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NCH scoops top training award

Nottingham City Homes last night shone at the National Training Awards for its commitment to improving customer service across the company.

We were announced as East Midlands Training Award winners for Partnership and Collaboration at an awards on Tuesday 20th October held at the East Midlands Conference Centre and hosted by UKSkills.

The ‘Let’s Make the Difference’ programme was introduced following a poor Audit Commission report in 2006 and low customer satisfaction that remained stagnant at 60%. It was developed to give the company a new cultural identity, boost performance and inspire staff.

In 2007 our Learning and Development team approached CragRats, a training company that offered a theatre-based approach to learning. Together we created ‘Let's Make the Difference’.

For the purposes of the training we based drama workshops on an imaginary housing company. This gave staff a chance to look at normal everyday scenarios from the outside and see how their own behaviour and temperament affects customers.

The programme encouraged teamwork, and with the help of forum theatre, gave our employees the tools to deal with conflicts and difficult conversations. There was also a strong focus on equality and diversity that helped to change attitudes.

The training was delivered in a series of workshops over a 58-day period between December 2007 and May 2008. In all, 970 staff were trained. Board members and our tenant inspectors also received the training.

Compliments from customers have increased since the start of the programme, and managers report that staff now constructively challenge each other about their work and learn from mistakes.

In our 2008/09 Audit Commission inspection we were given “excellent prospects for improvement” showing the vast changes made since 2006. As a result of that inspection we were able to access more than £200 million of funding to invest in improving thousands of council homes across the city.

Our successes didn’t stop there. We also beat private sector firms to win the city council’s repairs and maintenance contract, worth £142.5 million over five years.

But it was this year’s customer satisfaction (STATUS) survey that was probably the most telling indicator. Overall customer satisfaction rose dramatically for the second year running to 80% (69% in 2008 and 60% in 2007.)

Chief Executive, Chris Langstaff, said:

We are delighted to have received recognition at the National Training Awards. This is a huge accolade and shows that our commitment to improving customer service and the culture of our company has been recognised.

We are a company committed to training with more than 90 apprentices working with us and a large number of learning opportunities made available to employees, tenants and leaseholders.

(Thu 22 October 2009 09:00:00 GMT)

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