HR Excellence Awards 2009: Best Third Sector Strategy or Initiative - Broadway

The HR strategy aims to: make staff more innovative, entrepreneurial and risk-taking; expand the organisation's culture of learning; make quality of service a priority; and ensure integrity remains at the forefront of all activity.

Not only has Broadway demonstrated how HR strategy can have a positive impact on an organisation and its service users, but it has also developed a groundbreaking initiative - social enterprise consultancy Real People. This generates income for Broadway while helping other homelessness charities transform their performance and viability through good HR practice. It believes the HR functions of charities should be as innovative as those of the most profitable private companies.

In a difficult economic year, when third-sector bodies were particularly vulnerable to a fall in donations, the HR team has had to work hard to persuade senior management not to reduce infrastructure costs. It was important to have quality staff, high engagement scores and low sick-leave indicators - even if the pursuit of this meant that some contracts were lost to price-cutting rival consultancies.

It has an 18% turnover rate for volunteers against a 25% sector average, 1.9% absence compared with the 5% average, while 71% of management appointments are made internally.

Judges' comments

The judges believe Broadway is the sector leader in HR and has been agile in seizing new opportunities to develop its business. Client satisfaction has improved, and it has won new contracts.

HIGHLY COMMENDED - The Learning Trust

The Learning Trust is a not-for-profit organisation responsible for running all education services for the London Borough of Hackney, from schools to adult education. It was the first company of its kind to manage education for an entire borough, and is responsible for the eduction of more than 27,000 children.

The trust recognises staff are crucial to achieving its vision, but it previously relied on temporary staff and consultants, while the performance management system was poorly understood and fewer than half of staff received appraisals. So in 2007 a new people management strategy was born, including training for headteachers and a focus on wellbeing. The result has been improved staff retention and annual savings of nearly £500,000.

The judges said the approach was "ambitious and community-centric".