Cutting edge voting for unions
Education union NEU are no strangers to using cutting-edge tech for their campaigning, so when in-person conferences were cancelled due to Covid, the NEU looked to technology to turn their conferences digital. But they needed something nobody else had: a fully democratic voting platform.
Working closely with the ChangeLab team, the NEU took their 2020 and 2021 conferences online with the new voting platform Democracy, a voting tool entirely designed to fit the bill for a modern union to make important democratic decisions.
The very first conference using the new Democracy voting platform went live in October 2020. With around 800 participants online at any one time, 200 votes were held, and an impressive 150,000 ballots were filed and the results were available immediately. An unprecedented experience for delegates!
A Turbulent Time for Teachers
The Coronavirus pandemic affected the education of the nation’s children. Representing more than 450,000 members working in hundreds of schools and colleges, the NEU needed to respond quickly. For decisions to be made, the NEU’s membership needed to gather together. These decisions could affect thousands of working teachers, leaders, support staff - and of course their students.
Membership is the lifeblood of any union; this is just as true for the NEU. So with in-person conferences an impossibility, the need for an efficient and effective digital way to get together was urgent. The solution also needed to recognise NEU’s nuanced voting style. It was a tall order.
"We were able to incorporate all the complexity of options we had in terms of weighted voting, multiple votes etc."
- David Kimber, NEU
By the time April came around, the NEU and ChangeLab were ready for the full conference experience... albeit remotely! This time round, and with one practice round under their belt, the NEU had a full TV set studio setup with lighting and cameras. This made it a great experience for delegates.
Without the need to pass microphones around, walk to the front of the conference room and crucially being able to take quick pulse-checks on every delegate about whether to raise a standing order, the event moved at an efficient pace, meaning lots more was achieved than they could ever have anticipated. For example, members could indicate with just one click if they wanted to move to a vote and so the whole event passed smoothly and swiftly.
"It was getting picked up on social media, we noticed lots of kudos from other unions commenting on NEU's success."
- Rich Shakespeare, ChangeLab
So what’s the verdict?
David Kimber, from the NEU said that whilst they hope that in-person events will happen again "we have learnt much and been forced to discover just how much we can achieve online."
He went on to say that the future hybrid model will be a more inclusive as well as allowing more people to attend “Delegates whose carer responsibilities or disabilities previously prevented them from attending, now have more opportunities to get involved, and limiting factors such as travel and accommodation costs, and venue capacity, need no longer be an inhibiting feature.”
