We love it when clients contact us to say "we want to try something different". A council recently came to us to invite us to write and produce some podcasts for their council members 'ERC Centres' -- or 'Emergency Relief Centres'. These are the centres that open up when there are emergencies (such as bushfires) and people need to evacuate their homes.
ERCs are staffed by council employees who volunteer. It may be some time between when they are formally trained to operate the centre and when they have to put their skills into practice. Rather than flick through an operating manual of several hundred pages, the aim was to synthesise the information down to a critical need to know refresher that volunteers could listen to in the car or on their phone on the way to the emergency.
The podcast format could not have fit the brief any better. There is some solid research to suggest that playing bite size chunks of information is a great way to successfully embed some key learning and encourage behavioural change. Read more about that here.
Little did we realise at the time of recording, how critical the ERC's role would be over the Summer. What an honour! We wrote and recorded 6 different podcasts for each of the different ERC job roles and they are now available for the staff member to listen to as a reminder of the key things they need to do on their way to helping save lives.
And we loved putting them together. If you are looking to try "something different" for your staff. Now's the time. Give us a call.