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Giving frontline workers at St Mungo's time to really listen
By reducing admin and mental load, St Mungo’s helped their support workers really listen to the people they support and build trusting relationships.
Feeling listened to can be life-changing.
For people experiencing homelessness, conversations with support workers offer a chance to feel seen and understood in the middle of uncertainty.
But too often, these conversations are interrupted by note-taking. Project workers have a duty to capture accurate case notes and record actions, but this can make it harder to stay fully present in meetings.
St Mungo’s, the homelessness charity supporting over 26,000 people each year, wanted to ease the pressure of admin and give their workforce more time to interact with clients.
So, they piloted Notes to see whether they could capture notes in the background, and allow support workers to be more present and spend more time building trusting relationships.
The challenge
Too much note-taking
Managers often found themselves spending more time writing up meetings and supervision sessions than actually running them.
Project workers faced a difficult choice. They could write notes during meetings, which pulled their attention away from clients. Or they could write them afterwards, often after back-to-back sessions, relying on memory to reconstruct conversations.
Mental load
Admin didn’t just take time, it took headspace. Staff described worrying about forgetting important details and replaying conversations in their minds, adding to the strain of an already emotionally demanding job.
The approach
The pilot took place across three high-support-needs hostels: Endell Street, Birkenhead Street, and Endsleigh Gardens. Both managers and project workers used Magic Notes to capture notes from meetings, supervision sessions, and day-to-day interactions.
Early in the pilot it became clear that Notes fit most naturally into managers’ workflows, where meetings were more structured.
Project workers’ conversations were often more informal and unpredictable, and in some situations, it didn’t feel appropriate to use Notes.
Based on this feedback, new templates were introduced, including dictation and room-check templates.
Room checks happen weekly across the hostels. Project workers walk from room to room, noting conditions, concerns and any follow-up actions. Previously, they would often make brief handwritten notes and then spend time later writing them up properly.
With the new template, project workers could dictate short updates while completing the checks. Instead of batching admin at the end of the shift, they captured notes in the moment.
This small change made Notes feel more aligned with frontline realities, and more project workers began using the tool consistently.
The impact
Time back to focus on what matters
Meetings no longer meant hours of writing up notes afterwards, and keeping on top of compliance felt more manageable.
In the pilot, admin time dropped by 66%, from 2 hours 53 minutes per week to just 58 minutes.
Across three hostels, this equates to over 80 working days saved per year — more than 16 weeks of staff capacity recovered.
“I was struggling to keep up with compliance just because the amount of time that it was taking to do the meeting and then get the notes into a format that was helpful. That was definitely one of the biggest aha moments… since using Notes I've been able to keep on top of my compliance, it's been just so, so helpful.”
Less mental load
60% of project workers reported feeling less mental load after meetings, and all managers reported reduced mental fatigue.
Staff no longer had to replay conversations in their minds or worry about whether they had captured everything accurately. The notes were already there, which made the work feel lighter and easier to manage.
Improved managerial support
With less focus on note-taking, managers were able to give more support to their teams.
75% of managers said they were more present in meetings and 100% said that interactions with colleagues improved.
Better conversations
Project workers also noticed a change in their day-to-day interactions with clients. Without needing to focus on writing notes, conversations felt more natural and less transactional.
Staff said they could listen more actively and spend more time focusing on the person in front of them, not the paperwork waiting afterwards.
Help your team focus on people, not paperwork
Book a demo to see how Notes can give your team more time to listen.
