Convene sat down with Katie Prowse, Governance and Compliance Manager, Peabody Housing Association, to talk about the many years they’ve used Convene and the features they find useful.
You have had a number of years’ experience of using Convene. Please could you share more about that.
I came from Aldwick housing association which then merged with Catalyst. The system we currently use is the Convene system which was originally implemented at Aldwick. We have been through more than one merger, and we brought Convene with us through this process.
Our Chief Executive at the time was working for Aldwick. He knew and liked Convene and suggested Convene was taken forward to Catalyst. So essentially Catalyst adopted the Aldwick Convene model and we rebranded the system for Catalyst. Peabody also implemented Convene very recently so when we completed the merger, we looked at how to amalgamate the two systems.
Convene was originally implemented by Aldwick’s company secretary at the time. He was looking for a functional solution that was really easy for our members that were not used to having electronic devices to use during Board meetings. The initial appeal for Convene was its front-end user functionality. It allowed people of all levels of tech awareness to access the system easily. We like the fact that it is available through apps which are downloadable to almost every device and it’s extremely easy for people who have only a rudimentary appreciation of technology.
People are all far more technologically astute nowadays but at the time Convene was introduced, paper use was still prevalent, so one of the reasons for implementing a digital solution was to move away from paper-based operations.
We really liked the fact that with Convene you are able to annotate digitally. To be able to write your own notes and to be able to share that information. This definitely appealed to some of our Executive colleagues. We are trying to use that technology in other areas, for example meeting minutes reviews.
We are now using the Review Room function more widely also. We have really embraced that since it allows for full transparency of key documents which is easier for our non-executive directors. For example, we don’t share Sharepoint with our Non-Exec Directors, who are obviously able to access it if they wish to, but it can be a bit more inconvenient because they would need to open it on their own devices, then go through authentication so rather than using it in that way, we use for minutes etc. We set up a Review Room, we give our Non-exec directors time to comment, and it works as an ideal place for them to make neutral comments. It helps to be able to put a time frame on this.
Our Non-Executive directors are busy people, and we don’t want to place undue pressure on them. The time frame makes it possible for us to allocate a specific period and advise our Non-Executive Directors that they have a specific number of days (for example seven days) to be reviewed and add comments etc without constraining them to a 1–2-day response time. It creates a valuable feedback loop and also records when they have viewed the necessary info which allows for greater visibility which is very useful for keeping people on track.
How has Convene addressed any accessibility requirements?
A key focus for us is the equality and diversity agenda and making sure that our organisations are ahead of the curve as far as that is concerned. Our Chief exec is dyslexic and the Convene app works well with the iPad. The iPad reads Convene for you, so functionality wise that works really well for him. To have this level of accessibility is especially beneficial for any employee who has dyslexia but who would rather not declare it publicly. The system essentially manages their situation for them without a need to disclose personal information unless they are happy to do so. It’s a key feature that adds a lot of value.
How has Convene helped as far as paper reduction and ESG goals are concerned?
Covid-19 has done a lot for that! Had Covid-19 not happened, a lot of our Board members would still be requesting paper packs. We feel that we have definitely moved away from a paper-based model. There were exceptionally large Board packs at that stage. Almost all our meetings are online now, and we don’t print anything off anymore.
Which Convene features would you say have been useful?
When we went into lockdown, I was in a project managerial role and not within the Company Secretariat. One of the original heads of Co Sec came to me because one of the biggest challenges for Housing associations is the signing functions of the authorised signatory. There is a wet signature requirement (unless the Land Registry agrees to do everything digitally which we have no authority over,) but for the documents that could be signed digitally, we didn’t have the tool to sign them off for example using DocuSign or similar which presented a challenge. I had used digital sign off functions previously and Convene had at the time brought out some new functionality with signature boxes.
Convene provided us with that functionality, so we now do all our authorised signatory through Convene. Everything that goes through our Exec team that can be digitally signed and now goes through Convene’s Review Rooms for sign off. We have been using this function since the beginning of the lockdown period and it has been especially useful. We also use the Review Room for our Minutes signing. The minutes all go to the Chairs via Review Room, and we have also started doing this for document reviews. We’ve been sending minutes out in advance of meetings so that Board members are able to comment before they go into the main meeting pack. We have been doing that with the Chairs also so that they can review minutes online. The Review Room has been incredibly useful, and we are looking at how we can build upon that in terms of best practice going forward.
The Document Library is another feature that we find useful. We use it in two different ways. We link the Document library to the agenda. Our Executive team were finding it challenging going from the meeting pack to the Document Library if there was a document that they needed to refer to and then back into the meeting pack, all of which broke the smooth flow of meetings. Now we link the Doc Library to the agenda. Our Executive Team can now go into the agenda, click on the links for the document library, access the document and go straight back into the meeting. It has removed the need to come out of the process.
We use it for additional information so for example for information that is important for the agenda but not essential. It could be a report that a Board member could access which would enrich the information contained in a meeting. We also use it for storing records of all our signed minutes and we have a consolidated file for members to access and read if required, plus we have our Board and committee handbook in there which include the guidance notes for members on what their expectations are. We have a Board area with all the relevant privacy settings in place, our subcommittees have their own folders for documentation, and we also have private folders because some of our Executive members like to store documents privately.
I am quite particular about our structures, and we find the administration groups really useful. We have set up our Board and committees as groups and this is broken down into two sections. We have included the standing attendees for individuals who attend the Board and committees all the time but who are not members and then we have a members group as well which makes it easy for us to apply permission to the folder structure in the document library since we no longer need to go into individual folders and remove a document, we simply alter the groups on the system which then updates the file structure, so this has been very beneficial. We track our groups on a document that is held on our drives and we update that to reflect any changes.
How has Convene been received by your users?
With Aldwick, the Board members were able to access Convene using the app or the URL. With new members I’ve been providing them with the app. One of the disadvantages of that is that they can’t print off from the app, and you have to give them the URL. This is a disadvantage since I view that essentially as the back end where our “offline” work is done, and as a result it reduces the breadth of the information that they have access to. The roll out is critical -if you don’t get the right orientation to start with trying to unpick that for any mistakes is impossible. Once people have got used to doing it a certain way it can become set in stone.
The app is great. I think there are some balances to address since some of our Board members have outdated technology e.g., old iPad which makes it impossible for them to use the app. I’m confident about the systems security now that we have our file structures and security permissions set up. We like the Convene help pages and have also built our own Convene user guides.