We spoke to Sara Hobden and Tara Mackintosh from Southdown Housing to share how Convene’s intuitive and cost-friendly software has helped their Board meetings, from both the front and back end of the organisation.
If you could introduce yourselves to us please.
I’m Sara Hobden, I’m the Governance Assistant and I’ve been using Convene since we started using it in October 2020.
I’m Tara Mackintosh, I’m the Risk and Information Governance Manager. I have the back end access like Sara does and have helped out in Sara’s absence and in terms of the admin. But also I sit on our Operational Performance Group and attend our Audit & Risk committee who both use Convene. So I use it from the app side as well.
Would you describe your board and management structure and how you use Convene within that structure?
We use it internally with the C-Suite, the chief executive and the chief officers use it for their meetings and we use it for the board meetings, which are all external board members. So we use it both internally and externally.
We have our main board and then we have 3 subcommittees, and they all use Convene in exactly the same way.
What led you to want a board portal and why did you pick Convene?
The person who actually looked, she looked at two different portals and decided on Convene. This was our previous assistant company secretary, she would have done a decent amount of research.
But the rationale of picking Convene, I don’t think either of us are aware of but the reality is probably a combination of usability and cost.
How often do you use Convene?
It’s at least biweekly, because we have at least five or six meetings a month.
We have at least two meetings a month of non-board meetings because we have our C-Suite and we have our operational performance group that are using it once a month each. There’s always a governance prep meeting as well. And then one or two board committee meetings.
How much time does it save you in the day-to-day tasks of preparing for a meeting?
Pre-Convene, we were printing off individual physical packs of maybe 150 pages for members of the executive team and board and then they were getting sent out in the post.
It has certainly helped speed things up a lot, particularly through COVID. But as we’ve learnt how to use it, we’ve worked out shortcuts as well because when we have a governance prep meeting for any of the board or committee meetings I use the same agenda, I just clone it.
Which features do you find the most useful?
I think we can probably answer from different viewpoints, Sara can probably answer from the kind of setup admin and Tara can answer from using it in the meetings.
Sara: The document library is very useful for me to put things that don’t actually need to be in the meetings, but they need to have a look at. We’ve got 3 new board members, and I’ve just set up an induction folder in the document library so that I can put together all the information that they need so that it’s easily accessible to them.
The fact that our board members are all external makes it quite a good way of being able to send them, rather than send documents through email. I pop them in in the Convene library if there’s something in particular that I need to give to a board member, and it’s a much more secure way of doing so.
Tara: I suppose from a front end user, I’d say the fact it’s all one pack. Before last month, we weren’t using Convene for our Operational Performance Group and we were having to open a Word document, close it, go into an Excel spreadsheet, close it and it just doesn’t work.
I think that the option to follow the chair scrolling is useful, as well as the post it note thing. I’m not sure what the right term is, but that’s really useful because it gives us a chance to answer the questions in advance and understand what the questions are going to be in advance.
I find that really helpful while I’m attending audit and risk because I’m not a member of audit and risk, but I produce a number of the papers. It’s really helpful to be able to see what they’ve asked and also to answer it so we don’t waste time going through those questions in the meeting.
Sara: Just the fact that it triggers and tells you if a paper has been updated so you can see something’s been updated since you went in, that’s really useful as well. It’s good to be able to update a paper directly from the agenda if you’ve got a new version of the paper.
We’ve just upgraded to version 8, so there are new features that we haven’t explored yet. But I’m looking quite optimistically at the whiteboard function.
Do you do remote, hybrid or in-person meetings and how has Convene helped with that?
We have 3 meetings of each committee a year and two of them we have in person and one of them we do online. Occasionally we’ll have hybrid meetings if somebody can’t make a meeting, but we find it easier to either do it all in MS Teams or all in person.
Convene just makes it easier because we all know we’re all looking at the same thing at the same time. You aren’t reliant on having had a pack if you suddenly not come, if you’re suddenly unable to attend in person, there’s no sort of faffing around finding documents or papers. You just know you’re going to Convene.
It’s just slicker because with the operational performance group, every time you go to a different agenda item, it used to take 30 seconds for people to remind themselves which folder they’re in and what documents they need.
What sort of training did you have from Convene and how often do you do training?
When we initially set up, we had quite a lot of training over a period of a few weeks from Convene. But after that we’ve been on our own really.
It doesn’t take a lot of training, which is good as well. It’s very intuitive, which we find very helpful.
At the first OPG that we had using Convene, it was really well received. People are really busy, so anything that makes the meeting more efficient is going to be positive. That’s not unique to Convene, but it’s certainly been the case with Convene.
Are there any other general comments you have about Convene?
It’s been very positive. The fact that it’s so intuitive just means that when we had a new administrator starting to use it, I spent about 15 minutes with her and that’s it. Then she’s up and away.
So it’s useful and good from an administrative point of view, but also from the front end use point of view. I know there will be systems that are great on one of those and not so much the other and vice versa.
I definitely think that it’s good that it’s tailored. I think it’s good to stick to this is a very specific tool for a very specific purpose. Stick to your guns, develop it well and, and have it really focused on what it’s meant to do.
We’ve definitely had systems before where they’ve kind of lost sight of their original purpose.
And then they’re not as good at what they’re meant to be doing.
Whereas Convene, it’s got a very good, clear purpose. I think I would sort of worry if it tried to do all the bells and whistles and then we’ve lost the core value of it.
It’s a good tool, it does what it says on the tin.