Elderly-Care Centre
Introduction
Our Proposed Business
The corporation we propose is an elderly-care centre for the elderly only. It is named
“Wonderland for golden-ager”. Our target market is mainly the elderly who lives alone at
home. Various activities will be provided for the elderly.
In terms of general environment, there is no specific place which is only for the elderly.
Although there are sports centre, the elderly may not make friends with the people who are
in the same age group. Compared to the other places, we have an opportunity because we
provide a place of entertainment for the elderly only. In terms of specific environment, we
are the first elderly-care centre in Hongkong, therefore we get a strength since we have few
competitors.
Feasibility of Project
First, high technical skills are not needed. Since our centre mainly provide simple service
and facilities to the elderly, technical skills are less significant to our centre and the salaries
of our employees will not be too high. Second, aging problem occurs in Hongkong.
According to the government research, from 2006 to 2016, the population of the elderly
increased 36.4%. Due to the serious aging problem and higher quality of life, our service has
opportunities to get a high market share.
Details of the Elderly-Care Centre
Missions and Goals
Planning is essential to business, we will set up missions and goals because they can
provide direction and reduce uncertainty for management decision. The missions of our
centre are a) Providing a people-oriented environment and b) Helping the elderly build good
relationships with others in elderly-care centre.
Goals of the elderly-care centre will be divided by two parts, Financial goal and Strategic
goal. For Financial goal: Maintain a long run and profitable business; (a) Earn at least
500,000 a year (b) Increase 6% profit in the subsequent years. For Strategic goal: (a) To
ensure no elderly feel lonely (b) Delivering message that all elderly can play with others like
teenagers. The benefits of the society are we can reduce the pressure of offspring to look
after the elderly, facing the aging problem positively and taking care of the elderly.
Location & Shop selection
In the first place, we will run our business in Wong Tai Sin. Our targeted segments are
the healthy elderly. According to the government, in 2018, the proportion of the elderly above
65 years old in this district was the highest in Hong Kong. As a result, there are almost
150,000 potential elderly customers for us. Through our data collection, the rivalry of other
competitors is low since we are the first one in Hong Kong to create this Elderly-care centre
and combine the advantages of nursing home and community centre.
We have weighted three decision criteria: (1) the rent, (2) the number of the elderly
nearby, (3) the environment of the centre for the centre selection. We determine the most
essential factor is the rent. It is because we will have the pick-up service and we only have
the capital of $3,000,000. Therefore, we choose to develop our centre in the old Video
arcade in Wong Tai Sin. Besides, our centre is about 2500 ft and there are 6-7 rooms with a
variety of facilities (KTV, mahjong, beds etc.), a lobby and 2 washrooms. The maximum
capacity is approximately 260 people.
Employee Section
For choosing employee, there are two decision criteria. First, the personality will be the
most significant aspect we focused on. SIOP claims that "Personality tests typically measure
traits related to behavior at work, interpersonal interactions, and satisfaction with different
aspects of work." We will request every applicant to take a personality test before they work
in our centre, by finishing the test, the employee must be kind-hearted and compassionate,
as we have to confirm the employees are able to take good care of the aged and accompany
the elderly. Therefore, personality will be allocated with the top priority.
Second, creativity is also an important part of the criteria ,since our centre will hold as
many as possible activities for the elderly to join. The activity and event should be perfect
blends of entertainment and knowledge, allow the elderly to kill two bird with one rock. On
the one hand, they can feel funny when the participate in the event, on the other hand, they
can gain more knowledge after finishing the event. After that, the elderly feels no more
tedious and solitary after they joining our centre. In view of this, creativity is one of the
factors of employee section and it will be allocated with the second priority.
Building Image
On one hand, we prefer hiring the disabled and ex-offender. According to the Hong Kong
Poverty Situation Report on Disability 2013, "the unemployment rate of those working-age
persons with disabilities (PWDs) who participated in the labour market was 6.7 per cent in
2013, which was notably higher than the overall rate of the same age group (3.7 per cent)" .
