Working Families

Problem 

Working Families provides free legal advice to working parents and carers on their rights at work and in-work benefits entitlements. They offer paid-for employer services to large corporates to help build & sustain flexible & family friendly workplaces. Using their experience of working closely with parents, carers and employers, they also aim to influence positive policy change. 

They sought the help of a volunteer through PBE’s Data First Aid service to help them draw out meaningful comparisons across their collected datasets and advise on how to better enable these comparisons going forwards.  

Solution 

Working Families was matched with Sam Wildsmith who, using mostly PowerBI, was able to look in depth across data from 2022-23 for their Legal Advice Service as well as their regional data and make useful distinctions about their service users.  

Results 

The work that Sam did has allowed the charity to better understand the need of their service users from helpful comparisons that were made such as the 10 most common issues lower-income families raise with them versus higher-income families. 

The data analysis enabled Working Families to calculate the percentage of helpline users who are from lower-income households which is a key reporting metric for the charity, particularly when speaking to funders with a focus on prioritising supporting people at risk of or living in poverty.  

Impact 

The findings are being widely used across the charity – in marketing/comms, impact reporting, fundraising, key stakeholder meetings as well as charity-wide presentations.  

They will also be integral to some large funding applications that the charity is due to make.  

Zoe Holland, Trusts and Foundations Manager at the charity stated: 

“Sam’s work is complete, and it has been and will continue to be extremely useful to Working Families.”  

Read Working Families data deep dive