Gurkha Welfare Trust

At a glance

Sector: Not for Profit

Organisation: The Gurkha Welfare Trust

People: 560 colleagues across Nepal and the UK

Locations: 21 welfare centres, residential homes and support teams

Key outcomes

Stronger internal communication across Nepal and the UK
Greater visibility of frontline teams and service delivery
Improved employee engagement through everyday storytelling
Better knowledge sharing across dispersed teams
Richer content supporting fundraising and organisational communications

The Gurkha Welfare Trust
Connecting colleagues across continents by making frontline work visible

The Challenge

With colleagues based at 21 Area Welfare Centres and delivering financial aid, medical services and community projects across Nepal, alongside fundraising and support teams in the UK, keeping everyone connected wasn't straightforward.

The Gurkha Welfare Trust wanted one place for colleagues to communicate, share knowledge and stay connected to its mission.

In addition, the team wanted frontline employees in Nepal to have a stronger voice. Incredible work was happening every day, and the many stories, achievements and examples of service delivery needed to reach the wider organisation.

"“Work Networks were brilliant, guiding us through setup, migration, and running staff workshops that really helped get everyone on board.""

Heather Hitchins, Communications & Digital Manager

The Solution

Work Networks helped The Gurkha Welfare Trust design a digital communication approach that reflected how colleagues actually work.

From implementation and migration to launch planning, communications, training and adoption, the focus was simple. Create lasting behaviours, not just launch another platform.

Using Workvivo as the organisation's digital workplace, colleagues now have a straightforward way to share updates, recognise achievements and connect across Nepal and the UK.

The impact:

Within nine months, Workvivo had become part of everyday working life, illustrated by high employee usage:

96.8% activation
92.3% monthly active usage
91.9% mobile adoption

Colleagues shared more than 1,600 posts, generating over 52,000 reactions and 1,500 comments, demonstrating consistently high participation.

Most importantly, communication changed.

Frontline colleagues across Nepal are now sharing updates, making service delivery and individual successes far more visible across the organisation.

Instead of relying on central communications alone, stories now come directly from the people delivering services on the ground. That has strengthened employee engagement, improved knowledge sharing and given colleagues across Nepal and the UK a better understanding of each other's work.

The increased visibility has given fundraising and communications teams a richer source of authentic stories, photos and videos that help demonstrate the Trust's impact to supporters.

"Workvivo makes it so much easier to find and share real moments, stories, photos and videos, which support our fundraising and communications. The amazing content enhances our digital output, generating significant online income and supporter engagement."

Heather Hitchins, Communications & Digital Manager

What’s Next for Gurkha Welfare Trust

With a strong foundation firmly established, the next phase will build on existing behaviours: encouraging deeper discussion, developing recognition through badges, using polls and acknowledgements selectively, deep diving into advanced analytics to provide insight.

For The Gurkha Welfare Trust, the opportunity is to turn strong platform adoption into even greater organisational value: helping communications, fundraising and operational teams make better use of the stories, knowledge and insight already being shared every day.