Our Sights Ahead
Strategic Roadmap for the 2023-2025
We embarked on our Strategic Planning journey in end 2021, going to two (2) Management Summits – in Chiang Mai in July 2022 and Sri Lanka in August 2023. The ‘directional roadmap’ was further distilled into various initiatives which were consolidated into the ‘Mid-Term Plan’.
Mid Term Plan
- The 16 initiatives in our 2023 Mid-Term Plan were reviewed and refined. Three (3) initiatives resumed ‘normal operations’ and another four (4) were added, making a total of 17 initiatives coming into 2024.
- New developments took place in the national eldercare landscape. Our Mid-Term Plan initiatives were further adjusted in line with these ‘directional changes’.
- As the initiatives pan out, we will review them again at the 2024 Management Summit, planned for August/September 2024.
- Beyond 2025, the MTP will morph into an established and sustainable strategic framework, under the current four or even more comprehensive strategic thrusts. Initiatives will also be strategically aligned with national directions in the eldercare landscape.
- Technology may feature more prominently or assist in operational efficiencies, like having an organisational dashboard of key performance indicators.
Organisational Excellence – Our Journey Thus Far…
It began a while back. But in 2021, we made the leap to organise the ‘jigsaw puzzle’:
- We were looking at the ‘Business Excellence Framework’ (BEF) when the ‘Organisational Health Framework for Social Services’ (OHFSS) by NCSS was launched. (It was actually based on the BEF.) We wasted no time and were among the first to use the OHFSS. We scored Fair (61.1%).
- We also participated in the ‘Digital Acceleration Index’ (DAI) (also by NCSS). The DAI helped us to measure our digitalisation maturity level. We achieved the ‘starter’ score of ‘21’.
- With these indicators that showed us our ‘where we are’, we engaged a Consultant to facilitate our ‘where we want to go’ – hence the Mid-Term Plan or MTP.
Project Mid-Term Plan (MTP), as it was coined, provided further necessary changes in response to evolving needs and eldercare landscape.
Hence, Centre Management revised its structure to encompass the impending developments.
OE Journal – its Impact
As an organisation striving to be a significant player in the eldercare landscape, we had to consider several angles, including how we look from outside in, from the front of the house.
This resulted in:
- Improved networking with peer organisations and learning best practices;
- Developing our relationships with Authorities, including various governmental agencies;
- Making more deliberate efforts to expand our partnerships and working relationships in the healthcare community;
- Working hard at being more visible as an eldercare organisation and a charity entity;
- Internally, we strove to improve our capabilities, capacities and operational readiness.
1. Change in Organisational Structure
- We went through a couple of rounds of changes in organisational structure. The biggest impact should be at the Centre Management – from purely facilities-based to function-based (see organisational structure for Centre Management). Staff resources were indeed key to optimising the changes – realigning of departments and support staff functions.
- There will certainly be a need for refinements.
2. Improved Facilities & Programmes – Improvements to Environment
- It was a crucial ‘facelift’ – starting back in 2021/2022 and all four Day Care Centres completed their renovations by July 2023.
- It was a refreshing new environment, for both staff and clients.
- More services are being lined up to meet the evolving eldercare landscape – like homecare. There will also be the new model of care (Butterfly approach) for dementia clients in 2024.
3. Brand 'New'
- We had our revised By-Laws approved by the Authorities (in Oct 2023). (The last revision was made in 2013.) We now have ‘BOARD of Directors’ instead of ‘Committee of Management’.
- With a refreshed corporate design and look, we delved into the social media space – Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Going into 2024, we have made our presence felt – quite a bit by statistical indicators.
- Our ‘Brand Ambassadors’ from our fundraising partner, LadderPro, who collect our donation income on the streets. They indirectly ‘shout out our brand’ as they go about their work. Many more have met SASCO Home through them.
4. Digitalisation Transformation
- We were a ‘starter’ (21) in 2021, by our DAI. We achieved ‘performer’ (59) in 2023; the sector’s DAI was 22.
- It was one of our MTP initiatives and we have made good strides. It took a while but coming out of 2023, we are rolling out the systems for our core support functions – healthcare, HR, finance, donor management system, volunteer management system and visitor management system.
- Coming out of 2023, we were more cognisant of using technology where it can improve processes, and its efficiencies.
- Going into 2024, we were already preparing seriously – to have an Organisational Dashboard that monitors KPIs across departments, functions and systems, automatically. Now, we feel the pulse but not how much.
5. Environmental, Social and Governance – In Practice
- We have implemented the ESG at our workplace, albeit in ‘basic steps’ – partly to continue to cultivate an ‘ESG mindset’; for example, energy consumption, waste reduction, environmentally friendly utensils – across our facilities, centres and offices.
- Going into 2024, we will look into establishing a more formal structure of implementation and reporting.
6. Fundraising
- Fundraising was, is and always will be our organisation’s lifeline – to the meaningful work done in the spectrum of eldercare from our sheltered home to the senior care centres to the active ageing centres. •
- The expenditures on seniors increasingly must surely be for programmes and activities, subsidies and financial assistance, and enhancing services to help our seniors age actively and with quality of life.
- As the horizon for fundraising looks less than optimistic, we will need to devise multiple strategies and perhaps look to multiple channels and ‘streams of donation income’.
Age Well SG Programme
Minister Ong Ye Kung launched the Age Well Programme on 16 Nov 2023. It is a national programme to ‘support seniors to age well in their homes and their communities’.
One of the pillars of this national programme is the ‘seamless delivery of care’. The nation is divided into 85 sub-regions and each sub-region shall have a suite of eldercare facilities, from active ageing centres (AACs) to senior care centres (SCCs) and even nursing homes. Each sub-region may have a population of between 9,000 and 17,000 seniors.
Hence, among the existing service providers for eldercare (social service agencies or SSAs), there would need to be a lead provider, to coordinate and monitor the population of seniors in that sub-region – in terms of ageing activities and healthcare. Thus, a ‘class monitor’ holds a register of 9,000 seniors and at any one time, would be able to tell the status of a particular senior (in that sub-region). This is part of ‘bundled services to the senior’ or ‘seamless delivery of care’ that may take a senior through an AAC, SCC, home care and then further to a nursing home, if needed.
- SASCO Home currently resides in six (6) such sub-regions. We would definitely be keen to play a more active and contributory role, especially in our own sub-regions.
- What it would mean, would be for us to be more deliberate in mustering our resources, and/or engaging with highly compatible partners – whether in terms of systems or resources.
- We are also embarking into ‘higher horizons’ that will even steer our organisation beyond our current frontiers:
Service Excellence
- We would like to be more than intuitive in this area of ‘service excellence’; in all areas, but starting with our clients, our seniors;
- We will be more deliberate in developing a ‘service excellence framework’ such that our practices in service delivery can be consistent across our organisation, in all aspects of our responsibilities and accountabilities.
Research
- Part of our aspiration has been to be a learning organisation – hence, to nurture a culture of an ‘enquiring mind’ such that it will be conducive to continuous learning and improving individual selves, professionally and individually;
- In 2024, a skeletal resource will form a research unit, to spearhead the necessary development of capabilities in research as well as driving initiatives that seek to uncover information, details and analyses from available data or new data. Such knowledge will be meaningful and purposeful in improving daily work, systems and processes.
- Hence, an important area for emphasis would be to harness ‘current data’ and even design the collection of data such that analyses can be made and be used for better decision-making, in the organisation. An organisational Dashboard, with the various tiers, is in the pipeline.
