This photo of Lyndoch Living senior staff was taken in 2017. Only two staff members, and the CEO (centre), remain. [Original image Lyndoch Living Facebook page. Graphics added.]
This photo of senior Lyndoch Living staff was taken on the front lawns of Lyndoch in 2017.
Of those in the line-up, only two faces remain.
Three, if I count the CEO, pictured in the centre.
The turnover from those in this photo includes four Nurse Unit Managers, an Occupational Therapist, the Chief Financial Officer, the Director of Hotel Services, the Head of kitchen services, the Human Resources Co-ordinator, the Director of Nursing, and the Director of People and Resilience which is a title dripping with irony, because resilience doesn’t come into this.
They are all gone, regardless of their “resilience”.
Last week I posted a photo of seven experienced clinical staff who have left in the past eight weeks, but this photo dips into an exodus that has been from right across Lyndoch.
Some of those in this photo had only just started in their roles, but were gone within three years.
Why?
We have not been told why.
I have written many times now about the loss of up to 200 staff from Lyndoch Living in the past five years and still nobody has told us why.
The board, it seems, considers such a loss quite acceptable, normal even.
It is this normalisation of the abnormal which has got me thinking – was this staff purge part of the grand plan all along?
Was the idea to get rid of anyone who complained, cost too much, knew too much or who simply didn’t apply the “Lyndoch Way” of saying “yes!” even when their hearts told them to say “no, no, no”?
Maybe it has been a part of Lyndoch’s grand masterplan that, let’s face it, very few people knew much about and still don’t.
The community owns Lyndoch, but in the past five years it has been kept completely in the dark.
Who knew that Tomlinson Wing would be demolished to make way for a $22m medical clinic?
Who knew that Lyndoch had, in 2018, quietly become a Company Limited by Guarantee that would be used to cut the community out?
And who knew that so many hard-working, committed local people who worked at Lyndoch would be forced to leave in a purge that still rolls on?
The impact of these losses is already being felt and my fear is that the full impact is yet to come.
Again, for the sake of the elderly and vulnerable residents, I hope I am wrong.
With so many staff gone how are they resourcing shifts, etc. It has become a reputational issue now. No one in their right mind would work for lyndoch. No one. That’s a very poor outcome. Especially for residents. So where are they sourcing labour from? A labour hire company? I’m always scepetical when I see this in play. Because you’ve to ask who owns the labour her company? Follow the money as they say.