Adobe Success Story

Mensheds is a unique not-for-profit organisation specialising in the health and well-being of men. Mensheds Australia was established to quickly and efficiently assist in starting, running, and growing individual men's sheds across Australia.

Each men's shed is an individual local organisation that offers opportunities for regular social interaction, the promotion of fellowship and support, active participation, and learning new skills—especially about health, well-being, and helping the community.

Benefits

• Provided real-time collaborative problem solving between geographically dispersed trainers
• Facilitated easy monitoring and evaluation with real-time surveys and questionnaires
• Accelerated development of engaging online training
• Reduced travel and logistic costs
• Improved compliance and occupational health and safety risk management

Project Details

Spreading the word far and wide
From the outset, the biggest challenge faced by Mensheds Australia was to reach men throughout the country, particularly those with low business acumen, poor understanding of health issues, and little money at their disposal, and provide these groups with something unique in the world of men's health.

Individual men's sheds are geographically scattered across Australia, and are managed by local governments, community groups, and motivated individuals. To start a group and keep programs running for members, men's sheds require resources, training, and detailed information available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. "At the moment, we have 300 training programs available and many more in progress," says Peter Sergeant, managing director of Mensheds Australia. "These programs cover every practical specialisation imaginable to run a men's shed—from veteran affairs to marketing to fund raising and motivation."

Mensheds Australia needed to provide quick and easy access to products, services, and information while retaining the support of the health industry and communities. In addition, the organisation needed to manage vast amounts of information along with appropriate tools, processes, and templates, and, in order to be sustainable over time, a system for effective collaboration, communication, and customer service had to be financially viable.

"Even when Mensheds commenced operation in 2003, we had already produced hundreds of training programs and information modules—approximately 5,000 slides—for small business owners," says Sergeant. "All of this knowledge was useless unless we could present it compellingly on a grand scale over great distances to potential supporters, members, and managers of men's sheds."

An organisation shaped by technology
"When we discovered Acrobat Connect Professional and realised how easily we could communicate and collaborate with groups across the country and worldwide, it actually redefined our concept of men's sheds and determined the way that we would operate," continues Sergeant.

Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional allows Mensheds Australia to use multimedia to deliver support to even the most remote communities. Members of men's sheds can use their PCs to connect via the Internet to their local groups and individual members without being overwhelmed by the technology. It is as simple as going to their own unique, designated URL address to access their personal online meeting rooms.

Men's shed managers can also interact with the head office of Mensheds and access rich content. Rather than simply disseminating vast amounts of documents, Acrobat Connect Professional has provided Mensheds Australia with an interactive system whereby it is possible to analyse the training progress of the men's sheds managers.

Rich, engaging experiences
Mensheds Australia is able to offer interactive, content-rich services such as a Resource Centre, Help Desk, Networking, Economic Gardening, and Consulting. Using the collaboration tools in Acrobat Connect Professional, Mensheds Australia enables an enhanced experience for men's sheds managers and members, including:

• A creative culture focused on opportunity generation and innovation
• Providing an always-available Help Desk service that delivers management as well as psychological support, information, and knowledge
• Customised meeting flows with branded content
• The ability to store and share information across meeting rooms or easily record meetings for later on-demand viewing
• Voiceovers added to an extensive library of previously created PowerPoint workshops and presentations
• Frequent, fast development and Internet delivery of new training modules
• Anytime, anywhere access to voice-enhanced training modules
• Seminars via web video and audio conferencing with screen sharing, whiteboarding, and chat
• An audio-visual learning environment that allows members to participate in both live and self-paced courses, as well as virtual classes that contain interactive content such as quizzes, surveys, and simulations

From an administrative perspective, Acrobat Connect Professional has drastically reduced the cost of delivery, travel, training, and Occupational Health & Safety compliance. Explains Sergeant, "When you consider the thousands of documents and information packages used by Mensheds Australia to communicate and collaborate with individual men's sheds and our partners every¬where, Acrobat Connect Professional is worth approximately $5 million to our organisation."

The feedback from supporters and stakeholders on the organisation's portal, www.mensheds.com.au has been outstanding and exceeded all expectations. "Simply put, without Acrobat Connect Professional, we would not have been able to continue with our work at Mensheds," concludes Sergeant. "We couldn't deliver the volume of information needed anywhere near as efficiently and compellingly without the Adobe software."

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