Cost effective, team-wide training to enable extraordinary social efforts
Founded in 1966, Shelter is the housing and homelessness charity; campaigning for homes as a human right, and for better policies and practices to improve the lives of homeless and vulnerably housed people. And with over 115,000 children homeless in the UK today — some living in damp storage containers, badly converted office blocks and chaotic B&Bs — there is much to be done.
We're privileged to practically support the creative, campaign and digital teams at the charity; helping to build the skills needed to achieve their extraordinary ends on a daily basis — from equipping managers with the skills to lead time-poor and distributed teams, to using more inclusive tools for idea generation and campaign development.
At the heart of the partnership
Team-wide access to our learning platform offers everyone equal, unlimited, individual access to live training, self-directed resources and micro-learning courses. People pick the topics and skills that fit their goals and diaries.
At the point of promotion, managers in the department are offered places in our Open Manager Cohorts, providing them with a timely and social space to practice and sharpen their people-management skills.
Bitesize training workshops are delivered directly into the team around timely areas of focus, driven by real-time challenges and opportunities. Most recently, these have focused on ways to better give and receive feedback in the team, and digital storytelling skills.
Personal learning pathways, nudges and resource curation supported by the team enables key platform content to be 'surfaced' at key points throughout the year. This might be quieter moments in the campaign cycle, the completion of probation periods, or (for managers) linked into performance reviews and career conversations.
Illustration by Yann Le Bec
Partnership impact
• 95% of team members engaging with platform content more than 3 times a month.
• 100% team attendance at internal workshops delivered.
• 100% of internal workshop participants responding 'Yes, Definitely' to the question 'Have you learned relevant new skills you can now apply within your teams?'
• 100% of managers participating in Open Manager Cohorts answering ’Yes, Definitely’ to the question 'Would you recommend the programme to other managers within the department?'
"The YCN resources, courses and community have been so helpful to all I've worked on since I joined the team. I love how new topics are continually added and how my feedback has shaped the programme."
Through cost effective and collaborative cross-organisational cohorts, department heads and newly promoted managers at Shelter have been equipped with positive, purposeful and proven approaches to managing their teams in ever-busy and distributed times. From establishing cultures of continual feedback, to taking more of a coaching approach; connecting work into wider Shelter goals, to bringing inclusion to remote teams — all has been experimented with in relation to real individual and collective challenges.
For someone at risk of homelessness, the expert support and advice provided by Shelter can be the difference between finding emergency accommodation or spending a night in their car. In the UK tonight, families will sleep on the sofas of friends and families with no permanent place to call home. Some of us will spend the night in freezing cars, damp tents and dirty doorways. The Shelter message is loud and clear. These are not homes, and we must act now.