In view of this, it is not uncommon to see that our society is not friendly to those disabled
persons. Thereby, more opportunities should be provided to them in order to them to
reintegrate into our society. By giving them a proper training program, such as teaching them
the skills to accompany with the elderly, instilling them the goals and visions of our centre, by
doing so, it could allow them to familiar with the daily operation of our corporation. We do
believe that after training, they can work as ordinary people. Besides, offering job
opportunities to the disabled and ex-offenders can show the social responsibility of our
corporation, it increases the employment rate of the socially vulnerable groups in society.
On the other hand, taking good care of the aged is also a core belief of our firm. The
solitary elderly tends to have depression as the live alone and nobody chats with them. For a
long run, they may feel tedious and lonely, in a more serious scenario, they may well be
suicided. According to the The Samaritan Befrienders Hong Kong,” In 2018, there were 353
suicide deaths over the age of 60, accounting for 36.96% of the total number of suicides.” In
light of this, we try to help the elderly get out of the loneliness by providing a hilarious place
for them to make friends with each other, such as the room of karaoke or mah-jong, both of
the events are suitable for the elderly, it is easy for them to chat with others with common
topic. Besides, it does not take much to realize that the elderly are generally physically frail.
With this in mind, there are also numerous static activities will be provided to them, like
gardening, handicraft, calligraphy, etc. Once the elderly gets good relationships with their
friends and our staff in the centre, they will appreciate our centre and share their happy
mood with their families, it builds up a good image of our centre.
Promotion
For the purpose of getting more recognition to our centre, we will collaborate with some
nursing homes by giving them special and interesting activities to those elderly who are
living in a nursing home, or even being tedious at home without any companion. This action
is good for the society because of the aging problem. With the aim of social responsibility,
our centre is willing and able to help the elderly. Besides, we will distribute leaflets and post
advertising posters to some nursing homes and on the streets, such as Wong Tai Sin and
Tsz Wan Shan. Furthermore, we will often visit different nursing home and the house of the
elderly so as to promote our activities of the centre which can improve elderly’s mental and
physical health.
Daily Operation
In the daily operation, the ways to charge the customers are shown as follow:
1. The charge of one-day permit is $50.
2. The charge of monthly pass is $1000.
In order to maintain the goodwill of our centre, this scheme is adapted. Elderly can
consider which scheme they would choose. At the same time, they have to register with their
personal data (ID number, their name, phone number, address etc.). In the light of this, the
calculation of toll will be enhanced. Once when the elderly came, the starting time should be
recorded in the computer. This policy definitely reduce confusion about the calculation of the
payment and a smooth running can be achieved.
Also, aiming to the stakeholder approach, we have to treat employees fairly and
honestly. The employees could dress up with their casual wear since they will put on their
employee badge. This is a bit informal. However, this arrangement can show elderly that
employees are not only a staff to serve them, but also one of their friends. They can sing
karaoke and play mahjong together in order to spread the love to each other, especially to
the elderly. The employee badge can show their professionalism and easier to be
recognized by the elderly.
Strategies to against Competitors
For the sake of market share controlling, differentiation strategy will be applied in our
corporation. Although the degree of change is very stable since the burgeoning of aging
popularity, we still made some changes to differentiate our competitor and us. First, we are
not only a place for taking care of the elderly, but also delivering the love to the elderly.
However, it seems that nursing home only looking for the physiological needs and safety
needs of them, but the social needs and esteem needs cannot be fulfilled in a nursing
home. Owing to dignity, the elderly is unwilling to live in a nursing home since it is labelled
that they are abandoned by their family. Also, the social needs are neglected when they live
in nursing home, we had to know that there are only few of activities are provided to them
and it is difficult for them to meet new friends in nursing home. In contrast, we can provide a
variety of activities like karaoke, calligraphy to them, they can easily chat with each other via
the common topics. Also, our centre is not badly labelled. In general, nursing home is
assumed to take care of the elderly who lives without family caring. However, our centre
aims to make the elderly feel happy and makes no negative impression to the public. Under
this line of thinking, the social needs and esteem needs are fulfilled if they joined our centre.
