YMCA NSW
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YMCA NSW, also known as “the Y”, is part of the oldest and largest youth organisation in the world.
In 2017, the Y commenced an annual Engagement Survey program with Voice Project. The program followed a difficult period for The Y, who were subject to the Royal Commission inquiry into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Following this period, the Y implemented significant changes to the company values, strategy, systems and processes to ensure the safeguarding of children was at the heart of everything they do.
Voice Project worked closely with the Y to design a staff engagement survey that enabled their Executive to annually assess their performance against the new standards set and to compare their results to other Community and Recreational Services organisations. This included tailoring questions to assess the effectiveness of their child safeguarding practices. Voice Project also implemented a unique approach of SMS survey invitations as a strategy to drive participation in a workforce where two out of three staff members were casual workers, who typically choose not to engage in staff surveys.
Despite the SMS invitations and best practice pre-survey communications, the first survey in 2017 only achieved a response rate of 36% (higher than average for casual workforces, but lower than our target). This was mainly attributed to staff scepticism and also a lengthy survey which resulted in a frustrating experience when completing via mobile phone. The results of the survey showed that staff were satisfied with their current direction around safeguarding children, but that much more work was needed to further improve processes, technology and career opportunities for staff. With Voice Project’s support, The Y committed to making improvements across these three priority areas.
The following year, Voice Project redesigned their survey from 100 questions down to 40. This saw the response rate increase to 56%, with a spike in the number of mobile completions. But the more impressive increases related to improvements in their identified priority areas, leading to their selection as a finalist in the 2018 Voice Project Change Challenge Awards. With their program now embedded they continue to improve response rates (63% in 2019), maintain their positive results in relation to child safeguarding and make improvements to their identified priority areas.
