“When Covid -19 hit, it gave us a real opportunity to make some really quick responsive changes within Apricot. We made decisions which would normally have taken quite a bit longer to implement, depending on where they fitted within our overall strategy.” Explains Louise Kermode, Head of Services.
“One of the first things we did was to alter some of the forms we used daily, such as our duty and intake form. This helped us manage the way we processed referrals in response to the restrictions put in place by COVID-19. We altered the forms so we could automatically send people through to our telephone support, or to our “lunch and door – step chats” delivery service, which enables us to provide a check-in service to those most vulnerable.
“By making these changes, we were not only easily able to track who came to us post Covid-19, but by adding a simple tick box, we could see whether the current situation was impacting on their mental health, enabling us to do some research on the effects of Covid-19 and mental health. These changes also allowed us to respond quickly to immediate needs.”
The ability to run reports at short notice and avoid manual data crunching was crucial for Jami to understand how their additional services were supporting their clients.
“We would usually report on a bi-monthly basis to our board,” Louise explains.“There was a real need during this crisis to live track our activities and their results by running reports more regularly, including creating responsive dashboards, which the team at Gallery were really helpful in setting up. These dashboards allowed the CEO to gain insight about what was happening and be able to keep the wider Jewish community informed in his daily conversations with them.
“Another thing that we found surprisingly easy to track and quickly pull a report on within Apricot was the proportion of telephone support being delivered by our volunteers. Volunteering at the moment is huge, and it was really important that we could show the percentage of our support being delivered by volunteers.”
Apricot’s quick reporting functionality has proved beneficial for Jami when responding to funding applications during the crisis.
“Being able to pull this live data considerably aided our response to Covid-19 funding applications. Normally, our applications have a long lead time and take quite a lot of time to prepare; however, being able to provide evidence in a short time frame for our fundraising marketing team has been really important in this situation. We’ve been so impressed with how quickly we have been able to gather this information. We are even considering giving that team access to certain dashboards and reports going forward, changing the way we work longer term.”
Another advantage of Apricot that was key during this time, was the ability to provide specific permission sets to different staff teams, as Louise outlines how Jami revisited their organisational structure during the pandemic.
“The current situation has involved a lot of redeployment of staff, and through the system I’ve being able to provide them with the right permissions to access what they need to see, in order to confidently perform their newly redeployed roles.”
Jami have even started to use Apricot to improve internal communication, enabling the wider team to engage and understand the positive impact their work is having within the community.
“One key takeaway from using Apricot’s sophisticated reporting was the ability to show staff members the volume of work they have been able to achieve during this crisis.” Louise explains.
“Our team have had to make considerable changes to the way they work, amid the intense pressure and demand on their time. The ability to easily inform staff about the number of hours they have given to the support services we’ve offered has been really helpful in terms of motivating them during such an uncertain time, especially as your normal working practices are so up in the air and you don’t feel like you’ve been able to deliver the number of services you previously were able to.”
Jami did an assessment within Apricot, comparing the level of support provided pre and post Covid-19 with surprising results.
“Our telephone support replaced the majority of our 1-1 contact support; and we were able to evidence that over a 6-week period we had a 55% increase in hours of support delivered and a 29% increase in the number of people we are supporting. Being able to deliver figures like that is not only important for funding applications and staff motivation, but also for our social media and marketing campaigns, to demonstrate the volume of the work we are doing, which is really positive. Using Apricot as a way of internal communication is as important as what we communicate externally.”
Louise concludes. “I certainly feel this situation has allowed us to try new ways of working within Apricot that we hadn’t tried before. There’s been a bit more bravery around using the systems – rather than thinking about it too much I’ve just gone ahead and tried it, with remarkable results.”