Our Corporate Plan Objective – Organisation we are all proud to be part of

We may be a small team but we make a difference.

 

We’ve launched our ambitious, new corporate plan – it sets out how we’ll support you over the next three years to help you create better homes and places.

This new plan focusses on your unrivalled member experience, it outlines our influencing priorities for the next few years: meeting the net zero challenge and housing at the heart of a rebalanced country, and it highlights our plans to provide the best services to support you now and into the future.

One of the objectives within our corporate plan states we are an ‘organisation we are all proud to be part of.’

Within this objective we cover three ambitions which ensures we will continue to offer a rewarding, supportive place to work where we invest in people and they can be themselves and fulfill their potential.

It states we will build an organizational structure and support framework that enable our staff team to thrive, act autonomously, competently and become subject matter experts in their field.

For our staff development and wellbeing programme we work on the ethos that one size does not fit all. We personalise training and development plans to ensure every staff member is empowered to be a subject matter expert in their field. We currently support around a quarter of staff in recognised academic or professional qualifications or affiliation to their respective professional member bodies, safeguarding our authenticity in housing sector knowledge, procurement services and operational support.

We support the sector’s GEM Programme which aims to recruit and retain talent to the social housing sector. Our latest GEM recruits started in May and July and we are currently recruiting for a third GEM recruit, all are working in policy and member engagement.  NHC has been a stepping point for two of our past GEM recruits who have recently left us for career development and pleasingly staying within the sector, whilst another has recently been promoted internally to Manager level.

Part of ensuring our staff team can thrive involves providing appropriate and timely training. Our recent focus is on mental health support, running full staff and line manager sessions through Mental Health in Business and with Consultant Clinical Psychologist Dr Victoria Miller. We now have three accredited staff Mental Health First Aiders as well as a wealth of resources available to staff and line managers through our Benenden offer, our Employee Assistance Programme and on our internal staff Wellbeing Teams channel. Our quarterly staff-lead Wellbeing Working Group continues to thrive providing an open forum for staff to bring any concerns to the table for general discussion. We have commenced work on campaigns around the benefits of sleep for wellbeing, and nutrition and exercise as well as proactive ways to support good mental health, sharing knowledge with our Members along the way.

All of our work is underpinned by our aim to empower and encourage our people and inspire our members to embrace inclusive opportunities for all, recognizing the importance and value of equality, diversity and inclusion and ensuring wellbeing and sustainability are at the heart of all our activities. You’ll see these themes running through everything we do over the next three years. On sustainability we want to minimise our own environmental impact across the organisation and embed sustainability as a core principle. We want to act on sustainability in its widest sense, both internally in the way we work as an organisation and externally by supporting members to meet the net-zero challenge and create thriving, low carbon communities.

We want to build on our wellbeing programme to be at the forefront of championing wellbeing at work, raising awareness of important topics, sharing best practice with members, and providing a supportive framework to enable our staff to thrive, both physically and mentally.

On the topic of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion we want to ensure the creation of a safe space for all staff to discuss EDI issues without fear of judgement. We want to maintain a supportive and inclusive working environment which has EDI firmly on the agenda and ensure those who need support specifically around EDI have a platform. We want to project the importance of EDI across the membership and the sector, sharing best practice and key learnings.

Our ambition is to lead from the front as a member organization with a modern effective working environment and impactful internal communications.

Our Flexible Futures project determined how we work now and into the future. This was an all staff lead project to review our Future Workspace (where we work), Future Resources (who, when and how we work), Future Terms and Conditions and Internal Comms and Wellbeing.  Staff told us that they valued flexibility of both work location and working hours and were able to be more productive with less commuting and time travelling.

We have now moved into a smaller collaborative hub at Hope Street Xchange in Sunderland City Centre where staff can collaborate.  Staff can opt to work from home or collaborate in the office. Under our new agile working policy staff can work with their line managers to agree working hours to balance business needs with other life commitments.  Our new way of working aims to retain the advantages we’ve experienced from home working and encourage our colleague friendships through a more modern, fit for purpose internal comms structure.  We are not complacent however and check in regularly with staff via surveys monitoring wellbeing and workloads.

At the heart of the Flexible Futures project is our new Performance and Wellbeing System (PAWS). Developed in house it is designed to link together regular performance and wellbeing checks with annual objectives and performance and development reviews. Each staff member has objectives which link directly to the main corporate plan and through a single system we are then able to ensure we remain focussed on these overarching objectives as we carry out our day-to-day work.

As we move forwards, we will continue to travel less, work smarter, support each other, and collaborate to achieve the best results.

Our staff are the key to ensuring the NHC is an organization we are all proud to be part of.  Our values were written by our staff and reflect who we are and how we work: we are Member Focused, we are Collaborative, we are Innovative, and we Make a Difference.