Innovation award supports one of Scotland’s oldest social care charities

The local charity, Voluntary Service Aberdeen (VSA), presented its challenges of both recruitment and staff retention to the students in hopes that they could devise innovative ideas for the organisation to take forward.  

70 Robert Gordon University (RGU) students took up the challenge as part of the university’s Innovation Award: a scheme where learners explore innovations of the future and put into action their ideas through an interdisciplinary challenge for a select regional organisation. 

Through structured workshops, the students ideated, pitched, and provided actionable solutions for VSA, which employs more than 600 people in Aberdeen in support of creating a better future for vulnerable children and adults. 

"VSA Chief Operating Officer John Booth says: “Securing and retaining the right staff is of paramount importance to VSA. We work with vulnerable children and adults providing consistent support, care, and opportunities that can have a dramatic impact on enabling them to lead the best of lives and fulfil their potential by meeting the outcomes that matter to them. 

"A lot of times, when people apply for a care role, they don't fully appreciate what to expect or the potential career opportunities and options that exist. The social care sector is forecast as one of the largest growth sectors for the NE Economy as society reconciles with an increasing ageing population. This will require the sector to look at new technology and innovative ideas to respond to the challenge.  We were blown away by the range of innovative ideas generated by the students, VSA could make use of them all—not just for helping people to understand if a career in care is for them, but to also support our staff's development, retention, and career direction as well. 

"We've already spoken to the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Group at RGU to see if we can come back to develop some of these ideas in hopes of taking them forward." 

Workshops were cross-disciplinary in nature, with diversity being key to inspire innovation. Each of the 12 teams involved were purposefully comprised of students from different schools, working together to solve the care worker Retention and Recruitment challenge set by VSA. 

For their efforts, the students will be awarded level two of RGU’s three-level Innovation Award micro-credential, which will be noted on their Higher Education Achievement Record. Those who complete all three levels will receive the full award certificate as evidence of the skills that employers value to help them stand out from other graduates in future. 

The winning pitch suggested a solution involving virtual reality and Artificial Intelligence that creates different patient-care simulations for candidates to experience. This would help job seekers understand if they are right for the role, all while the AI improves the training experience as more users make use of the solution. 

Keyur Shah, a Procurement & Supply Chain Management student and co-deliverer of the winning pitch, said: “The use of AI for conversational training is already an established field, with many language learning companies leveraging this incredible and ever-improving technology, so the jump to social care training isn’t a huge one. The one difficulty we faced was moving past the buzzwords of “AI and Machine Learning” to a fully fleshed-out implementation model but, in the end, staying focused on the core idea was all it took to fit all the other pieces together.  

“I thought the opportunity was a great way to connect students from various courses and mindsets. The inclusion of a real-life issue faced by a local business in Aberdeen is a unique way to engage in the out of the box thinking everybody was there to experience, and also for the business to gauge what the biggest trends in their field are among young people.” 

Chris Moule, Head of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at RGU adds: “RGU is committed to supporting local organisations to contribute to Scotland’s economic and social regeneration. We continue to be a forward thinking, entrepreneurial University and the success of this collaboration with VSA is a real example of where we can work in partnership to make a positive contribution to the region. 

“Getting our students to bring their creative and innovative young minds to develop solutions to industry challenges is a fruitful exercise and a wonderful experience. We are always looking for organisations with challenges that require novel and interdisciplinary solutions. Our RGU Innovation Award participants may help you find the path to your next success.” 

If your organisation would like to be involved in future Innovation Award challenges, please contact innovation@rgu.ac.uk.

Image from left to right: Nathan Rankine, Linda Jepkoech Lagat, Keyur Shah, Kwadwo Kwafo-Fokuo, Wan Hay Eugina Ng, Regan Gray, Ming Loi.