Member Spotlight Member Spotlight What does your funeral home do in order to create a strong community presence? Do you believe that this is important? Staying connected with our communities is important to us and has been for generations. It is increasingly difficult in a large city with changing demographics to keep those connections. We support a range of sporting and community groups, and I am a past president and board member of our Rotary Club District. In what ways do you use technology to further the services you offer? We embrace technology where it is beneficial and enhances our services, not just for the sake of using technology. While we have filmed all funerals at our funeral homes for decades, this past year we pivoted and all funerals are live-streamed for families who want it, at any location, including churches and cemeteries. Since COVID, we have seen traffic to our website increase tenfold, predominantly to our Tribute Walls for each funeral to post comments, photos or watch the webcast. With multiple locations and a centralized operations center, we have Wi-Fi across all sites, use SRS as our comprehensive operational software, Microsoft Teams to connect with staff in the office or on the road, and a thorough company intranet using Sharepoint. What growing trends have you noticed in the funeral service profession? How do you keep up with these changes? As a 160-year-old business, we have learned to adapt to many changes and trends over many decades, such as the transition from horse-drawn hearses to motorised vehicles, and the introduction of telephones. The growing changes are cultural ones. Over generations, the many traditions of our migrant nation are diluted and different cultures inter-marry and become entwined. At the same time, people have steadily moved away from organized religion, ceremony and rituals. Where previously funeral directors and families would simply follow the guidelines of priests, today each funeral is personalized and adapted to best reflect the life of the person who has died. Focusing on personalization makes funerals relevant, whether simply by music or an audio-visual presentation, or by use of color, funeral location, food or physical mementos. A recent funeral we conducted in an aircraft hanger in front of a restored WWII plane is a vivid example of how the funeral was strongly relevant for the family. Nelson’s staff works closely with families to ensure services reflect the life of the person who has died, like this biker funeral at their Williamstown location. (photo provided) What do you value most about OGR? Why did you become a member? The Nelson family have been members of OGR for over 30 years. I remember hosting a symposium of OGR members here in Melbourne, Australia in the early 1990s. We joined because it gave us insight and inspiration to better operate our family business. Sharing ideas and stories with like-minded friends from around the world helps improve everything we do. Over the past decade, we have been actively involved in establishing OGR’s inaugural Intercontinental Study Group. This group could now best be described as a group of friends who happen to work in the same profession in different corners of the world. We motivate, energize and stir each other, learning constantly how we can adapt ideas to our own unique environments. How has COVID-19 hit your nation, and how has your funeral home responded to meet the need? Comparatively, Australia has had low numbers of COVID-19 cases. However here in Melbourne, we faced (at the time) some of the world’s strictest restrictions and shutdowns, including strict home confinement for 112 days. In total, there have been 909 COVID-19 deaths in all of Australia since the pandemic began. Many other cities in the world have experienced this www.ogr.org | The Independent® 29
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