We’re excited to head to the Integrated Care Systems Conference 2023. The event, hosted by Govconnect, will be taking place at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. We’ll be heading down on the 23rd March to meet with people from across the sector and share the work TeamKinetic has been doing recently.
Find out more about Integrated Care Systems below.
As part of our attendance, we’re excited to be offering an exclusive offer to the attendees of the event. They can start using the TeamKinetic Volunteer Management System at a reduced rate! Attendees who take advantage of this limited-time offer will receive 25% off their first year.
We’ll be handing out flyers at the event from our exhibition stand, they have an exclusive code on them. All you need to do is follow these steps:
Input the code on the flyer in the ‘Promo code’ box
and that’s it!
If you’d rather not start a trial and instead talk directly to one of our team, you should find a chat box on the website, you’ll be put in direct contact with one of the team between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Terms and Conditions apply. The code can be used from 23/03/2023 until expiry on 23/06/2023. The code can be used either when a trial is started or in correspondence with one of the TeamKinetic team. The offer gives you 25% off the fee of your first year using the system. The first year at 25% off offer starts from the date of your first payment, if the system is used after this period, standard charges will apply. Standard prices can be found on our website at https://teamkinetic.co.uk/pricing. This offer can only be used once. Offer only open to attendees of the Integrated Care Systems Conference 2023 using the code when making their trial site (proof of attendance may be required). Please direct any questions about this promotion to alex@teamkinetic.co.uk.
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Charity work and volunteering are usually largely associated with the festive period, people want to donate their time to give back to help those less fortunate during Christmas.
Before Christmas, we posted a blog discussing the many available opportunities and ideas of where to volunteer at Christmas time. The reality is these organisations need help and support from volunteers all year round and not just during the festive period and volunteer managers may also find a large decrease in volunteers after this time. People in need aren’t just homeless or lonely during the festive period, similar to the well knowing saying from the Dogs Trust organisation, “A dog is for life, not just for Christmas”.
Support for people in need will need volunteers and donations more than ever especially due to the cost of living crisis. There are plenty of opportunities where organisations need help from volunteers all year round below and some ways volunteer managers can retain these volunteers throughout the year.
Volunteering At Crisis
Crisis is a charity for people experiencing homelessness, each year they support thousands of people to help find safe and stable accommodation. Over the festive period, Crisis had thousands of volunteers across the UK providing companionship and serving and delivering hot meals. These volunteers are still needed throughout the year as homelessness is an ongoing issue, Crisis estimated that around 227,000 people were experiencing the worst forms of homelessness across England, Scotland and Wales in 2021. The charity is consistently creating new opportunities so you can find the one that suits you best.
You can find available volunteering opportunities near you on the Crisis website.
Volunteering At Age UK
Age UK is a charity that helps older people that don’t have care or support from others or anyone to turn to, leading to 1.2 million older people in the UK experiencing loneliness each year. You can become a part of the Age UK community and provide support and raise money so people can get the help they deserve. Although older people may be particularly lonely during the festive period, they will also experience this all year round. A simple way you can make a difference is the telephone friendship service, just as little as 30 minutes of your time a week to talk to an elderly person over the phone can largely impact an older person’s life.
Volunteering At Charity Shops
Volunteers for charity shops are needed now more than ever, since the pandemic thousands of volunteers in retail have been lost. The number of volunteers at charity shops in the UK has fallen by 24% since 2019.
There are plenty of organisations including Barnardo’s UK, British Heart Foundation and more that have hundreds of charity shops across the UK. Roles could include working the tills, decorating window displays or managing donations. Barnardo’s UK currently has 10,000 shop volunteers keeping their 700 shops up and running, but without the help of volunteers, these organisations could struggle.
Tips For Volunteer Managers
As a volunteer manager, it may be difficult to retain these volunteers to carry on volunteering throughout the year and not just at Christmas time. Promoting that volunteering is a rewarding New Years’ resolution idea on your organisation’s website or social media, could encourage people to continue volunteering.
