What is essential? Civil Society reflects on the important things out of Covid-19
A view from our cohort of Digital Fund grantholders
This month’s theme: what is essential?
In a few months, everything in our sector and the world changed. Out of the many questions being asked, one question has stood out to me to be at the core of it all, and that is ‘What is essential’?
Suddenly, with so much of our services, choices, options and ways of living stripped back, it can be quite dizzying and there has been a lot of re-orienting both to the new conditions (most obviously: we can’t meet each other face to face or work together in person!) but also the new perspective that this pandemic has afforded us. Julie Bishop from Law Centres Network put it as:
“[the pandemic] has brought what is essential into sharp focus.”
Many people have been touched by loss of loved ones, loss of income, loss of community and loss of security. It is first and foremost a tragic and devastating global event, and one that is going to take a long time to adapt to and recover from. This recent report by Alex Evans and David Stevens refer to the pandemic as the ‘long crisis’ which I think is a good frame.
However, many people, services and charities have reported that the massive rewiring of how we do day-to-day life, accelerated timelines and drastic prioritisation has brought a lot of things into perspective and allowed developments that were scheduled to take months to happen in weeks.
What is essential in the services our grantholders are providing? What is essential to be able to keep going? What are charities leaving behind? What are the skills and practices they had already in place that were essential in being able to respond to this crisis? What might be essential in the coming months? These are some of the questions we asked grantholders in their monthly reflection last month, and you will hear a synthesis of the answers we received across 20 of our organisations.
The Digital Fund monthly sensemaking
Each month, Digital Fund grantholders engage in a process of reflection, learning and insight around a particular theme. For May, the theme has been “What is essential?” and has included a webinar panel discussion, individual conversations and written reflections prompted by a survey for grantholders.
You can find the full recording for this month’s panel discussion on the theme of ‘What is essential’ below. Our panellists this month came from the support team, and we had an all-star panel with at least one person from each support organisation:
- Suraj Vadgama (from CAST)
- Charne Tromp (from CAST)
- Cat Ainsworth (from DOTPROJECT)
- Kirsty Cameron (from DOTPROJECT)
- Nick Stanhope (from Shift Design)
Many people were in touch to say this had been their favourite webinar yet. It was really interesting to have these five sector experts who are supporting so many different organisations within (and outside of) our grantholder cohort and so bring a real sense of the patterns across civil society.
I included this now well-known quote from the amazing Arundhati Roy about the pandemic as a portal, asking panellists “what is the light luggage you are walking through the portal and what are you leaving behind?” There were some tough questions and I really recommend watching the ~1 hour recording because the thoughtful and articulate answers are well worth it!
As well as talking about what they have seen as most essential with the grantholders they have been working with, many of the reflections are also at the level of civil society, funding, the charity sector and the things the pandemic has revealed to be essential that we couldn’t see before, and what it’s revealed to be essential but is missing.
Sensemaking for this month
These two quotes summed up a lot of what I saw across the cohort:
“Long and intense working days, periods of rapid internal change (which is inspiring) together with frustration that we could do more if funding was available”
— Lucy from Grandparents Plus.
“There is a sense of urgency because we don’t know what tomorrow holds now. It must be done. Particularly for client facing charities who feel a sense of responsibility to be with their community and support them through this.”
— Julie from Law Centres Network
Below you can find a high level synthesis of the themes and insights from across the cohort.
Charities are moving at pace to support users above all else
Consistently across the cohort words like “focused”, “driven”, “increased sense of responsibility”, “fast pace of working” were used to describe what the feeling of work was right now. Many spoke about the increased pace compressing timelines so delivery pipelines were faster than ever seen before.
Day to day work feels very focussed and delivery driven — examples of this are from getting all frontline staff onto digital platforms and with the right confidence levels to commence supporting young people in this way (providing a ‘pop-up’ digital advice line; creating staff and young people guidance very quickly with experts from safeguarding, information governance, digital, quality practice — signing off at a pace never known before).
Digital tools and online collaboration is absolutely essential
Unsurprisingly, almost all grantholders referenced how a range of digital tools covering a constant communication and information sharing function has been absolutely essential. At its core, we’re told “good broadband and a decent digital device are vital to making it happen” from Julie of Law Centres Network. Then, from across the cohort, we heard these tools referenced:
- Slack for chit chat through the day
- Microsoft Teams to keep everyone in touch
- Google Meet for video calls
- Can’t do without… Zoom for video calls
- Shared Google Docs for collaboration
- Sharepoint for shared folders
- Monday.com for task management and user stories
Essentially: a chat function, a video call function, a shared information storage system, and in fewer cases, project management software. In organisations where not everybody has access to a device, this is acutely felt. Chris from With You told us that they “Wished there had been laptops to equip frontline staff” — and this tech disparity is clearly exacerbated in the pandemic.
