We’re proud to be a social enterprise. It means we find the best of the private and public sector and bring them both together. However, there are certain times when we have to make a clear choice between the behaviours of the two.
Where the private sector must fend off competition, please stakeholders and keep everything ‘hush hush’, the public sector will regularly be open to scrutiny, be accountable to taxpayers and be honest about their progress, no matter how painful. This is so that insight can be gained and improvements can be made. This is why Offploy believes that transparency is key and holds it as one of our core values.
We believe transparency should be practised at all levels of our organisation, from how we report to our commissioners, to how we advise our candidates. It is not always going to be comfortable but as a community organisation we will rely on the support of others around us to deliver the best service possible.
Below we go through what transparency means for our commissioners, colleagues and candidates.
Commissioners
It means we will give you everything you need to know about our service, right down to the bare bones. We will offer unfettered access to our processes and, where GDPR allows, to our data.
We will tell you when we’re struggling and we will ask for help. This might be on performance, our relationship with your team, or other projects where we might be able to gain your advice and support.
We ask that our commissioners are transparent with us. If we could be doing something better it would help us to know sooner rather than later. Sometimes monthly management meetings are too far away and the problem has either gone undiscovered or got worse. Please tell us on the spot where possible so challenges in their infancy can be met with solutions.
We have great, honest and transparent relationships with all of our commissioners. We respect the bare honesty and enjoy feedback being a two-way street that is respected and reciprocated by both parties. We are confident this makes for a stronger service, with more people supported to a higher quality and a reduction in crime.
Colleagues
It can be daunting being honest with your employer about feelings of discomfort in the service. The truth about Offploy is that we are still learning and want to improve. Whilst we try and anticipate every challenge, for the most part we assume everything is going well until told otherwise and rely heavily on our colleagues who live our service to tell us when something could be improved. We will listen to you and do what it takes to alleviate any concerns you have. This value goes hand in hand with our ‘care enough to confront’ value.
This doesn’t just go for your work life though. If you need to talk about something in your home life, we are here to listen and support. You would not believe the lengths we have gone to support our people dealing with their own challenges at home. The work/life balance is slowly becoming a ‘blend’ in this society and a happy colleague at home is a happy colleague at work. Please talk to us; we will do all we can to support you.
Candidates
Candidates are Offploy’s entire reason for being. We want to support as many people with criminal convictions as possible and to the highest of standards. We want everyone to get another chance at turning their back on crime and contributing to society.
We are very much an employment support service, and we are not specialists with drugs, health or accommodation. We will be honest with our candidates coming into this service about this support and will rely on specialist partners to offer the right help.
We will also let candidates know why we are collecting their information, what we will do with it, who will have access to it, and what data can be requested to be removed by them. It is not always straightforward as we are gathering data for statutory bodies but we will always be transparent in the process of understanding this. Offploy is a registered member of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ZA318087).
We will not always have all the answers; this is one limitation we had to come to terms with very quickly in our early days. However, we will support you in finding the answers using our network of advisors.
Overall
We are proud of what we have learnt and achieved in our four years of service, but we recognise we still have a long way to go until we’re a sector leader in transparency. If you have any thoughts on how we could improve our transparency, please email us on website@offploy.org. You can read more about our other values here.