Another way to retain your volunteers throughout the year is to offer flexible scheduling options for roles. People may be drawn to volunteering over Christmas because it means they only have to volunteer for a day or two. By making future opportunities flexible, people won’t have to commit to volunteering full-time.
You can read more about how to engage and retain your volunteers in 2023 here!
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The combined NHS Foundation Trust of Warrington and Halton Hospitals is responsible for a budget of around £215 million each year. They manage over 4,200 staff and provide access to care for over half a million patients.
Two volunteer managers, Claire and Emily, manage and coordinate volunteers across the entire trust. We spoke to Claire to find out how Warrington and Halton have managed volunteers since December 2016 using TeamKinetic volunteer management software.
Can you explain your roles and responsibilities at Warrington and Halton Hospitals?
Emily and I lead the volunteer programme here at Warrington and Halton Hospitals Trust. We are responsible for the safe recruitment and training of new and existing volunteers and developing innovative ways to engage volunteers to support patient and visitor experience. We also work alongside the whole staff team to develop and improve their volunteer management skills.
How did you come across TeamKinetic?
In a previous role, I was the North West Volunteer Centres Representative for NCVO and had a demonstration of the Volunteer Kinetic software when the Volunteer Centre network was looking at alternative brokering solutions. It was a couple of years later when working with Warrington and Halton NHS Trust that I saw the opportunity for TeamKinetic to provide its software benefits for the organisation, so I got in touch.
Can you tell me about the kind of opportunities you have available to volunteers?
Currently, we have 32 different opportunities for volunteers to get involved with. Both clinical and non-clinical. Some of these roles are more traditional such as our administrative roles, meeting and greeting and ward buddies, but there are also some unique roles that we have developed specifically for us. We have worked closely with our theatre departments, to develop roles for volunteers to assist our sterile services and provide back-office support to the stores. We also have volunteers in our eye clinic, medical engineering department and accommodation and education department to name a few.
How has TeamKinetic improved the recruitment process for volunteers?
The volunteering portal provided by TeamKinetic has allowed a simple registration process for our new volunteers enabling us to exceed our volunteer recruitment forecast to date. Being able to monitor the recruitment steps and manage the administration of DBS checks has supported a smoother and quicker registration to active rate.
How has TeamKinetic benefited the volunteer?
Our volunteers are aged from 16 to 83. For those confident using technology, it has handed over the responsibility for finding opportunities, logging hours and tracking their progress. This has incentivised them to search for more opportunities that match their interests and suit their needs.
Of course, for those less confident using technology we have spent some time showing them. For others we can imitate them as a user, enabling us to log their hours and track their activities. Provider and Volunteer feedback on the portal is also a useful tool in encouraging others to register and supports the recognition and reward of their individual contribution. We have received some great feedback from our volunteers, telling us how much they like the system and like being able to pick their own opportunities and have the ability to try a variety of roles at the same time. This has been a major draw for some of our younger volunteers who are keen to further their education and careers in the Health and Social Care field.
How has TeamKinetic benefited the opportunity providers?
Using the volunteering portal to list opportunities has made advertising opportunities across lots of social media channels and websites a lot easier. We take a short amount of time to train key staff to upload opportunities themselves if they are confident. This gives them more freedom and access to engaging volunteers who engage in their area of work
For those departments and staff who have time limitations and have a host of other programmes and systems to use, we are able to take the pressure off them and do it on their behalf. Collectively, this reduces the pressure placed on us volunteer managers and also reduces the time it takes for them to advertise opportunities.
What influence has your organisation had in the development of TeamKinetic’s functionality?
Over the last year, we have continually provided feedback on how the system could be developed to support specific aspects of our recruitment and administration processes and give us back valuable time to support our volunteers and staff. As the NHS’ recruitment is a much more stringent process compared to other sectors, such as sport. We needed a greater focus on the internal documentation required, and some of the suggestions we have made have gone into the development of the software.
