How teams from Digital, GIS and Innovation redeployed to support our Covid-19 response

It was about one week into lockdown when I jumped on a call to discuss how the innovation team could support our Covid response in the UK. The organisation was waking up to a global emergency like none we had ever responded to before. For our UK Operations this wasn’t an emergency like localised flooding or a gas leak where we could redeploy volunteers and supplies from other area’s if needed. This impacted the entire country, our staff, volunteers and service users. Then throw into the mix 4,000 staff members suddenly working from home and the need to adapt our usual services as well as developing new one’s simultaneously. We truly were in unprecedented times.

National Volunteer Scrum Team

Our first request was to set up a National Volunteer scrum team, which Alice, Monica and I established. Monica talks about how we did this and why in her blog. It’s important to point out that the scrum team wouldn’t have been successful if it weren’t for two other groups we worked in partnership with: the UK Oversight Group and the Advisory Group.

The UK Oversight Group was made up of UK Operations Directors and Heads of Department from all services and across devolved nations (vital as laws and guidance differed in each nation). We had a daily stand up at 8.30 hours every day to go through the backlog of requests so they could be prioritised or further questions could be asked. This agile approach was a new way of working for our organisation and it took a few weeks to get into the swing of things. But we had a fantastic chair in Matthew (Director of Crisis Response & Community Resilience) who was a constant champion of this new way of working as well as being open, clear and honest in his communication.

The Advisory Group was made up of Directors from communications, data, volunteering and project managers. We met every morning at 09.00 hours to discuss which requests would be taken forward and the impact that had on media, data, platforms and volunteering legalities.

Once the initial surge had passed, structures were established, ways of working had become embedded and the requests were picked up directly by our operations teams. This was a good moment as we had brought teams together around problems, working in agile ways and now they were doing this independently of our team.

Martin, British Red Cross volunteers and FareShare, working together to deliver palettes of food over 13 weeks of the pandemic. The team distributed 141,000kg of food (this relates to over 330,000 meals) through 20 network organisations, reaching 319 Food Banks. An example of a request for support which came through our National Volunteer Scrum team.

Tactical Cells

It quickly became clear that we needed a standard national approach to meet people’s needs in response to Covid-19. Whether this involved deciding on the types of food parcels we distributed, how we collected money to shop for those self isolating or which volunteers had the right checks to deliver certain medications. We divided the UK into eight regions in order to organise how we responded to requests for support. We traditionally work in service lines which includes Independent Living, Emergency Response, Crisis Response, Refugee Services, Mobility Aids and Red Cross Training. For COVID-19, our service lines combined forces and worked as eight regional teams in what we called ‘tactical cells’. The new ‘tactical cell’ teams were upskilled on tools and processes for volunteer deployment, capturing data and managing requests for support in their region.

This was the first time cross departmental teams and services had worked together around a problem for an extended period of time. Emily a Senior Emergency Officer reflected:

“Previously, we just had frequent long meetings with other services before covid19 hit. With the tactical cells, we were able to decide on donations and where best to help efficiently as possible. It created a space for us to work together in a way that we weren’t able to before. It broke down barriers for us.”

Afsa, Ainsley, Aaron and Lucas who were redeployed from our innovation hub, digital transformation and Information Technology team did an incredible job developing guidance for the ‘tactical cells’ in under two weeks (it truly deserves a blog in it’s own right!). The guidance and processes are being continuously iterated upon based on feedback from the ‘tactical cells’. As with the Volunteer Scrum this is now run and owned by a UK Operations change team.

Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership (VCSEP)

One of the other areas of our Covid-19 response which rapidly developed in March was our work with the VCSEP. Robyn explains what it is and how it came together during the pandemic in her blog. Similar to our ‘tactical cells’, all 11 members of the VCSEP such as Victim Support, Muslim Charities Forum and British Red Cross came together to form ‘multiagency cells’ across the UK. This created a process for all voluntary organisations to pool resources and support each other. For example, if Red Cross did not have expertise in a request that had come to them — they would pass it to the VCSEP ‘multiagency cell’ where a partner organisation, for example, Victim Support might be able to provide support. This meant that those best placed to meet a request, responded, be it organisations with expert knowledge or resources that could help, fast. Jon, Director for Independent Living and Crisis Response in London explained the importance of this partnership and how it worked at a ‘tactical cell’ level:

