At PA, we are a team of 60 Remarkable and passionate professionals all driven towards the same purpose: To ensure that all Australians receive the care, dignity and quality of life they deserve. In 2017, to reconnect our day-to-day to our impact and to continue to make changing the lives of older Australians our beacon, we set out on a social impact measurement journey to embed it in our culture forever. We realised, if we are living our truth that the entire reason we exist is to impact older Australians, shouldn’t we be able to define that impact and measure and report on it? So we did – see the results here. In the meantime, welcome to this article series in which we all explore our own connection to that purpose.
Victoria Kelly
7 years ago was my very first day at Provider Assist. Immediately before coming to PA, I was working as a Finance Manager at Quiksilver. After beginning my career in the Big 4 accounting world, all I used to think was…if only I could do ‘this’ at a really cool company. Quiksilver seemed like my dream job!
As you can imagine for a young 20 something, Quiksilver was lots of fun. Great cheap clothes, ski trips, lots of time on the beach, great parties. In the beginning, I was having a blast. But every week we sat in meetings strategising about how we could sell more t-shirts, more wetsuits, more swimwear. I love business, any business really, and I learned an extraordinary amount…but soon I really struggled to muster up the energy to work out how to sell more t-shirts! So…I stayed true to myself and took a risk. I moved to the city in search of a role that was more meaningful.
Around the same time, my beautiful Nan had passed away after 9 years in residential care. Although there were still beautiful moments during this time – my Nan retained her mischievous side and the staff in her facility were all lovely – they were 9 really tough years of dementia and of less than remarkable care and support which I realised is quite a normal experience. From that experience, I knew I wanted better for future generations of older people and their families. So here I am at PA – 7 years later absolutely loving what I do and I’m changing lives!
And I feel so lucky to be here! Lots of my friends are in roles they don’t love and roles that are not impacting society in a positive way. They all have plans to set themselves up, build financial security and then they’ll give back by donating some money or do some volunteering. But here we all are, impacting people now.
This is one of the truly unique things about the team at PA. Everyone who has come onto the team has had what I like to call a ‘magic moment’ during their interview process where they clearly articulate the change they want to make in the world and that they believe they can do that with Provider Assist.
Each of us connects to PA’s vision in entirely different ways. Whether you’ve joined PA to share your clinical expertise to influence the entire industry or for others it’s often…“I believe at PA I can make a positive difference to society and on people’s lives – and I want to be a part of that.”
For me, I truly believe that purpose and profit are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe the exact opposite – that unless Aged Care organisations have the ability to run optimised, leveraged and efficient business models – older Australians will never receive the care, dignity and quality of life they deserve. We’ll never attract investment to our industry, our industry will never be the first choice for the best university graduates, clinical professionals or the best management & leadership executives. Older Australians deserve all of these things. So I want to use my skills to help Aged Care organisations reach their full potential in business.
The 2017 Impact Report had been a dream of mine for years. So over the last little while we set out to dig deeper and deeper to define, measure & report on our impact in order to publish our first ever Impact Report. Lucky for us that we’re all such purpose-driven PA-topians, it’s been a lot of fun. I’m so proud of the result and have never felt more connected and aware of our purpose. Impact is now embedded in our day-to-day as we continue to measure, expand and improve.
Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in finding out how we did it.
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Victoria Kelly – Partner, Strategy & Operations Author |