What advice would you have for other NHS Trusts who need to improve their volunteer management?
For us, TeamKinetic software simplifies the recruitment and management of volunteers, enabling us to advertise opportunities on multiple social media channels and being an easy read platform for our volunteers to get involved in the opportunities available. Engaging more volunteers and providing robust good quality opportunities that support our staff and patient experience enables us to add value and improve our service to those using Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Trust.
Thank you for your time and comments, Claire and Emily.
It is no secret that the National Health Service is planning some big things to celebrate its 70th Birthday. Two leading projects are in the works: The Cultural History of the NHS and The NHS at 70. Collectively, these celebrations coincide with the bigger movement to increase volunteering within the NHS and David Cameron’s Big Society.
The excitement for such celebration and the increasing role of volunteers within hospital trusts made it fitting to share the experience of NHS Pennine Acute Trust developing its voluntary workforce through TeamKinetic’s volunteer management software.
How TeamKinetic Helped the Pennine Acute Trust
A few years ago, NHS Pennine Acute Trust acknowledged its current method of volunteer management, which used a basic version of Microsoft Access, was becoming outdated and limited in its capacity to manage and engage volunteers effectively.
Exploring the options available became the responsibility of Jo McCallister, Volunteer Service Manager at the Trust. Jo recognised that social health volunteering is different to other voluntary sectors. With a much more rigorous recruitment process, including the processing of DBS and additional documentation required due to the nature of work, a system that was capable of supporting this process was essential. Jo also understood to create a strong, reliable and motivated workforce the software needed to provide effective channels of communication.
“Creating strong lines of communication is essential to any engaged team, more so in the voluntary sector as you have to understand what the volunteer is seeking and if you are able to fulfil their desire through an opportunity.”
When searching the different volunteer management software systems available, TeamKinetic was “a standout product, with a fresh and easy to use interface” prompting Jo to explore it further. With key features that surpassed the capabilities of the previous management method, such as logging hours, personalised and group emails, links to social media and the ability to upload additional documentation, the TeamKinetic software was an ideal match for the Trust.
To date, the TeamKinetic volunteer management software has successfully assisted in the recruitment of 550 volunteers, of which 90% are actively volunteering. Jo relates the success of the volunteering programme to everyday improvement the software has made: “Day in, day out, we know what we are doing, what our volunteers are doing and what needs to be done”. Being able to have a structured system in place has made her job and those in her department much easier. It also provides a sense of security and continuity with new or alternative administrators able to pick up the system quickly and easily if required.
The multi-tier system, between volunteers, admins and opportunity providers, benefits all of those involved. By devolving the workload of information input, documentation upload, opportunity posting, the collection of feedback and generating reporting, it reduces the workload on volunteer managers. This saved time can then be used more effectively in building those interpersonal relationships with volunteers. Furthermore, volunteers are able to access and view opportunities online, which appeals to the growing amount of younger volunteers, with a quarter being under the age of 25, and for those older volunteers the system requires little to no training. Commenting on the experience of using TeamKinetic:
“We definitely advocate the benefits of TeamKinetic. As volunteering evolves, so must the system used to manage it. You need a system that is live and up-to-date, which TeamKinetic definitely does.
The team is very receptive to feedback. They listen to your thoughts and suggestions, putting them on your wish list. They then see if it is feasible and would benefit other volunteer managers, and then add it to the software’s RoadMap for future inclusion.
We highly recommend you get one of the team to speak to you about how TeamKinetic can improve your volunteer management, or get in touch with us at NHS Pennine to see how we are benefiting from the software each day.”
To learn more about TeamKinetic’s volunteer management software and how it could help your trust celebrate the NHS 70th Birthday or any other voluntary workforce needs please contact one of our team.
With public health under new budget pressures and no sign of abating cronic health needs the Guardian discussion on the roll of the Voluntary sector offers some interesting arguments.
