10 January 2012
Roots HR CIC Announces Winners of Free Consultancy Services Offer
Roots Human Resources CIC has announced the successful applicants for its two free 12-month human resources subscriptions offer, which was launched on Social Enterprise Day 2011. Now in its second year, this offer was launched again following the success of the 2011 subscriptions. The winning organisations were picked from charities and social enterprises across the UK that met specific criteria, including number of employees and percentage of income derived from trading. The winners receive subscriptions to Roots HR's COMPLY employment law and people management advice service, tailored to meet the unique needs of civil society organisations. The subscriptions will be funded from Roots HR's trading surpluses, as stakeholder consultation revealed that this is how interested parties would most like these to be used.
This year's successful organisations are Shencare Voluntary Transport Ltd and ChangeKitchen CIC.
Shencare Voluntary Transport – Shencare is a community transport organisation providing escorted wheelchair accessible passenger transport in a fleet of 10 minibuses for elderly and vulnerable individuals, who otherwise would be at risk of social isolation. Shencare have established partnerships with Midland Mencap and Birmingham Volunteer Services to provide work experience opportunities which have subsequently led to paid employment, as well as delivering training for the MiDAS minibus driver's certificate.
CEO Christopher Busst commented: "In the coming year we hope to continue our journey to becoming more self- sustainable and this will entail taking a more professional approach to fulfilling our contracts and service level agreements and the way in which staff and volunteers are recruited, inducted, trained and self-enabled to be the "front of house" for the charity. This free subscription with Roots HR will undoubtedly help us to achieve our objectives and we really look forward to the partnership."
ChangeKitchen – ChangeKitchen provides high quality vegetarian/vegan catering for events from 10 to 400, with dishes suitable for those from different faiths, those with food allergies or different diets. They achieve this by employing and training people who would otherwise find it difficult to enter the labour market, as well as delivering healthy eating cookery classes to change the way people think about food.
Director Dr Birgit Kehrer commented: "I am delighted to have won this great 1 year's free HR support subscription by Roots HR. I have known Roots HR for a long time and always valued their work greatly. ChangeKitchen will greatly benefit from this by working hard with Roots HR on getting all our policies, work and volunteers contracts and similar documents up to the best possible standards. This will ensure all of our employees and volunteers, in particular all ex service user employees and volunteers, have the best possible framework for working with us."
A team of Roots HR consultants chose these two organisations for the free 12-month subscriptions because of their growth potential and ongoing need for HR support. Chief Executive Jan Golding explains: "We had a great response to this offer and choosing the successful organisations from our shortlist was difficult. We have chosen Shencare Voluntary Transport and ChangeKitchen because we felt they had the most to gain and could maximize the offer to its full potential. However, we are also looking at ways to work with some of the unsuccessful applicants to deliver the project work they need".
Roots HR will monitor the outcomes of these free subscriptions to identify the benefit to the organisations and their service users. The information gained will inform the design of future offers that use Roots HR's trading surpluses.
