'Prison changed my perspective': From inmate to techy

Crime doesn't pay, but Offploy's Jacob Hill took important lessons from his time behind bars

Prison is probably not your go-to recruitment ground when you need new staff, but Jacob Hill, MD of Offploy, thinks it should be.

Hill is an ex-inmate himself, having gone to jail in 2015 for selling drugs. There he worked as a peer advisor, helping other prisoners with tasks like debt management and housing.

The work was so rewarding that he founded Offploy on his release in 2016, to support socially excluded people into employment. Since then, the organisation has helped more than 3,000 people and employs around 30.

"I never wanted to get involved in the criminal justice sector," says Jacob. "My parents worked for 30-odd years in the police force and always advised me against going down the policing route or getting involved with all of that - because of the challenges that come with it, I suppose...

"I wouldn't [previously] have looked at anyone in prison as someone worth my time or worth my attention... [Being in prison] changed my perspective on criminal justice and the people in the system."

Filing cabinets and version control

As a firm that's just seven years old, you might expect Offploy to be totally cloud-based. You'd be right - but it didn't start that way.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic Offploy was using a combination of paper and spreadsheets. Version control was an issue.

"We had God knows how many versions of an Excel spreadsheet that was password protected. The password was changed every time with an extra number...

"This is where we were before. We had colleagues who were pretty demotivated, and we had something like one and a half dedicated admin roles where colleagues...whose role was a mentor, were spending a big portion of their time maintaining paperwork."

In those early days, each hour spent meeting a candidate required another hour on admin work, and Jacob freely acknowledges that it had to change.

"Better systems than the DWP"

During 2020, the team "got to work" building their own digital system based on Salesforce ("Not two great words for the social sector," Jacob admits. "I can't go around forcing sales.")

That's when they found Conga, and specifically Conga Grid: a way to effectively use Excel within Salesforce, to "really bring our very binary Salesforce data to life."

"We got rid of all that paperwork. We were able to report in real time what was going on.

"We had better systems than the probation service, than the Department for Work and Pensions, and we have these prime organisations - organisations that are bigger than us, that have 5-10 year contracts with these major providers - who still use Excel spreadsheets to process beneficiary data. And it's just me a few friends from a bedroom!"

"I'm frustrated at the social sector mindset"

Now Offploy uses the Conga suite - Composer, Sign and Grid - across its entire workflow.

The organisation has raised its efficiency three-fold: either supporting three times as many people or one person for three times as long.

While most providers in the sector, like the Job Centre, spend an average of 20 minutes with a candidate, Offploy can now spend an hour with them every week, at a minimum.

"It's a lot less time on paperwork and more time on purpose work," says Jacob. "I'm frustrated that the social sector doesn't adopt it more. I'm frustrated at the mindset of charities and public sector that think they can't implement this type of technology without millions of pounds worth of mobilisation, when we've been able to do it through Conga with out-of-the-box solutions."

Automating the admin burden

Offploy gathers a huge amount of data on each candidate - Jacob estimates it to be 150 data points per person - but hasn't had to recruit any additional admin staff since the move to Conga, saving the company about £60,000.

In fact, the admin burden on existing staff has been cut. Instead of spending an hour writing up notes and emails, "Colleagues just have to fill out two boxes before they can close the case note. One is a well-being comment, and one is what you've covered. That creates an entire case note for us."

Jacob plans to leverage Offploy's new efficiency for further growth, with expansion around the country.

"I only intend to grow. We've just won more areas and we're now in Plymouth, of all places... We've got Teesside and Plymouth in our service.

"We've got a lot of of work to do to expand throughout the United Kingdom, but with the backing of Conga I know we can scale this service to support people all over the world, and I intend to do just that."