The Beyond a Helpline programme was launched in collaboration with Broadway to provide effective HR support to smaller homelessness agencies. This was in response to issues raised within one of our Action Learning sets for heads of small homelessness agencies in London.
Staff are the essential element in any organisation’s ability to deliver services, even more so for those with a vulnerable client group, yet many organisations admitted to difficulties in recruiting and retaining high-performing people. One of the shared issues, therefore, was the need for consistent, high-quality and affordable HR support. It was to satisfy this need that the project started life.
Following a competitive process Broadway, which has an award-winning HR
department, was selected to deliver the pilot scheme on our behalf. It ran for two years, from April 2006 to March 2008, and 11 agencies received support.
Triangle Consulting evaluated the pilot and concluded that Beyond a Helpline was an innovative and successful approach to improving people-management. It had succeeded in transforming both the way some agencies were organised and the way they managed their staff. In the words of one participant:
‘The change has been vast… Things are not chaotically done any more - there are clear processes, structures which pervade everything. Now people are proud of the professionalism, it filters into everything.’
In 2008, the programme was transferred to Broadway who continue to offer the service via their Real People consultancy.
The evaluation and detailed case studies are available from our resources page.