My own communication at work
I am the activity coordinator in a caregiver association. My workplace is Kainuun Omaishoitaja ja Läheiset ry. The association manages the OmaisOiva activities, where I am the responsible employee. OmaisOiva is a nationwide project that has been operating in Kainuu for 10 years. I am responsible for the project’s finances and operations. My job includes planning activities, directing operations, and reporting. Our clients are caregivers who take care of their loved ones daily. We organize peer support cafes, activity groups, and events. We announce these on Facebook and our website. Facebook is a good channel to reach them. We make our activities visible and can highlight good articles. Through Facebook, we create a social network for caregivers to stay connected.
Through our website, we can provide better information. There you can find the association’s board members and staff. On the website, we announce our activities by location and in more detail. Professionals in social and healthcare can check our website to learn about our activities and refer their clients to them. Our website also has a chat where you can ask for advice on caregiving-related questions.
We also use WhatsApp. Each municipality has its own WhatsApp group. If schedules, groups, or other activities change, we can notify about the changes through it. WhatsApp helps with quick communication, especially when specific local information needs to be shared with a particular group.
I use Teams a lot in my work. Many of our collaboration meetings are held via Teams. Additionally, we use Teams due to long distances. For example, we might be at a peer support café in Puolanka while our expert is in Kajaani. This way, we can bring experts to remote areas as well. We can also organize peer groups or coaching sessions for caregivers via Teams. I also use various communication tools and programs related to reporting in my work. Webropol is a great tool for creating events, collecting participants, and their information. Google Forms is useful for various surveys.
In financial administration, we use the Procouter program. Invoices, accounting and salary administration go through it. The association has its own accounting, and the project has its own. In addition, the membership register works through the Congress service. This is a service maintained by our umbrella organization Omaishoitajaliitto. You can join the association through our own website or through the pages of the Family Caregivers Association
Doodle
Doodle is a tool on the internet that can facilitate time management and agree on meeting schedules.
Doodle on the website can create a survey that is sent to participants. They can choose from the suggested times the most suitable for them. This would be a good tool for arranging meetings between the government and various cooperation groups. Often, agreeing to meet together is challenging and time-consuming.
In this application, it is possible to maintain a calendar, plan individual and group meetings. There is both a free version and a paid version of this. I see it as a disadvantage that there are many electronic calendar possibilities, and the calendar should, however, only be available through one tool. When there are several calendars, it becomes more laborious. Doodle's instructions say that these could be combined, but I see it as complicated. I would only use this tool for planning and arranging meeting times.
Instagram is a free social media service for sharing photos and videos. Users can comment and like content shared by each other. Pictures and videos can be edited with different filters, or so-called filters. Using the service on mobile devices requires an application that is available for iOS and Android operating systems. Instagram is said to be the fastest growing social media channel in Finland. We have been thinking about implementing Instagram. However, I haven't delved into it further before this assignment. I have thought that it is not suitable for informing or marketing our seniors. I have also thought that using more social media tools takes more time. Instagram seems to be more popular than Facebook, at least among young people. Family care is very broad, and we have a lot of working family caregivers that we cannot reach. Instagram could help reach them. Through Instagram, we could make our activities visible through pictures, but it doesn't seem to be suitable for informing.
Miro
The Miro tool is a virtual whiteboard. People invited with the invitation link can simultaneously edit the whiteboard to their liking, adding, for example, pictures, videos, files, thoughts and notes. Miro is suitable as a tool between work teams for planning tasks, implementing ideas and for general ideation. With the help of the whiteboard, group members get to structure their ideas through text, images and videos, so that ideation and planning can be made more and more meaningful and versatile.
Miro offers its users a total of five pricing packages – free, Team, Business and Enterprise versions. Of the paid packages, the Team package would probably suit us, in which we could use not only the features of the free version but also other additional features that make work easier. These include unlimited whiteboards, anonymous third-party whiteboard editors, projects, customizable backgrounds, and other useful features. The Team version is said to be very suitable for smaller teams. My work includes a lot of operational planning and ideation. I could imagine Miro making it different and a new way of doing it. In addition, I think that it would be a good tool for holding remote groups. However, I am a traditional organizer of meetings, and I feel that interaction is of great importance. Will this virtual platform replace face-to-face interaction? Will there be less planning and ideas if you must stress a new tool with which things would have to be done.
Pinterest is a visual search engine and web application where users can create and share images and videos on various topics.
Pinterest is therefore an image service where you can share and collect images according to your interests. Pinterest is specifically used for searching for new ideas, getting inspired, finding out and collecting preferences, and following passions and hobbies.
I haven't used Pinterest, but I could imagine that there could be ideas for our peer cafe. Peer-to-peer cafes have a theme every time. It can be an expert who speaks or lectures. It can be something nice to do together and Pinterest could help with that. As I explored the pros and cons of Pinterest, the sheer number of things that stood out. Searching for ideas there can take a huge amount of time, which is the downside of this platform. In addition, the commercialism that has come to Pinterest can take away the original idea.
YouTube
YouTube is a video service on the Internet owned by Google. It allows users to add their own videos and watch and comment on videos uploaded by other users. I'm sure we've all used YouTube to find music, but now I'm thinking about the possibility of YouTube in work life in other ways. We have different training courses based on the same content. We ask experts for them separately each time. If we were to record an expert's lecture and upload it to YouTube, we could use these so that we don't have to ask an expert to come on site every time. This would make it easier for both the experts and me to use their time.
When I got to know YouTube, I noticed that this recording and uploading can be done so that it does not become public, but you can put a limitation on it, in which case the video is only for your own use. This is a positive thing. A limitation may be that the expert does not give permission for recording.
You can also use a lot of material made by others on YouTube. There you can find music as well as various prepared lectures and exercise classes. Here, you must remember and consider YouTube's own terms of use, which prohibit the public presentation of content uploaded to YouTube without the author's permission.
Digital services are meant to help. They are used to gain visibility and make work easier. They enable a lot. However, responsibility should be considered. No one should be offended. Data protection, security and confidentiality must be taken into account. We must remember that all the material we post publicly can be found online forever. We must take care of information security from both the customer's and the company's point of view.
My own learning
I got acquainted with various tools online. There were many on the list that I had never heard of. I watched the videos and chose five that I found interesting. In this section, I realized that there are a lot of tools. There are really several alternative conditions of the same type for time management or different planning. As is also the case with communication, contact and many other options through or with the help of social media. I tried to choose five different tools that we don't have.
I could use Doodle for a meeting to facilitate schedules, Miro as a remote tool for caregiver training. With the help of Instagram, we could find more younger caregivers or at least make them aware of our activities. I got into Pinterest for ideas. However, I wouldn't take Pinterest as a regular tool now. You tube has many possibilities, as long as you remember the author's rights.
This section was tedious and took time as I went through the different tools from the list. At the same time, this was very educational and eye-opening how many of these online tools there are. I believe that there is something for everyone in these for different purposes. For both large and small companies, jobs or tasks. Through this task, I got information about different names of online tools that can be used if needed. That way you can go deeper again later. If necessary and in the future, this can be useful many times.
Digitalised Working Environment