In light of this, this is the biggest difference between our centre to the nursing home.
In addition, our centre is trying to be unique in the elderly care market. We are going to
provide a specific shuttle bus for the pick-up service. In contrast, most of the community
centre arranged the elderly go home by themselves. However, once the elderly join the
activities of the centre, the pick-up service are arranged for them. Our centre not only
provides shuttle bus pick-up service, but also arrange a babysitter, or even our staff pick up
and drop off the elderly from the centre to their living place after this event, to ensure their
own safety. This definitely maintain and ensure a good security of elderly in order to avoid
unexpected accidents.
Controlling
First and foremost, actual performance will be measured. By measuring our
performance, there are several methods can be used, like personal observation, the
monitor can observe the attitude of our staff, determine it is polite or not. Also, written
report will be used to record the revenue earned.
Then, we will compare actual performance against the standard. As the before part
mentioned, one of our plans is earned at least $500000 per year, and as the cash flow
mentioned, totally $533000 may well be earned after the year, we definitely accept this but it
is just an estimation. If there is a big gap between these two parts, when we compare the
actual performance and the goals, such as there are still $200,000 profits to reach the goals,
we would consider to take some actions to solve it.
Finally, managerial action will be taken to correct deviations or inadequate
standards. If the standard can be reached after this year, it is fine. However, if we cannot
reach the goals we planned before, basic correct actions should be taken to solve the
problem. For example, if our staff are impolite to the elderly and therefore dented our
reputation, the ethical training program will be adopted next year. In other case, if the
promotions are not enough, we would like to spend more budgets on advertisements to
promote our centre.
Evaluation
At the end of the month, we will have a meeting about the daily operational problems and
management problems. Like the elderly participants the centre, the price, the employee’s
services and so on can be discussed. Also, for the sake of preventing groupthink , nominal
group technique will be adopted in our discussion, allowing our employees feel free to
share their ideas. The changing scheme will be implemented in the next month. Improve the
services once a month.
Anticipated Problems
There are two structured problems. First, people who don't understand our service that
the centre like the nursing home which have a bad impression. As a result, our centre will
take some videos to indicate our service. Our centre is attaches great importance to people
oriented, not production oriented. So people can know more about our service.
Secondly, as their children, they may be concerned about unethical behavior by
employees. More people may worry about we are not friendly to elderly. Therefore, we will
have ethics training to our employees. We can hold workshop, ethics training programme
for them to build-up behaviour. In addition, because of the code of ethics, employees should
follow the ethical rules. There is a penalty for violation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the nature and objective of our care centre is to provide a comfortable
environment for elderly people who cannot be cared for by their children during the day or at
night.
As we all know, children are very busy at work. Although they don't want to send their
parents to the nursing home, they still have to go to work at the same time and can't take
care of the elderly. Therefore, this nursing home is very suitable, because the goal of our
nursing home is to provide different facilities for the elderly. Children can send their children
to the center before work and pick them up after work. The center provides different activities
for the elderly, including games, calligraphy, board games and so on. The elderly can choose
different activities to participate in, and sometimes the centre will have volunteers to perform
activities for the elderly to play, so that the elderly spend a happy day in the center, break the
concept of the traditional home for the elderly.
In order to let people experience the service of the care home, we will often hold some
promotion, which can let the elderly experience a one-hour free trial play, if you think it is
suitable for yourself, you can join our big family.
We will often give out questionnaires to collect the opinions of the elderly and children to
decide which food they like to eat for lunch/dinner and which activities are the most popular.
Finally, we will recruit people for our care centers through leaflets, online social media
publicity and posters.
