tools, such as neuroscience, behavioural economics and statistics. Such tools can help make the field more sophisticated and valuable to business decisions.

Although the responsibilities and influence of top corporate communications leaders has increased, corporate communications functions are still traditionally viewed as a C-suite stepchild. That’s partly due to the difficulty in measuring its effectiveness, which is seen as a “soft” skill.  While it’s still tough to measure the efficacy of corporate communications, new tools in sentiment analysis, reputation analysis, and brand assessment are adding more rigor to the field, especially in the age of digital business.

It’s time for communications practitioners to take the leap into the leadership circle, and for corporations to recognize the importance of strategic communications. That’s what the Corporate Communications and PR Leadership is about. Join us to hear from Australia’s leading communications and PR experts, discussing how we put communications firmly in the corporate leadership circle. 

Written by: Beth Hampton 

Beth came to Australia in late 2016. Having spent some time travelling through Southeast Asia and briefly living in Singapore – she was ready to embrace the lifestyle of a working Sydneysider!

Beth grew up in London, and completed her degree in Psychology at the University of York. She always dreamed of landing a job in the police, but figured it was worth swapping the handcuffs and late shifts for an exciting new city and a job full of fun and opportunity in a fantastic company like Akolade!

Beth loves cooking, playing the piano, terrible British soap operas, an ice-cold G&T and exploring new places.

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Takeaways from the National Indigenous Economic Development Forum

Rex Angie, Director, Narungga Investment Company and Karen Diver Former Special Adviser to President Barack Obama on Native American Affairs and Former Chairwoman of the Native American tribe Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

Empowerment was the key takeaway from the 4^th National Indigenous Economic Development Forum in Cairns 28-30 June.

Speakers from across Australia shared stories that gave delegates practical strategies while also inspired them to keep fighting to overcome hurdles, to work together, and to improve financial and employment outcomes within their communities.

The international key note speaker, Karen Diver, Former Special Adviser to President Barack Obama on Native American Affairs and Former Chairwoman of the Native American tribe Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa received standing ovations from the delegates.

Ms Karen shared the struggles and achievements in Native American tribes’ fight to become financially independent and be recognised by the government.

Herb Smith from Dreamtime Tuka in New South Wales was another speaker who greatly moved the audience. Mr Smith started his business from scratch and has in short period of time become a  leading supplier of bush food products. One of the company's achievements is its successful partnership with Qantas to deliver bush food products on flights.

Although the message of Indigenous economic development remains the same, it is vital to come together to keep fighting for improved outcomes within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. 

Mimmie grew up in Sweden and first came to Australia as a backpacker after high school. After travelling around the country for two years she returned to Europe and pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism in London. But the longing for Australia and the sun became too strong. After having worked for some time in the media industry, Mimmie decided to make a change and swap the news for conferences. She now gets to do what she loves the most, meeting new people and keep learning about cultures and issues while producing conferences on current topics.

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Take Your Social Analytics To The Next Level

Do you want a CMO’s advice on how to navigate social media? Start by talking to the 25-year-old in the room.

Paige Leidig, CMO of social analytics company Netbase, says the best way to understand social media’s potential when it comes to driving business value is to think like a digital native. If you’re a CMO, perhaps it’s time to think like one of the more junior members of your team.

Recognizing the power of social media, especially when it comes to leveraging social analytics to make marketing decisions, must start with setting the right mindset and forgetting what you thought you knew about consumer insights. Combine this mindset with your strategic marketing expertise and you’ll be on your way to unlocking the full potential of social for your brand.

If you’re a senior marketing leader scratching your head when it comes to what to do with deluge of social media data coming your way, follow these best practices.

Capture data that you can act on 

Social media conversations are happening all day, everyday, with or without your brand pushing messaging out. These organic conversations can reveal a great deal about your brand and can even inform the way your company behaves on social media. The question mark for brands: how do you capture this data, and once you have it, how do you act on it?

To illustrate this point, Leidig referenced an example in which somebody leaked a major announcement from Crayola ahead of “National Crayon Day,” threatening to undermine a big PR moment. Through ongoing social listening, the brand was able to get ahead of the crisis and use it as an opportunity to engage the community at a deeper level. Crayola even released a YouTube video to proactively address the leak.

Fish where the fish are

Beyond helping you understand important metrics like share of voice against competitors and identify prospective influencer-partners, social listening can also reveal the platforms where your band can make the most impact.

Leidig cited Pocky here, a quirky Japanese cookie brand that used social analytics to discover that most organic conversations for their products were occurring on Tumblr, a niche platform with a relatively small, yet passionate user base. In response, Pocky began to proactively create content there and saw a 70 percent increase in mentions as a result.

Avoid the Ozzy vs. Charles mistake

Social analytics can also be used to overcome some of the limitations of traditional demographic personas. To demonstrate, Leidig asked the crowd to imagine two men of British descent, both born in 1948, both wealthy. He explained that while demographic data would indicate these two men would be interested in the same products, he implored that there were key behavioral aspects missing from the equation. 

The future

Social media is still quite new, and the analytic tools for exploiting it are still evolving.  Let’s be honest with ourselves – how many true social media experts can there really be?  What would be the risk of suddenly discarding methods that have served us well for so long, in favour of an alternative that has not yet stood the test of time?  Why not concentrate instead on using social media qualitatively to assist in questionnaire development, or as one component in marketing mix modelling. Should social media be used to put a human face on data mining and predictive analytics?  Why not focus on utilizing it in tandem with other qualitative methods?  Social media analytics has already proven itself in these roles.

Is social media an asteroid streaking towards traditional marketing research or a valuable complement, rather than a complete substitute?  We lean towards the second conclusion and feel social media adds to, but will never fully replace traditional marketing research.  We see it as an important new and increasingly indispensable source of insights, but not the catastrophe some have feared nor the research nirvana others have sought. 

Nicolas was born in Belgium and became an expert in consuming excellent beers, chocolate and waffles. During the winter period you can find him on a hockey pitch and in summer he loves to go for a swim or a surf. In 2013 Nicolas was wondering what the beers, chocolate and waffles would taste like in Australia and never came back. One reason… the weather. Nicolas obtained a masters in International Politics and tries to use this background to produce excellent conferences at Akolade.

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