Your Comms Group Case Studies.

Unison:  

We’re proud of the work we have done and continue to do with Unison, and are pleased to be part of something that protects the rights and conditions of so many people in the UK who are not always in a position to make their own voices heard.

A little bit about Unison

At YCG, we work with businesses and organisations of all types and all sizes, from the smallest of SMEs to the largest big businesses around, and the nature of our work means we get to see the different demands and changing environments each of them faces.

One of our big clients is the UK’s largest public sector trade union, Unison – an organisation that represents and fights for the rights and working conditions of 1.3 million employees across the UK (many of whom are employed by privately owned or run organisations).

Today, Unison is headquartered between Euston and Kings Cross in London and itself employs approximately 1,200 staff, mainly operating out of more than 1,000 branch offices in 12 regions around the country.

It also has a thousand more volunteers (including, but not limited to, shop stewards and campaigners) who help to deliver the union’s services in every corner of the United Kingdom.

How one views the importance of the work they do inevitably depends to a large extent on political inclination, but the essence of the principle that underpins that work – to ensure its members across the public and private sector are treated fairly and equally by the government and their employers – is unlikely to be argued by many.

Without organisations like Unison, we may not have had a minimum wage or a broad agreement on how many hours constitutes a reasonable working week.

Given our sponsorship and support of the Care Workers Charity, we have a particular interest in the fortunes and interests of those working in the care sector. But as a business that runs according to a very clear set of ethics, we’re proud to be supplying Unison with the mobile technology that keeps it operating efficiently.

The efficiency and effectiveness of all of that day-to-day work begins with the way in which Unison staff – from those in branches, to regional and national staff – are able to communicate with one another.

Where we stepped in

Unison faced some very common problems that we see on a daily basis, (albeit on a larger scale) so we felt that we were prepared to offer them a more than adequate solution.

They wanted to:

• Reduce overall spend
• Deal with an ethical company
• Control and limit bill shock
• Roll out new devices for 2000 users
• Install Mobile Device Management on all devices, with preloaded personal settings for each user within applications such as outlook
• Keep sensitive data protected

The YCG solution

We can find you exactly the right tariff – we won’t sell you more than you need – so we managed to reduce Unison’s spend from an average of over £50k per month to consistently less than £35k per month. That’s a win in anyone’s book!

We are signed up to electronics watch – a not-for-profit non-government organisation which helps public sector organisations work together and collaborate with civil society monitors in production regions to protect the rights of workers in their electronics supply chains - from mining to manufacturing.

We are experts on all major networks’ mobile billing platforms, which helps us set up things like user-specific caps and alerts, and save Unison thousands each year.

Between April and July 2020 (in the first Coronavirus lockdown), we successfully managed a full kit refresh, deploying 2,250 new mobile handsets to all users – all of which came pre-configured with the Mobile Device Management (MDM) installed and pre-loaded personal settings for each individual user.