Tag: Canadian Hearing Society

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Surveys Help Us Meet Our Clients’ Needs

Screen Shot 2018-02-07 at 5.44.04 PMA key part of my leadership DNA is fact-based decision-making. I’ve never been comfortable just running on gut or intuition. Neither of those is any good without a solid factual basis for understanding what decision options there are and how each will impact the business.

In September, my Board at Canadian Hearing Society approved a bold strategic plan for building the leading national organization to serve Deaf and hard of hearing Canadians.

We are an aggressive and fast moving organization, so there has already been a huge amount of activity taking place to help us achieve the Board’s vision. A key initiative conducted in October 2017 was the surveying of 550 clients from CHS’s Audiology and Counselling programs. Respondents were clients who received an appointment between April 1 to September 30, 2017. The survey was available in multiple languages (English, ASL, French, LSQ, Simplified Chinese, Russian and Portuguese). This interim report was completed December 2017 and the final report will be available summer 2018.

We are pleased with the results of the survey. Generally, we feel it shows that we are on the right track. A lot of our clients seem satisfied. I am very proud of the dedicated people at CHS who work tirelessly on behalf of our client.

However, the survey also shows us where there are opportunities to improve and get better. We will be using this insight through 2018 as we roll out our strategic plan. And, we will continue to survey our clients on a regular basis. Meeting their needs is our mission.

More information on the survey results is available by following this link to the Canadian Hearing Society website.

 

 

 

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Using Social Media To Reach Our Audiences

Social media is a natural communications channel for the people who want to know what’s happening at Canadian Hearing Society.

Our primary audiences are Deaf and hard of hearing Canadians. Twitter, Facebook and other platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram are well understood, closely monitored and well used by these Canadians.

Other key audiences for CHS include employers, funders and donors. We use social media to help ensure that it’s easy for these audiences to stay current on what’s happening.

Here’s what I’ve learned about using social media in our organization:

  1. It’s requires a serious commitment. At CHS there is no shortage of news, events, expertise and insight that is helpful for the people we serve. The challenge is staying organized, planned and capable. That is the responsibility of our communications department. We’ve invested in them and count on them to stay on top of what’s current, provide interesting and easy-to-understand content and, to provide the expertise and capacity for communicating on-line in a timely and professional manner.
  2. People must be constantly reminded to include social media in their planning. Like ‘quality control’, ‘HR’, or many other corporate functions, people easily fall into the habit of thinking that social media is someone else’s responsibility (the communications department!). It becomes an after-thought. When that happens we miss opportunities to keep people well informed. Counteracting that means constantly reminding ourselves to think about social media planning from the outset of every activity.
  3. Not everyone loves every piece of content we tweet or post (although they seem to like most of them). That is to be expected. Everyone is different.  We cannot let it dissuade us from our on-going commitment to do the best we can to keep our clients and others who care about us informed.
  4. Social media is giving us better insight on the needs of those we serve. Every day, our leadership team gets a report on our social media activity. We see what content we’ve posted, how far it’s reached and how much interaction has taken place. As a result, I see us developing a stronger sense for how to communicate with Deaf and hard of hearing Canadians and with others who are important to CHS.

At Canadian Hearing Society, we’re using social media because it is such an effective, efficient, timely, and visible tool for communicating information and insight. It is a critical strategy we are using to achieve our goals.

Here is a link to our Twitter feed.

Here is a link to our Facebook page.

Here is a link to our LinkedIn page.

Her is a link to our website.