Outcare

Working directly across all levels of the organisation and reporting directly to CEO Paul McMullan on a monthly basis we advised on a range of issues and initiatives including:

• Ongoing improvements in stakeholder communication
• Business development opportunities
• Bid strategies
• Ongoing strategic planning
• Organisational structure development
• Assisting in the formation of an in-house comms unit

Giles Dutfield from Push Consulting was also invited to co-present with CEO Paul McMullan at the National Reducing Re-offending Conference in Sydney in 2016 to share best practice with sector peers from across Australia and New Zealand.

Traditional NFP funding is often delivered on a per-program basis for a range of agencies and partnerships to suit multiple correlates of client need. This often results in a confusing web of programs and services, each with differing target audiences, benefits and eligibility criteria.

Telephone interviews with key management and program leaders, coupled with input from service users and client-facing staff across the operation enabled us to build a comprehensive map of the existing service portfolio.

Based on our experience in consolidating and simplifying complex service structures with UK clients such as Victim Support and the UK's NHS/PHE Gateways project we were able to greatly simplify Outcare's client offering into succinct needs-driven entry points.

This had several key benefits:

1. Users could search for support more effectively online. A pull down menu of familiar issues on the new website would present familiar issues such as; AOD, family domestic violence and homelessness rather that scrolling through a list of programs, looking for relevant services.
2. The search result generated not only a list of services provided but also listed the individually funded programs that contained those services. Users were able to identify programs to which they were most eligible which, in turn, managed expectations in a far more efficient and supportive manner.
3. The agility of this system allows for both programs and services to be linked and changed dynamically.
4. This approach vastly reduced the amount of enquiry time and printed communication material which delivered operational savings.

The freedom of open space workshops is ideal to capture…

… the combined views of the whole organisation.

With 40% of Outcares business due for tender within the following 12 months it was vital to ensure that the new brand was owned by all of the staff set against this period of uncertainty.

An voluntary Open Space worksup with 75% of the staff in attendances clearly identified the values and themes that resonated most strongly with the staff. Key points were:

• Agreement to realign Outcare's new brand with the needs of both internal and external stakeholders
• An evolution in both structure and culture to ensure that Outcare's tone and actions, from it's organisational stance through to staff behaviours, accurately reflected the new brand's vision and values.

"Push Consulting recognised early on in our engagement that unless we captured staff input/views and they were given a context and understanding for the organisational change, they would be resistant and this would become a major obstacle. Having an Open Space event where the whole staff group had their say about the good, bad and all, of Outcare, enabled me as CEO to listen to them, give a message of how important their engagement is/was, and then drive the necessary changes through an agenda which they co-contributed."

Paul McMullan. CEO, Outcare.

The chosen logo intertwines the O and C to make a heart shape, the universally accepted symbol of care and nurturing. The C represents the break in the cycle of reoffending which Outcare seek to create. Finally the colours themselves have meaning; the oranges take their cue from the indigenous colour palette of the first Australians whilst the blue reflects the corporate and enterprise driven nature of the organisation.

Two positioning statements were adopted, one for internal stakeholder use, a second for external usage:

1. Think like a business, act like a charity. This speaks to values such as agility, enterprise and innovation and their part in Outcare's drive to offer value and build independent financial sustainability.
2. We know resettlement inside out. This references Outcare's ability to work with offenders along all touch-points of their journey from arrest, sentencing, incarceration and release.

Photography

From early consultation it was identified that stock images would alienate much of Outcare's target audiences. Based on our previous successes in communication with drug & alcohol, domestic violence and ex-offender subjects in the UK and Australasia we decided to feature service users through documentary photography to ensure that images and stories were perceived as authentic by both staff and service users alike.

Both staff and clients were photographed, documentary-style, in their homes, at case worker meetings and at the visitor centres Outcare operated from. We worked alongside the client to ensure that all permissions paperwork was compliant with relevant government agency standards.

This resulted in an open and honest toolkit of images, featuring, wherever possible, real staff dealing with real clients to add honesty and openness to the brand.

Textual content

Copywriting support ensured that content for programs and services was communicated effectively both to the client and funding stakeholders and SEO optimised without compromising readability to a predominantly Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (CALD) audience.