webqem blog

Mensheds is a uniquely Australian organisation dedicated to supporting the men’s shed movement and the needs of their communities. There are growing problems with men’s health. Isolation, loneliness and depression are now looming as major men’s health issues.Mensheds Australia provides direction and support infrastructure for the development of sustainable men’s sheds and their role as a catalyst in providing services to men and stimulating communities economic activities.

The Challenge

How do you provide high quality products and services and support them, 24 X 7 direct to the men’s sheds across Australia? The challenge was in providing something unique in the world of men’s health, to a group with low business acumen, poor understanding of health issues, little money at their disposal and communities with mendicant dispositions.Men’s sheds are geographically scattered with programs needing to be deployed throughout many locations. This type of large scale program implementation would be expensive and time consuming due to the amount of resources required, if the only delivery option was traditional face to face support and training.Mensheds Australia needed to provide quick and easy access to products, services and information whilst retaining the support of the health industry and communities and at the same time manage vast amounts of information along with appropriate tools, processes and templates.A unique methodology had to be developed to enhance collaboration, customer service, and to make the individual men’s shed financially viable. They had to be able to do this without continual handouts from governments and others. It had to provide for sustainability over time.Mensheds Australia (a not-for-profit company) needed a rapid implementation for the thousands of communities that could benefit from a men’s shed and to use the numbers to keep pricing at an affordable level.Another challenge was to propagate the Mensheds Australia concept without it being misunderstood and watered down. Mensheds Australia must be able to integrate with the health and other community services provided by the governments and the private sector and overcome any anti-business and anti-entrepreneurial sentiment, usually attached to such undertakings.

The Project

The project was to support a multifaceted business model, using multimedia to deliver support even to the most remote communities. The most important feature of the system was flexibility to provide access to the actual men’s sheds by allowing them to utilise their own humble PC from wherever they are.Mensheds Australia must build a culture of analysis and action rather than opinion and talkfests and at the same time generate new paradigms to accommodate the problems faced in men’s health that will be further impacted by the “baby boomers”.The materials had to be in simple everyday language, yet comprehensive enough to meet the requirements of both the inexperienced and experienced operators. The project required Mensheds Australia to manage the mass of information, knowledge, tools, processes and templates and make it easily accessible to the user without them being overwhelmed. Any systems used must also allow leverage of existing materials and skills developed over many years.To facilitate the development and management of a network infrastructure for 116 men’s sheds Hubs and 1,000 Spokes, across Australia within five years.

The Results

Mensheds Australia now delivers real time access, with a very positive experience for men sheds members:

• Focussed on a creative culture that focusses on opportunity generation and innovation.
• Providing a 24 x 7 Help Desk service that delivers physiological support, information and knowledge.
• People can quickly scan for relevant knowledge to meet their immediate needs.
• Thanks to Breeze – utilisation of an existing extensive library of Power Point workshops and presentations with voiceover were quickly added. This one activity has certainly added to the user friendliness of workshops.
• New training modules can now be developed and delivered in a few over the Internet in just a few days.
• Mensheds Australia is now able to deliver the most men’s shed-friendly services available anywhere, providing modern training products that can be delivered with voice over anywhere anytime.
• The Breeze web video conferencing was an added bonus to supplement seminars and other men’s sheds functions. In all, Breeze is making us into a very effective resource centre for our customers, providing us the cost effective mechanisms to deliver the most comprehensive resource available to our market.
• Ability to reduce the cost of training by offering a fully integrated learning environment, which will give the men’s sheds the freedom of delivering training at their pace, using the most appropriate delivery mechanism (Visual, Audio) for the information being communicated.
• The feedback received regarding the Breeze product on www.mensheds.com.au has been outstanding and exceeded all expectations.

The support we have received from the Webqem team in bringing our products to the market place has been exemplary.”

Peter Sergeant Managing Director

Benefit Summary

• Collaborative problem solving: The system brings geographically dispersed trainers and subject matter experts together in real time, to resolve issues and answer questions. Breaks down the boundaries of distance, time and duplication of effort.
• Attractive learning environment: Because of the attractive environment that can be created for a men’s shed the men’s shed will be able to more easily attract members and other men in the community, to learn about health and other issues.
• Attractive learning environment: through use of collaboration, real-time surveys and questions, the consistency of the message and quality of training can be tracked and monitored. This is particularly important when there are many trainers communicating compliance courses.
• Fully integrated blended learning environment: The system and tools, provides a fully blended learning environment, where material can be easily and readily customised to suit the differing requirements of a men’s shed.
• Easy continuous improvement: The tools are so easy to use that continuous improvement is not an issue. A modified version of the training or content can be made available in no time.
• Accelerated training: Mensheds Australia trainers can now use more of their time and skills creating engaging, effective training modules, rather than on travel, and planning and managing course logistics.
• Reduced cost: Training can be self-paced and taken anywhere and any time at the participant’s convenience; a significant cost and logistical issue in such a broad-based organisation as men’s sheds.
• Reduced risk: Allows tracking of training participation, which improves compliance and risk management with such things as OH&S Issues.
• Improved communications: Video conferencing allows us to deliver face-to face contact right into a men’s shed and to attract specialist presenters that would not be available to an individual men’s shed
• Rapid Time to Value: Systems are easy for users to learn without intensive instruction, and intuitive to use via friendly interfaces.
• Scalability: The scalability of the technology used, will no longer be an issue because of the mainstream corporate quality software, being used.