Good collaboration practices and ways of working have allowed streamline processes and adaptation
Good collaboration skills to accompany these digital tools is absolutely essential. More than half of grantholders referenced ‘good communication’ as being essential in some way, both within teams, and with beneficiaries and the public. Others mentioned ‘good rhythms’ especially in a time where a lot of routines and normal working patterns have been disrupted.
For some, existing practices and patterns that have been repeated and learned to form habits have been essential to keep everything going. Megan from NCVO described how existing processes allowed them to save time and adapt:
“Coordination and decision making processes allowed us to make quick decisions and move into 5-day rolling crisis planning mode without having to create new processes or structures.”
For others, the crisis is an opportunity to add new practices that weren’t being used consistently before: “We are using the crisis to more quickly introduce agile ceremonies (planning, daily stand ups, reviews) which were used sporadically but not consistently” (Francis from Samaritans). There are also new practices emerging such as “regular videos posted from CEO to inform and reassure people” as organisations realise that employees may have new needs for communication and transparency in these uncertain and stressful times.
A few grantholders talked about how their ways of working have had to change beyond simply ‘going virtual’ — e.g. large group work had to change to small group work as “large group codesign and collaboration isn’t possible” (Chris from With You).
Charities are putting their staff well-being at the centre, but many are needing a break
What is absolutely clear is that staff well-being is high up on the priorities across all of the Digital Fund cohort. This is extremely important given that grantholders also described their days with the following quotes:
“Hectic; challenging; changing; inspiring; strategic; balancing; collaborative and isolated all at the same time.”
“Busier than I would have imagined and more tiring”
“I miss my colleagues and the wellbeing that comes with interaction with others.”
Many acknowledged the added stressors on staff, and at the same time the increased demand on their energy and time to work at pace. Being flexible with staff is important, and also creating new spaces and ways to connect on a human level. Janine from BANES put it as:
“As a leadership team we are sensitive to the sea change this is for the staff and have been mindful of staff wellbeing as we work to develop this new remote working culture. If we don’t look after our staff and ensure that they are able to adapt to this new way of working, they won’t be able to engage in the fast paced change we need to see right now.”
For Family Lives, they say “we are very much a charity based around relationships and putting people first, I’m really proud that we’ve been doing that not only for our service users, but for our staff and volunteers too.”
Now that everything is done online, ways for employees to connect, socialise and celebrate wins is essential too. Elisabeth at Parkinson’s UK talked about the “need for social time” and the need to do “a quiz or just a drink together to celebrate what we’ve done.”
Pacing themselves — taking time for strategic thinking
Amidst the chaos it has been important to take breathers and reflect. When the external environment changes at breakneck speed it can be tempting to move into a reactive way of operating and trying to innovate in numerous directions without a clear strategy.
Some grantholders spoke about finding it valuable to ‘take a breath’ — and “step back and evaluate where we were and the steps we needed to take to innovate and change effectively.” For example, BANES has been using the tools of responsible innovation such as consequence scanning; checking the assumptions they were making in the changes they were looking to implement. This has ensured that the changes they are making are beneficial to their carers, have the best chances of success, and will be with them for the long term.
Charlotte at Carefree also reflected on how space and time had been absolutely essential to process and really reflect and interrogate new ideas that have emerged. She reflected on the ease with which we forget all of the ‘in between’ moments we have lost — like taking transport on the way to work in the morning. At Children’s Society, developing a plan to support their services and the different aspects of the organisation to re-mobilise has been essential.
Summing up
“We are clear that we will never go back to ‘business as usual’. — Lucy from Children’s Society
In a few months, the whole sector changed. Grantholders have been adapting, pivoting, accelerating, pausing, reflecting and putting their beneficiaries and the well-being of their staff at the centre. Coming out of the first 3 months of lockdown, it is clear that the second 3 months will require pacing themselves, relying on digital tools, old established and new adaptive rhythms and practices, but also support and funding from places that are able to provide those things; they can stretch to meet many things, but nothing is possible without a source of reliable funding and support.
