AuSAE Member Chat Series – Half an Hour of Power with Ken Griffin

11 Nov 2020 9:04 AM | Deleted user

Welcome back to our AuSAE Member Chat Series – Half an Hour of Power. This week we are delighted to have sat down with AuSAE member, Ken Griffin, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association.

In a short 30 minute interview we discussed four key questions with Ken to reflect on the last six months and look forward to the future.

What do the next 6 months look like for your association and your members 

From our association’s perspective the next 6 months will be an opportunity to harness and grow on the foundations we have already created this year. Our key focus will be reflecting, refining and creating a strong member value proposition as we move into a new stage of this crisis. This year has provided us all with the opportunity to stop, think and redefine what we can provide and what value we contribute to our membership communities.

This year we have been able to increase our advocacy impact and play an important role in the development of health strategies in Australia, raise our profile with government, broaden our stakeholder network and ensure the voice of our members is being heard.

I believe every Association CEO is grappling with the same set of issues from an internal team perspective – how do we keep staff engagement high and provide support during a time where uncertainty and the unknown is all we know. We are based in Melbourne which adds further challenges. For our team, over the next few months my goal is to provide as much certainty and control where possible.

From our members’ perspective this year has been frantic, overwhelming, and difficult. They have had to adapt quickly and will continue to do so as this crisis continues to unfold. Our members’ focus and attention is now turning to the COVID vaccine and the role they will play on the frontline of administering this, and the impact on the health care system of avoidance on chronic disease management during the time.

Areas of concern

Our biggest concerns moving forward will be the policy surrounding telehealth for nurses and extension of funding as well as key budget priorities and the impacts on our members.

Like most associations the changing landscape of events and our delivery of member value is also a concern. The days of gathering large groups of members are gone and it’s time for associations to reimagine their modes of delivery. We will seek to understand members – their priorities and expectations and form our strategy from here.

Areas of opportunity

We have some key areas of opportunity and we need to use this time to effectively prioritise and utilise the advantages we have been given this year.

  •  At an advocacy level we will play a large part in the development of primary health care strategy for the next 10 years.
  • For all of us, geographic barriers have well and truly been removed during this crisis. This opens a doorway to new ways of recruiting and retaining new talent into the sector. Over the coming months as organisation’s restructure and people reassess what they want to do, associations and not-for-profits have a great opportunity to harness this talent in the market.
  • The innovation that comes from difficult times is something I’m particularly passionate about. The new tools and technologies that will be available to businesses to refine efficiencies and increase organisational performance and growth is exciting. This innovation will help us to better manage remote workforces, help to make people more efficient and help us to communicate and interact with each other better than ever before. What we’ve seen in the past year is just the tip of the iceberg in where we will go.

Celebrated moments in the past six months

Our association has managed to retain all roles, and we have been able to grow our headcount during this time.

We are about to enter a concerning workforce issue, as students graduating this year are unable to graduate because they haven’t met their placement hours. During this time we have partnered with Monash University to secure 175 placements for students so they can graduate as scheduled.

I think what we are all proud of and what we have celebrated across the team is that when it counted we’ve been there for our members, representing their voice and being their anchor through all of this. At the end of the day – that’s what associations are here to do and we couldn’t be prouder to represent our members during this time.

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The Australasian Society of Association Executives (AuSAE)

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