Sustainable Development Bot

Innovative Project for a Leading Non-Profit Organisation

Executive Summary 

A leading non-profit organisation is a for-purpose organisation that supports people with spinal cord injuries and neurological conditions and their loved ones to thrive. At cubesys, each year we volunteer our professional services to find innovative solutions through our resources to create impact for similar organisations.

We collaborated with the organisation to develop an employee engagement solution. The goal of the project was to measure social engagement and raise awareness for specific areas, such as diversity, sustainability, and First Nations Peoples. The organisation encompasses the United Nations sustainable development goals through their social impact, and this project combined the aforementioned goals.

“So what this is enabling us to do hopefully, is show that as a small organisation here in Australia, we are actually contributing to a larger piece of work that is the UN Sustainable Development Goals. So, from that point of view, it’s very, very small steps, but it’s enabling us to show our collective contribution.” says the organisation’s Inclusion and Outcomes Manager

The Customer 

The organisation is a member-based for-purpose organisation founded in 1967 that aims to provide high-quality support to people with disabilities nationwide. Specifically, their mission is to advocate for and advance the rights, entitlements, and quality of life for individuals with spinal cord and other physical disabilities. The organisation wants to ensure that the right services are available so that people with disabilities and their loved ones can thrive.

The organisation is classified as a Disabled Person Organisation (DPO), an internationally recognised title for companies where over 51% of their board and membership is made up of people with disabilities. Currently, they serve 3000 members ranging from individuals with disabilities, their families, carers, researchers, and other professionals within this sector.

Image Credits: The organisation

The Problem

The organisation needed a system to survey their internal staff users at a regular frequency regarding their social awareness and engagement. After a specific period of time, each survey is presented to the staff users again. The intention of this activity was to understand what the individual knows and acts on. The organisation also wanted to find out if there were any other changes to their behaviours and attitudes. cubesys worked with a group of the organisation’s team members to create a solution for the process.

This survey was supposed to be presented to users in an engaging, easily accessible format that would garner attention and boost engagement. Another aim was to share important facts related to the topic with the users. They needed something easy to use and customisable, allowing the survey manager to add or update questions, images, and the frequency that the survey is presented.

The Solution

In response to this problem, cubesys has created a bot customised to the needs of the organisation. In order to use it, the admin simply creates a list of questions for a specific survey date, and uploads them for up to a year in advance. Once the questions have been written and uploaded, the entire process will be automated by the bot.

On the set date, the bot sends its questions via Microsoft Teams with users given up to 7 days to reply to the bot. Answers are then stored per department without any other identifiable information, making the survey completely anonymous. Admins can then choose to use PowerBI to easily see up-to-date reports on the data.

The Results 

cubesys took on a unique approach to the problem, with the use of a chatbot as opposed to an automated email or a static web application. The organisation was pleased with this tactic and the interactivity of the solution, as a chatbot is much more likely to gain attention and receive interaction due to its convenience. Respondents were simply required to click on a yes or no button.

With the solution being almost entirely automated, there is little need for maintenance or frequent management. This means that precious time can be dedicated to other tasks; the chatbot will continue running and collecting data unless stopped.

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Future Impact 

“I think what we would like to do in our next iteration of our social impact plan is actually set ourselves some targets. At this point we have very conservative targets because we were still feeling our way. It will enable us to set  targets such as reduced consumption of energy for example. That would be good.” says Suzie.

As part of the next phase of this project, the idea is to expand on the measurement to collect a larger set of data to visualise impact.

Testimonial from client 

“So far, a quarter of us have added our pronouns to our email signatures and some of us have done a Clean Up Australia pledge which is quite a good story from our end. We’re collecting some interesting data which allows us to tell a story of, I guess what people are doing in the office. As we now work in a hybrid situation, we can also ask about what people are  doing at home and to measure a change in their behaviour.”

 “Having support of an organisation to build something like this for us, it’s been a very positive experience and for that, the organisation is really grateful that we’ve been able to get this wonderful resource.” 

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