How Changing Futures North East keeps its volunteers and staff safeguarding-compliant, without losing a single expiry date

About the business 

Changing Futures North East is a charity that has spent 25 years supporting children and families across the North East of England. What began as a community youth centre has grown into a wide-reaching organisation, with separated family support, mental health support in schools, a fostering agency and a residential care home currently in development.

Behind the frontline work sits an intricate and tight-knit people operation. Jo, Operations and Finance Manager, oversees HR and payroll for 28 employees, but that’s only part of the picture. Around 90 volunteers, known as independent visitors, give looked-after children a consistent, impartial adult presence in their lives. Every one of those volunteers needs the same rigour applied to their compliance as any employee.

The challenge

As a charity with a high volunteer-to-employee ratio, two factors shaped Changing Futures North East’s decision on an HR platform: safeguarding compliance and cost.

Safeguarding came first. For a charity working with looked-after children, that means tracking background checks, qualifications and documentation for employees and volunteers alike, and making sure none of it quietly expires unnoticed.

Cost mattered just as much. Jo needed a system affordable enough to keep as much of the charity’s funding as possible going towards the children and families it supports, rather than its own admin. Whatever platform she chose had to deliver on both.

“We wanted a system to support all of the compliance elements of HR. Document storage, recruitment, background checks, identification, qualifications, plus anything that expires that we need to keep on top of.” 

The solution

Jo reviewed several platforms and built the business case for Employment Hero to the charity’s directors. Since going live, compliance reporting has changed the way her team works day to day. Jo would spend time manually filtering spreadsheets to spot which certifications were approaching their expiry date. Now, the system flags it directly.

“The reports in Employment Hero are brilliant. Every month, we pull a report to work out whose compliance checks are expiring soon. Rather than trying to manually pinpoint dates, we know who to chase and start the processes immediately.” 

Beyond compliance, the charity uses Employment Hero for policy sign-off, onboarding and offboarding checklists, and comprehensive board-level reporting, covering sickness records, Bradford Factor scores, attrition rates and headcount, all pulled directly from the platform. Jo has also built her own custom reports where the standard templates don’t quite fit.

“I can easily create my own report if there isn’t one that covers everything I’m looking for. Having the data at my fingertips makes everything so clear.”

Payroll for both of the charity’s two separate organisations also runs through Employment Hero, replacing what had previously been two disconnected systems with one. Now, Jo’s team has a single, consistent process to work from across the whole charity.

The ROI

• 90 volunteers brought into a single compliance system alongside 28 employees, at a cost-effective rate.
• Automated expiry tracking replacing manual spreadsheet filtering, with reports flagging exactly what’s expired or due.
• Two organisations consolidated onto one payroll platform, removing the need to manage separate systems for each entity.
• Board-ready reporting for sickness, Bradford Factor, attrition and headcount, generated directly from the platform.
• Custom reporting flexibility where standard templates don’t cover a specific need.

“Employment Hero has given me more confidence that we’ve got things in order.”

Why it matters

For a charity working with looked-after children, Jo and her team must guarantee that every adult in contact with a vulnerable child, staff and volunteers alike, is who they say they are and cleared to be there. It’s a major safeguarding risk if they don’t.

Changing Futures North East’s scale makes admin difficult without a system in place. 28 employees, 90 volunteers, two legal entities, and a fostering and residential care operation with its own regulatory demands. A platform that treats a volunteer compliance record with the same seriousness as an employee’s, without charging as though every volunteer were a full-time hire, is what makes that manageable for a lean team.

“When you’ve got so many volunteers, it’s so important to get compliance right. Employment Hero made it easier and gave us that big assurance that we are doing it right, and helps us keep track of everything.”