TimeBank Case Studies

Personal Development

The Organisation

TimeBank is a national charity inspiring and connecting people to share and give time. Its work falls into three main strands: developing innovative volunteering opportunities; working with charities to make more effective use of volunteers; and helping commercial organisations develop volunteering opportunities for their employees as part of corporate social responsibility programmes. Time Together is TimeBank's refugee mentoring project where volunteer mentors are matched with refugees to help them to achieve their goals in integration, employment and education. Since its inception in 2002 the Time Together programme has been successfully implemented in 24 locations, delivered on the ground by 'franchisee' organisations, each of which has a Project Co-ordinator implementing the Time Together model in their local area.

The Need

TimeBank is keen to ensure that its staff and those of its partner organisations have access to development opportunities. While franchisee organisations employ the Project Coordinators and therefore have responsibility for individual staff training, TimeBank organises a number of workshops throughout the year to share and develop best practice and to build strong support networks between coordinators across the UK. For this particular event, TimeBank wanted to respond to requests for personal development and to provide an opportunity to develop relevant skills for the successful delivery of Time Together. The needs varied from communication, influencing and mediation skills through to project management.

What We Did

Tamsin Alger, Project Manager for Time Together at TimeBank, commissioned Jacqueline Hill and Nick Coombe of J Hill Associates to provide three half-day workshops as part of a two-day national project co-ordinators' conference. Jacqueline and Nick worked with the Time Together central team to develop the agenda and test the design of the sessions. The first workshop helped participants to identify their personal communication and influencing styles and to develop an understanding of how they are perceived by and their impact on others. Participants then explored how their personal styles affected their approach to their work and highlighted some practical actions to achieve the outcomes they were looking for. The second workshop took the idea of personal communication and influencing styles a step further and explored different mediation techniques including how to give, seek and receive feedback effectively and an NLP technique for resolving conflict. The final workshop looked at a typical project management cycle, explored the various components and used the learning about personal styles to help participants improve their approach to management. Each workshop ended with a session where participants identified actions they would take to put the learning into practice back in the workplace.

Benefits

By jointly analysing the development needs of the Project Co-ordinators and designing the workshops we were able to provide a programme that was relevant to all the participants and one which provided significant personal development over a short period of time. The models gave a common language for the Project Co-ordinators to use when supporting each other and a basis from which to develop their own personal styles and approaches across a range of applications and situations. The participants were able to:

Grow comfortable with their own personal communication style and have awareness of how this affects others
Increase their confidence in managing relationships at work
Develop a greater ability to prioritise tasks at work and establish boundaries thereby positively impacting their own personal wellbeing
Develop confidence in having performance-based conversations with others
Gain skills and confidence to ask for feedback
Develop a better understanding of how to manage a project and where the pitfalls may occur
Gain more confidence in managing others through the duration of a project
Acquire some principles of project management that can be used in a variety of situations in their work with Time Together

The residential conference allowed the facilitators to offer coaching sessions in their 'free' time for TimeBank staff, which the individuals involved found very helpful. The consultants also helped the Time Together team to identify longer term success criteria against which the workshops can be measured in 3-6 months time. In particular it is hoped that participants will have used the skills learned to resolve difficult situations with others and develop others' skills in resolving their own situations.

Tamsin Alger, commented "The national workshops were an opportunity for us to bring together coordinators from across the country to develop their personal and professional skills and to strengthen existing support networks, all of which contributed to developing best practice in the delivery of Time Together nationally. J Hill Associates worked closely with us from the beginning in designing a tailor-made series of workshops that made the most of their expertise and applied it to our specific situation. We were impressed by the professionalism, commitment and enthusiasm of both Nick and Jacqueline when designing the workshops and over the two days in which they were delivered. We had very positive feedback from coordinators who found the workshops useful and engaging. We look forward to continuing to work with J Hill Associates in the future."

Comments from participants

Participant feedback included the following:

"Excellent, very relevant and useful"
"The sessions were very useful and well-organised and the facilitators were well-informed and they will develop my skills"
"Very relevant and well-facilitated"
"The colour coding of different personalities helped me to deal with a difficult situation"
"Was good to have workshops on personal development as we don't necessarily take time to do these things otherwise"
"I will think more about giving feedback and mediation, and not be afraid to do so"
"Management cycle will be implemented and planning is very useful to achieve targets"
"Project management was very useful for my future planning of events and time management. The usefulness of prioritising"

Strategic Planning at TimeBank

The Organisation

The Need

TimeBank grew out of an initiative to raise awareness of volunteering across the UK. Since its inception in 1999 it had developed from a single campaign organisation into one that not only was involved in awareness raising but also in proactively developing innovative volunteering projects with government, NGOs and commercial organisations. The senior management team wanted to consolidate the advances TimeBank had made and to take it to the next stage of its development, enabling it to be clearer about its ambitions, take greater control of its own destiny and become more independent.

What We Did

J Hill Associates was commissioned by TimeBank via Community Action Network (CAN). As part of its Breakthrough programme, CAN had worked with TimeBank to develop a business plan outlining financial growth plans over the coming 3 years and to secure funding for organisational development from Permira, an investment bank. The next step was to develop a strategy to achieve the planned growth whilst at the same time developing an exciting vision for the TimeBank of 2010. Jacqueline worked with the management team to develop a vision of TimeBank 'beyond the numbers' i.e. how the organisation would look and feel and what it would be like to be involved. They also looked externally at the likely changes to affect TimeBank in the coming years and the stakeholder relationships that would need to be developed. These inputs enabled the management team to develop the key themes for its future work and to identify strategic goals for each area year-on-year to 2010. At each key stage meetings were held with staff and trustees to elicit their views and generate engagement and excitement for the future vision of TimeBank. One such meeting looked at current TimeBank projects and how they contribute to the strategic goals. This provided staff with a sense of a connection to the past coupled with a stake in the future and a clear understanding of where new developments were needed to achieve Vision 2010. Another workshop elicited staff views on what had to change internally in order for TimeBank to achieve its strategic goals e.g. work processes, people management, leadership, culture, reward and recognition, structure, roles and skills. By the end of the strategic planning stage, TimeBank was in a position to connect its strategy back to its financial plans and to develop operational plans to make it a reality.

Benefits

TimeBank now has clarity about its future and is in a position to be more in control of its own destiny and independence.
The process built on the existing strengths and successes of TimeBank, creating a sense of excitement for and confidence in the future.
An aspirational vision was backed by financial and practical operational plans.
An overall view of the process and a staged approach enabled TimeBank to be clear about their achievements, the next steps and to manage the process according to their own needs and timescales.
The views of employees and trustees were taken into account generating a sense of ownership and excitement in the strategy.
The management team have acquired strategic planning skills and experience.

Moira Swinbank, Chief Executive commented, "The biggest lesson so far is not to be afraid to strip back to basics and uncover what we are really about."

Timebank can be found at: www.timebank.org.uk

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