The Benevolent Society, Australia’s first charity with offices in NSW, ACT and Queensland, is transforming the way it works, particularly in delivering service to its clients.
The Benevolent Society and the Disability Community Support Teams from the Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) are coming together into one organisation, increasing the size of The Benevolent Society’s workforce as well as growing the clientele.
CEO Jo Toohey said, “We have taken the opportunity to become a more flexible working organisation and to go as mobile as possible. The aim is to deliver better outcomes for our clients and greater job satisfaction for our staff. So we’re making the workforce as mobile as possible and we’re attempting to go paperless – that’s a little more difficult!”
“Along with the mobility aspect of our new way of working, we’re offering options to staff members to be more flexible – staff can alter their hours, change where they work to suit the demands of the job and the clients, and work where it suits them best to meet their daily requirements.”
Therapists, case workers and service providers in NSW across the three areas of concentration – Ageing, Disability and Child & Family – will work almost exclusively on tablets, linking remotely to The Benevolent Society’s servers and data storage units. Increasing both staff and clients in a ‘quick-moving’ five month period, The Benevolent Society consolidated a number of property sites across the state and is creating four major hubs in Sydney that will bring teams together to ensure collaboration.
At the four Sydney hubs – Hurstville, Chatswood, Liverpool and Kingswood (Werrington campus of Western Sydney University) – staffers have their own storage sites, meeting rooms, hot desks and can stay connected to other team members or other sites via Workplace by Facebook, via video conferencing using Skype for Business, regular phone contact or face-to-face meetings. The Benevolent Society also uses Workplace to ensure news and information is communicated rapidly and people can collaborate and connect.
“Why are we doing this?” asked Toohey rhetorically. “We want to reduce travel to and from The Benevolent Society offices by staff members in order to access files or write reports – we want staff members to do it on the go as it’s more convenient. We want to improve the client experience through easier staff access to information; we want to improve staff quality of life by supporting an effective work-life balance; and we want to improve our overall competitiveness in the Care Services sector.
“Most of our staffers, especially those at the coalface, will travel to see clients, work at hot desks in their new or refurbished offices and provide service in a way that best suits both our clients and our staff members.”
Offices in Queensland, as well as The Benevolent Society Head Office, will complete the transition to mobile working next year.
“It’s really important that staff members interact, that they don’t just sit at their desks, and that they’re able to go to other offices to collaborate with colleagues. That will include all Head Office people – HR, finance, IT, marketing and so on – as well as senior leaders who have teams from different geographical locations reporting to them,” said Toohey.
“Our desire is to be flexible, agile and nimble and ensure people across the organisation work together.”