Beyond a Helpline 

Effective HR support for smaller agencies

From early 2004 the London Housing Foundation sponsored a number of action learning sets for voluntary agencies tackling single homelessness in London. One of these involved the heads of a number of small agencies. After several meetings, members of this action learning set asked to meet with the Kevin Ireland, Executive Director of the Foundation. They explained that one of the major issues for each of the agencies involved was the difficulty in achieving effective standards in HR. Inevitably, responsibility for HR fell to the head of the agency, but none of these had professional qualifications in this area. Against the background of an increasingly competitive environment, where the development and operation of programmes and the constant demands of fundraising took more and more of the Director’s time, it was impossible to keep up with good practice and legal developments in HR. Agencies found that they were using helplines and solicitors – often very expensively - to patch up problems after they occurred. What they wanted, they explained, was some help to bring their HR up to a good standard and to avoid these problems arising.

The initial response

In order to clarify the situation and the needs of these agencies, Kevin led a one-day workshop. This workshop was attended by representatives of a dozen agencies and explored the problems and issues they had faced, their outstanding needs and what would be required to bring the HR function within their organisations up to a suitably high standard. At the end of the workshop there was a strong demand for an initiative to respond to the expressed needs. It was clear that these needs were shared by most small agencies in the voluntary sector, but no system of support for such agencies could be found that went ‘beyond a helpline’. It therefore determined to set up a pilot project that would, over the course of two years, develop the HR capacity of participating agencies to a high standard, comparable to that of well-performing, larger voluntary organisations.

Consideration was given to a number of models, including using professional HR consultants. However, it was felt that suitable professional expertise exists within larger voluntary organisations and that to tap into this would have the double benefit of utilising their greater understanding and experience of the voluntary sector environment, as well as providing them with a useful opportunity to strengthen their own organisational capacity through an element of social enterprise.

Developing the pilot programme

Seeking to tap the creativity of the larger voluntary organisations tackling homelessness, Kevin developed a brief that set out what was sought from the pilot programme and invited a number of suitable agencies to submit proposals for this work, setting out how they would meet the brief and what this would cost. Four larger agencies submitted proposals and three of these were asked to present their proposals to a panel that included the award winning Group Director of HR for London & Quadrant Housing Trust and the Chief Executive of Homeless Link. Meanwhile, the Foundation also appointed Triangle Consulting to undertake a contemporaneous evaluation of the two-year pilot. The panel selected Broadway Homelessness and Support to deliver the pilot.  Kevin then spent considerable time with staff from Broadway on the detail of how to implement the pilot programme, including a further workshop with potential participants in January 2006.

An important element in the development of the pilot was that each of the smaller agencies participating paid for the service they received. Whilst this was at a highly subsidised rate (approximating to 50% of the real cost during the pilot) this payment underlined that the agencies received a service as customers, ensuring that programme delivery was established from the outset on an appropriate basis. It also underlined to the agencies that they needed to keep a budget line for HR and set this at a level that could sustain the agencies improved HR performance at the end of the pilot.

The pilot programme

The pilot started operating fully in April 2006 with eleven agencies involved, ranging in size from five to thirty employed staff. Participating agencies received support from Broadway through:

• an audit of their current HR situation and needs;
• the development of core policies, procedures and competencies that were then adapted for each agency;
• training in relation to the above and other areas;
• regular HR surgeries;
• a helpline with dedicated support;
• guaranteed updating and support following any change in legislation or accepted good practice;
• a nominated account manager for each participating agency.

The original selection panel became a steering group for the pilot.

Review of year one

In February 2007 the participating agencies came together to review their experience of Beyond a Helpline. This was a very positive meeting, with the agencies reporting a number of positive changes:

• more consistency in their HR management;
• greater ability to manage their growing organisations with more complexity – such as more P/T staff and volunteers;
• greater ability to delegate HR matters – i.e. managers are using the procedures themselves rather than expecting it all to go back to the Director;
• recruiting better and more flexible staff (e.g. by competencies rather than experience etc.);
• several agencies had managed to deal effectively with difficult or underperforming staff;
• establishing effective appraisal systems.

Overall, the feeling was that the original idea was becoming a reality – it is possible within a small agency to have a quality HR system, well implemented:

“We aren’t stranded or on our own anymore”
“It took issues away from the personal to the professional – what the organisation requires from staff. People like clarity and this enabled the managers to be strong.”
“We have much greater consistency around HR issues and feeling we can deal with things that come our way.”
“HR was rooted in one person and can be delegated better now”
“We recruit on a more objective basis [based on core competencies] and can meet work objectives better because we have more internal flexibility.”

At this review session the idea of establishing a special website for Beyond a Helpline was canvassed, providing access to all of the standard policies and procedures that have been developed, along with the ability to track changes and developments and see where additional advice had been delivered about legal or other relevant issues. This was received enthusiastically and each agency was subsequently provided with its own, password protected site, where it could store its own adaptations of policies and procedures, as well as access further information and advice.

Year two 

At the end of the first year, two of the participating agencies found it no longer possible to continue as independent organisations and (both with assistance from the Foundation) found larger merger partners to provide a continuing basis for the delivery of their services to clients. Their exit interviews illustrated an extremely high satisfaction with the service they had received from Beyond a Helpline:

“We are more aware of good practice – we have broken through that sense that ‘we are a small organisation so we don’t/cant do that’ we will be less surprised by big organisation policies”
“It’s really worthwhile, go for it – especially in terms of reducing the anxiety factor for the non specialist manager”

At the same time, two further agencies joined for the remaining year of the pilot. In June 2007 Broadway used the experience they had developed from implementing Beyond a Helpline to deliver a free workshop for other, non-participating smaller agencies, focussing on the major HR risks for smaller organisations.

At the end of year two the evaluation will be completed and a full report, drawing lessons from the experience will be available on the website of the London Housing Foundation from June 2008.