Trailblazer Programme
Enhancing innovation and creativity at SJOG Hospitaller Services UK
Type of work: Workshop design and facilitation
Duration: 4 Sessions in 2 years
Team: SJOG Hospitaller Services UK - Opportunities team
My strengths: Workshops design, activity planning, and delivery
Impact: More colleagues aware and involved in innovation processes in the charity.
2 projects piloted and 1 implemented successfully with funding secured.
The Trailblazer Programme aims to develop social innovation trailblazers and help SJOG lead in meeting crucial needs across four social care sectors: homelessness, modern-day slavery and trafficking, disabilities, and older religious communities.
As a member of the Opportunities Team at SJOG, I focus on identifying innovation opportunities. We recognised that the best insights come from our colleagues, including project workers. This led us to establish a program that harnesses their creativity to develop new services for their communities. This program runs twice a year to create and pilot new concepts.
Colleagues presenting their rationale for a creative task of an impossible invention.
Colleagues building a prototype for a creative task of an impossible invention.
Diagram to explain the system design in the ideation phase
Colleagues presenting their rationale for a creative task of an impossible invention.
The Programme
The program is a two-day residential event for participants to engage in design thinking activities, creating innovative solutions to address challenges and enhance service users’ experience in SJOG's services.
As the Opportunities Team, our role is to provide colleagues across the organisation with tools, encouragement, and resources (including funding, time, and space) to develop their ideas and bring their expertise from working in the organisation and their understanding of the people we support.
The program involves the following phases:
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Designing: Participants attend a workshop with structured activities aimed at fostering creativity and generating new ways to support communities across SJOG and/or address social problems.
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Piloting: The best ideas have the opportunity to be piloted with support from the Opportunities Team for idea development and guidance from external experts in academia and industry.
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Measuring: The impact of the pilots will be measured with support from the Opportunities Team.
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Scaling: The Opportunities Team collaborates with the fundraising team to secure funding for scaling successful pilots.
High level framework for Trailblazer Programme. The residential sessions cover the Design phase. Rest of phases over a period of 3-6 months.
Above: challenges for session 1 Below: challenges for sessions 2 and 3
Above: ice breaker creative challenges Below: crazy 8's activity
High level framework for Trailblazer Programme. The residential sessions cover the Design phase. Rest of phases over a period of 3-6 months.
Defining the challenges
The Trailblazers framework follows the design thinking - Double Diamond process. Given SJOG's extensive presence with 500+ employees across the UK, our residential workshops focuses on the defining phase, involving ideation and concept creation. To ensure a productive creative and ideation space, I conducted the discovery phase beforehand to present the challenges to be addresses at the sessions.
Trailblazers 1: Participants submitted their ideas for the application, leading to the definition of challenges based on these themes.
Trailblazers 2 and 3: These sessions took a different approach. I conducted research across the 4 areas supported by SJOG, resulting in the definition of three challenges reflecting the research findings detailed in "A Life Worthwhile - Scoping Future Service Offers Revisited.”
Trailblazers 4: Tailored for the operations team, this session's challenge was defined based on conversations and the Chief Operation Officer's perspective on the things that needed to be addressed within her team.
Successful project
Belong
Culturally aware welcome packs for Ukrainian refugees.
1 - Concept
"Belong" concept was created during the first Trailblazers session.
It was originally a welcome pack for women refugees with essential items and connections to supporting networks.
2 - Piloting big scale
In the process of piloting we got the opportunity to work with Ukrainian refugees through the Homes for Ukraine scheme, as SJOG joined as a recognised provider.
Homes for Ukraine scheme aligned with the Belong’s objectives for refugees and support networks. Some slight changes in the items included in the packs were made to adjust to men and children as well.
3 - Building
Funding was secured to buy all the items and SIM cards were acquired with a partner phone provider.
4 - Details
Belong bags included a 10 step guide on what to do on arrival. It was a gesture of welcome for people who are lost.
5 - Delivery
I coordinated logistics for packing and delivering the bags to guests in their arrival to host’s homes.
6 - Reach
We supported 150 people with Belong.
7 - Impact
We collected feedback through a survey. Ukrainian guests showed appreciation for the Belong bags and highlighted the some of the most useful items like UK current adaptors.
Thoughtful acts of kindness like the Belong bags makes them feel that people are there to support them.
“Thank you very much for the welcome box! It came quickly, and the feeling was a pleasant surprise!” - Anonymous woman with family
Lessons Learnt
Thinking styles
After facilitating the first workshop, I realised the importance of accommodating different thinking styles in the upcoming sessions. As a designer with background in design thinking and service design tools, I was somewhat overconfident and assumed everyone would immediately understand and engage with these methodologies. However, this was not the case. I simplified the methods for the following sessions and closely monitored participant engagement while keeping the workshop's core purpose.
Evolving
The program has seen three iterations since its start due to two key factors. First, the challenge of designing a program that could accommodate the wide range of skills and knowledge levels within the charity. Second, a disparity between the expected outcomes and the actual results achieved.
For example, although the initial session produced positive results, we observed that individual work didn't fully harness our colleagues' creative potential, often resulting in a slower pace. As a result, during the second session, we shifted to group work, which proved more effective in engaging workshop participants.
The next steps
Implementing the concepts generated during the sessions demanded extra effort. Limited resources, both in terms of team capacity and organisation constraints, were challenging. While the concepts were promising, they needed further research and exploration before piloting.
This experience was a valuable lesson from a strategic and implementation perspective, emphasising the importance of resource optimisation. So far, only one concept has been piloted and progressed. Personally, I believe that additional user research and another ideation round could have produced even more innovation.