‘For example, national partnerships which the VCSEP helped to grow at a local level meant that in London over Easter weekend, immediate food drop-offs were possible to support 31 foodbanks in 9 London boroughs over a two day period. British Red Cross received the request for help from colleagues at London Plus and the Greater London Authority (GLA) and using funding from City Bridge Trust and the GLA alongside our corporate partnership with Tesco we set aside 40,000 food items across 22 store locations. British Red Cross lacked the volunteer capacity to deliver this on our own so we called on RE:ACT to help with the task. Without this partnership work we would’ve been unable to meet the need in time and food banks would have had to close.’

Mieka, Jo, Sarah, Alex, Paul and David from our Strategy, Digital Transformation, Innovation Hub and Geographical Information Systems teams came together to design and build how people could request support from VCSEP. You can learn more about this from Paul’s blog. With all areas of our Covid-19 response it was clear that those used to working in agile ways and with a background in product or service design were key skills when developing new or current services.

Support Line

Many of our UK services are referral based working with partners, trusts and local authorities. However there was a clear need to support individual requests for food, medicine or emotional well-being during Covid-19. Harry, Joe and Ross from the innovation Hub and technology department were part of the team that set up the support line, which was staffed by our incredible volunteers. Again this deserves a blog in it’s own right and you can read about Harry’s learning’s setting up a manual for volunteers.

The Support Line is still running and you can learn more about what support it can provide or how to get help on our website.

Hardship Fund

It was clear from the beginning of the pandemic that this would have a catastrophic effect on people’s finances, particularly those already on the breadline. Vicky from Digital Transformation and Ben our Technology Innovation Lead worked on a team exploring ways that we could get cash to those who needed it most. We did this through working with partner organisations who had relationships with those who were most vulnerable. One individual who received cash reflected:

“It was a nightmare of a time. Before the Red Cross, I think I was suicidal. I wanted to stick around for my kids”.

Alex, Director of Refugee services explains how the fund works and discuss’ our partnership with Aviva.

Solving problems on the fly

The services, teams and examples so far are one’s that can be neatly packaged up, have a clear narrative or do what it says on the tin. However, there were so many things that needed to be fixed or adapted, which arose on a daily basis because of our evolving response to the pandemic. Such as the new services and teams I have described above, which needed to connect to our current services, structures and ways of working.

When a new problem was identified the innovation, digital and data team would quickly jump on a call, hash out a plan and pull together a bunch of experts from across the organisation to fix these issues. These ranged from redesigning the journey when you landed on our website and were searching for support around Covid-19 to designing end to end data flows for individual requests for support. These were not mandated from top down and the majority of the time senior leadership had little or no knowledge of it. This is because the teams closest to the problem or who understood it best felt empowered to fix the issue and there simply wasn’t time for it to go up and down the chain. Earlier this year our CEO Mike encouraged the organisation “to seek forgiveness, not permission” and that was certainly felt during our response.

Reflections and learnings

Any service developed rapidly during an unprecedented global pandemic will be far from perfect. Yes there was duplication of work, we didn’t get the make-up of teams right at the beginning and at one point I was working so fast that when I stepped back, I realised I had been focusing on the wrong problem for weeks. That was a head in my hands moment and the next day I had to refocus and move the volunteer scrum team in a different direction.

But with a new 2020 strategy that has being human centered at its heart, this pandemic did more culturally to move the organisation in that direction than 5 years of policy or structural change could ever have achieved. People from across our organisation, with different expertise were brought together virtually around problems. We felt empowered, worked in agile ways and for the most part had clear outcomes.

There have been and will continue to be terrible long term effects across the globe from Covid-19. But with every rainbow drawing, community whatsapp group and Sir Captain Tom it showed me the incredible resilience within UK communities. It was clear that the way we support them in future will need to change and with our new strategy to put people at the heart of what we do, I know that Covid-19 contributed significantly in our cultural shift towards this.

Jess heads up the Innovation Hub at British Red Cross