believe housing are one of the North East’s largest housing associations, that pride themselves on putting their customers and their people at the heart of everything they do – making them part of their journey in providing better housing services, homes, and communities.
believe housing are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce to deliver their vision and values of life without barriers, and to do the right thing: for their people, for their customers, for their business.
In 2019, believe housing published a new 3 year business plan to develop the business. A key part of this plan was the desire to develop a culture of working “the believe way”. In February 2020, they introduced remote working companywide which created the immediate need to upskill their managers within the business.
The Objectives
- Enable managers to lead their teams consistently and support their people to collaborate and work together
- Create a culture of innovation and creativity through the development of a coaching approach
- Align communication and teams under a balanced scorecard, enabling high levels of staff engagement
- Ensure a “good working day” for all employees
An initial period of consultancy took place in order to tailor specific content to suit believe housing’s learning outcomes and employee developmental needs. Virtual focus groups were held which allowed us to gain feedback from senior leaders and key stakeholders, a sample of managers who would be attending the programme as well as some of their team members.
This period of consultancy provided us with an overview of their business culture and how it works, general expectations for the programme and any additional areas of content the programme needed to address. It also established the outcomes by which the success and impact of the programme was measured.
The Programme
A collaborative effort between Raise the Bar, our consultants and believe housing led us to shape an amazing 6 month programme which incorporated:
- A programme launch involving key stakeholders from the business
- 6 monthly 90-minute interactive sessions based around 6 core ‘conversations’ that would enable managers to develop core skills
- A blended approach to learning including a mix of printed workbooks, podcasts, email tips and micro content
- Programme support from a tailor made app which was key in delivering content resources, pre-course work and programme information as well as being a platform where delegates could collaborate and share their learnings
Alignment was the key to the programme with believe, as our bitesize learning was integrated into a roll out of a new cultural way of working and managing performance. This meant we worked closely with the business to ensure all messaging was complimentary, and that we truly spoke each other’s language in our material and internal messaging. Fully supported by the exec leadership team, they also attended every module to ensure that they re-enforced the language and behaviours we delivered to their 90 leaders. They are a wonderful team of people who have fully embraced managing virtually, and we very much enjoyed working with them.
Annabel Graham
Raise the Bar Consultant
