Lifeline Australia: Reducing admin by 50% using automations

Introduction

Each year over 1 million Australians reach out to Lifeline.

Lifeline is a renowned national charity organisation that provides 24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention services to the Australian community. Lifeline operates a phone helpline and digital service through text and chat. 

Through using Rosterfy they have been able to cut their volunteer application admin in half, saving them hours each week.

Their volunteers provide one-off crisis support to those that can benefit from immediate and short term assistance to cope with crisis or distress.

A consistent volunteer experience 

Lifeline Australia have a number of volunteer roles including:

• Fundraising: Volunteers help Lifeline Australia raise much needed funding to support their program.
• Retail Volunteers: Lifeline’s ability to generate revenue for their cause is directly linked to the efforts of volunteers who support their retail stores.
• Event Support: Event ‘Cheer Squads’ create a wonderful and engaging experience for participants and guests.
• Crisis Supporter: Volunteers provide one-off crisis support over the phone to assist people to cope with crisis or distress.

The Challenge

One of Lifeline’s biggest pain points from their previous system was that it was not fit for purpose, nor scalable, with a heavy manual admin overhead for their Recruitment Officer. 

They also wanted to increase and improve the volunteer experience throughout their recruitment process. Rosterfy was selected due to its configurability with complex workforce requirements built in as opposed to requiring developers to develop things from scratch.

With Rosterfy now in place, Lifeline Australia has a fit for purpose system that is configurable to their needs, allowing them to scale for the future.

The Solution

From ‘master spreadsheet’ to Rosterfy

Prior to using Rosterfy, Lifeline was using spreadsheets to manage their volunteer program. Looking for efficiency and scalability, they engaged Rosterfy to help streamline operations. 

As part of the migration to Rosterfy, Lifeline undertook an extensive mapping process and identified key processes that could be automated thanks to Rosterfy, which resulted in them enjoying a 50% decrease in application administration.

The Impact

Reducing manual admin overheads

After one week of using Rosterfy, Lifeline Australia can now process 10 -12 volunteer applications per hour, as opposed to 3-5 volunteer applications per hour, through their previous system.

Volunteers also praised the system saying, “I found the platform to be user-friendly and easy to navigate throughout the entire application process”. 

Ensuring compliance through screening

One of the major benefits of Rosterfy has been the ability to automate screening in the form of Working with Children Checks including checks and renewals.

Lifeline Australia implemented a reminder process through Rosterfy to ensure volunteers renewed their Working with Children Check before it expires, to avoid the volunteer being stood down because they were not compliant with government legislation.