How can we help you?
The members of the Company offer pro bono support on an individual basis to suitable organisations that would benefit from their experience and expertise.
All requests for pro bono support are considered by the Company's Pro Bono Committee (PBC) who will ensure that the request falls within our remit and that the organisation meets the Guild’s criteria.
Our Volunteers
Our volunteers are members of the Company of HR Professionals and most have held substantive position in HR or other people related professions (Recruitment/Executive Coaching etc.) and are often employed. Therefore most volunteers can offer a modest few hours a month to support a charity. We deliver most of our services virtually, to save travel, and we have limited our offer to the principal areas listed below to enable us to be able to deliver the services effectively. If you need a full time or part time consultant to re-write your staff handbook or undertake a disciplinary investigation, for example, these are best purchased from the market place
Areas of support
Our main focus is on helping with strategic HR issues and facilitating/developing skills and competences in HR. This can take many forms from specific developmental plans to simply helping senior members of an organisation (or project teams) work through particular concerns and issues.
The PBC is willing to consider all requests for support from eligible organisations but the principal areas in which Company members can help are:
- Coaching & Mentoring: this may include acting as a Coach or Mentoring skills development for an individual or team. This might range from helping in the development of individuals who are newly appointed to an HR role (or need HR skills in their current role) to working with internal project teams to bring added knowledge and expertise to support both a better outcome as well as the professional development of team members.
- HR Health Check: An HR professional will interview a number of key people within the organisation and review key documentation and policies and offer observations and thoughts on areas that might need attention or opportunities for improving the approach to HR at the charity.
- Employability Support: this is a wide-ranging area and would certainly include interview skills, CV preparation etc. as well as insights to employer’s expectations. There are many areas where individuals and/or specific groups can be at a disadvantage in seeking employment. Our members are able to provide advice and guidance in these areas. However, members act as individuals and do not offer a route to employment in the organisations they work for.
- HR Workshops may cover (in general terms) any area of HR, offering insights and understanding to groups of people in a wide range of HR issues. Recent examples of workshops that have been delivered have included ‘Managing your staff through a Crisis’, ‘Creating a Feedback Culture’ and ‘Performance Management’.
There are, of course, boundaries to the areas where we can offer support. For example, our members do not undertake work which is advisory/operational in nature, our role is not to compete with the commercial market for operational HR services and consulting.
Similarly, we absolutely do not offer any support in areas such as Employment Law, Tax and Pension.
Eligible organisations
The Company does not have strict qualifying criteria but the overall objective is to support smaller charities and similar not-for-profit organisations. The principal guidance is that recipients should:
- Be a charity, a not-for-profit organisation or have similar goals and objectives to a charity (e.g., social enterprises).
- Not otherwise be able to afford the type of support that they are requesting.
- Not be funded (e.g., public bodies) directly or indirectly to provide the support requested.
Requesting pro bono support
If an organisation feels that it would benefit from pro bono support it should, in the first instance, contact the Pro Bono Committee at pro-bono@hrprofessionals.org.uk. This will mean that we can make a preliminary assessment of the request covering, in particular, the help that is being sought and eligibility of the requesting organisation.
From that point, if initially positive on both sides, the steps will be to:
- Confirm eligibility and scope of the support requested. This is a key step to ensure that all parties fully understand and agree the parameters for the work and to allow the PBC to identify a suitable volunteer(s).
- Introduce the volunteer(s) and the organisation to ensure both are happy to proceed and to allow the organisation the opportunity to confirm that the volunteer(s) has the skills and experience to meet their needs.
- Enter into a formal Agreement between the volunteer(s) and the organisation to confirm the support offered. This Agreement ensures clarity on the work to be done and also recognises that as part of its pro bono nature neither the volunteer nor the Company is liable for any loss or damage suffered as a result of this arrangement or the provision of any services.
- The work proceeds.
At the end of the assignment the PBC will seek feedback from the organisation on the work undertaken.