PEOPLE
Creating a great place to work
PEOPLE
Creating a great place to work
People
Creating a great place to work
We firmly believe that by creating a positive workplace and having ‘the best team’, we can provide excellent services to our customers and communities.
In our Corporate Plan, we committed to:
Implementing our People Strategy
Creating a Communications Strategy
Over the next couple of pages, you can see what work we’ve done over the last year to achieve these commitments.
People Strategy
Last year we did lots of work in our people and culture space to enhance the experience our colleagues have while working for us.
Values-led recruitment
It’s important we have the right people in the right roles, and we focused on recruiting in line with our HEART values to make sure we’re hiring like-minded people who are just as passionate about making a difference for our customers and communities as we are.
Honest
Enterprising
Accountable
Respectful
Trustworthy
Learning and development
We’re committed to creating an environment where our colleagues are constantly learning and working to be the best version of themselves. In 2023/24 we provided lots of opportunities for training, and we:
Put 103 frontline colleagues through a variety of multi-skilled training courses. Your feedback told us that we needed to improve our figures for repairs jobs being completed right first time. Our operatives are trained and equipped to deliver services in one visit to your home, both to a high standard and in line with our ‘right first time’ ethos.
Delivered mandatory safeguarding training to all our colleagues so they’re well placed to identify people with care and support needs at risk of abuse, and know how to deal with safeguarding cases.
Our people managers completed our LEAD from the HEART management training course, and our new starters made up a new cohort of managers that started their journey on the programme. Our aim is for all of our people managers to be trained by January 2025 and new starters will commence the programme as and when they join us.
Organised Unconscious Bias training for all colleagues as part of our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
Delivered IOSH Managing Safely training to 27 of our managers to keep our colleagues and customers safe.
Celebrating our Apprentices
We’re big advocates for recruiting Apprentices, including those who live in our neighbourhoods, to broaden the range of skills, insight and experiences we have on our team. Our Apprenticeship programme provides Apprentices with the skills and experience they need to be successful in whatever career path they choose.
All of this was used to refresh our People Strategy, and the new version was approved in June 2024.
Creating a Communications Strategy
Good communication is essential and begins with how we convey our internal culture. This helps strengthen our relationship with you and key stakeholders, allowing you to understand our services and communicate on your terms. To support this, we developed a Communications Strategy by consulting with over 70 customers and analysing Tenant Satisfaction Measures from 2,300 surveys.
Our Customer Scrutiny Panel reviewed and approved the strategy, which focuses on two-way communication, making feedback opportunities clearer, and delivering the communications you want.
One key action is reviewing all customer communication touchpoints, ensuring we understand your needs when delivering services.
Customer Experience Strategy
We took lots of this learning on board to complete a new Customer Experience Strategy in 2024 – this strategy will help us strengthen customer voice, have a better approach to complaints and improve customer communication.
This will help us put customer experience at the heart of everything we do going forward.