Learn why Nurse Next Door Home Care is the right fit for entrepreneurs Amber Biesse and Matt Fitton
A Clear Purpose
In 2016 we were fortunate enough to move to Vancouver to live. This “gap year” as we now like to call it gave us time to reflect on what we would do next when we returned to Australia after our sabbatical. Over the past 25 years we have built and run a series of successful companies in a variety of industries. We knew our main criteria, whatever our next opportunity would be, was to create something with a sense of purpose.
As we asked ourselves the question: “who are we”, we looked to businesses that have stood the test of time. We realised they all shared the same elements: a clear purpose – why they do what they do; clear values – how they do what they do; and a clear vision for the future – where they are going and what it will look like when they get there.
Aged care, disability support and home care is an industry that is close to our heart. So when we saw Nurse Next Door’s pink cars driving around Vancouver and investigated a bit further, we were excited to find an organisation that was living and breathing a set of core values that resonated strongly with us, in an industry that has the potential to make a real difference in people’s lives. We knew we had found the purpose driven business we were looking for.
A Bold Pink Brand
Great brands are steeped in discipline. Not the kind that sees everyone at their desk from 6am to 10pm, but the discipline to stick to the pre-determined and clearly articulated core values. The discipline to not deviate from these core values in any area of the organisation. We are clear with everyone who encounters the Nurse Next Door brand: this is who we are and how we do things.
With a background in hospitality, our values have been built on a foundation of customer service. The desire to exceed people’s expectations. At Nurse Next Door we pride ourselves on the fact that, although we’re in the home care business, our model of care is not created around a set of tasks. Instead we focus on the experience each and every one of our clients has. This determination to be great, not good, is what excited us about the Nurse Next Door brand in the first place. A brand which is informed by a set of values that drive every decision the organisation makes:
- Admiring Our People
- Delivering WOW Customer Experience
- Finding a Better Way
- Being Passionate About Making A Difference
To be clear, our core values are not just a set of words found on the office wall. They are the essence of the Nurse Next Door brand, inculcated in every system and process. In a 2018 talk at the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures, Nurse Next Door Co-Founder John De Hart spoke of the early days when he and Co-Founder Ken Sim realised the key to growing and scaling a brand is to have a “maniacal” commitment to the core values. At Nurse Next Door our core values form what we call the ‘non-negotiable’ rules everyone lives by, creating an award-winning culture and an organisation people love to work for.
A Culture Of Raving Fans
We believe culture is the key to either great success or great failure. As Jim Collins theorises in his book, Good to Great: “first who, then what” stating, if you get the “right people on the bus”, then you can go where you need to go. The danger for many organisations, Collins argues, is to focus too heavily on where they’re going without thinking about who will take them there.
Any organisation can teach employees their systems and processes – the “what we do”. At Nurse Next Door our aim is to build a culture of what we call “raving fans” – from our franchise partners, and our caregivers and nurses, to our Care Services Centre team members – we have a group of people who love coming to work and believe so strongly in why we do what we do, they love talking about Nurse Next Door even when they are not working!
We look for people who not only have the qualifications and skills to deliver the care but, more importantly, embrace our values, share our purpose and are excited about our vision. They’re tenacious, resilient, they go above and beyond and at the same time they seek out the little things that make a difference.
At the end of the day, it comes back to the core purpose of Making Lives Better. When everyone in the organisation is aligned with the purpose, brand and culture, the organisation is able to focus on building a great business, which in our case is a business with heart.
With a core purpose of Making Lives Better, Nurse Next Door, under the leadership of Melbourne based Master Franchisors Matt Fitton and Amber Biesse, provides in-home aged care and disability support services built on our philosophy of Happier Ageing® focusing on possibility rather than disability.
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