Peaks & Plains Housing Trust

Written by Helen Bailey, Assistant Director OD

We started our journey in pursuit of getting in to the Times 100 Best Companies, in 2010. That year and the following year we were ‘one to watch’. In 2011, the lowest scores were Leadership and My Manager.  Having delivered our initial 5 year plan, we knew we needed to provide some clarity for the organisation around where we are going and our priorities for the next 5 years. In addition we were also keen to do more work around our behaviours as we knew people were still focused more on ‘what’ they were doing and did not place emphasis or priority on ‘how’ they were doing it. We already had some behaviours that were being used across the organisation and were reviewed as part of the performance appraisal process. To really highlight the importance of ‘how’, we engaged StraightForward to work with us, to more clearly define the behaviours, remove ambiguity and equip managers with the skills to manage people in line with our behaviours.  At this stage, we started to see a real difference as managers started to have more powerful conversations about ‘how’ people we going about their day to day duties – behaviours started to become much more of a priority.

This helped us start to make a difference to our ‘my manager’ scores. We strengthened this even further, by embarking on a development programme for the leadership team and all our managers, supported by StraightForward. The leadership went through a comprehensive 360 feedback process and all our managers attended a one day development event, all designed around our behaviours.  We also took some time to really clarify expectations in terms of managerial roles. The development centres and 360 process, enabled us to identify development needs at an individual level and to focus our efforts on developing behaviours across the organisation.

We also made a number of changes to HR processes such as introducing a probationary period and also changing the way we recruited to roles within the organisation, using the behaviours as the framework. The focus here was to ensure managers owned the processes and could make informed decisions about their team – taking responsibility for HR related decisions.

We also recognised the need to really engage our management population in the formulation of the 5 year plan. StraightForward developed and facilitated events aimed at ensuring all managers views were considered when shaping our overall purpose, strategic objectives and detailed plans on how these objectives will be met. We then took the plans to staff and consulted them at an all staff event. This has been a huge success. We now have a plan that everyone has bought in to and feels real ownership for.

A real success factor has been the commitment from the leadership team. We have invested in time, with StraightForward, to ensure that our leadership team is focusing on the right things and that we have the appropriate split between strategic and operational focus across our EMT and SMT. The team has worked really well together ensuring they role model appropriate behaviour and we are much better at addressing ‘unacceptable’ behaviour as we are really clear what this is..

In support of on-going management development, we have also introduced a Deputy role, to encourage support and also prepare people for future promotion opportunities.

Whilst we are really pleased with our placement in the Best Companies Times 100 – achieving 38 was amazing.. We recognise that we can’t sit back and relax. We are committed to continuing to develop our organisation and specifically our leadership/management population. StraightForward, have just carried out 360 feedback for all our managers this year…. We need to keep focused and moving forwards to ensure we retain our position or even progress!