HARVEST IS COMMITTED to turning homes and neighbourhoods into places where people want to live and choose to stay. The charity, established in 1963, provides more than 18,000 affordable homes, neighbourhood services, extra care for older people and staff accommodation for NHS trusts. Employees love working for Harvest and think it makes a real difference, winning it positive scores of 76% and 74% in our satisfaction survey. Based across 70 sites in the northwest, the staff go out of their way to provide a great service (90%). People at the Manchester-based social landlord, which also delivers private finance initiative (PFI) housing schemes, are happy with their pay and benefits (67%) and their positive scores to questions in our Fair Deal category ranked the charity 26th. The 670 employees are eligible for generous maternity and paternity pay, options to buy and sell holidays, access to discounts, a choice of three pension schemes, including a final-salary scheme, and a fully-funded health package that provides benefits such as dental, optical, specialist consultations, MRI scans and 24-hour counselling. The average salary of staff administrators is £19,000 and they are among 41% of workers who earn between £15,000 and £25,000 a year. Employees feel fairly rewarded for the work they do relative to people in similar roles in other organisations (65%, a top 20 result). The Harvest cream of the crop award scheme recognises outstanding achievement and contributions from individuals while the group that demonstrates true team spirit through working together can win £100 and a trophy. Staff go out of their way to help each other (79%) and feel a strong sense of family in their team (74%). This camaraderie is further strengthened by an annual conference and staff party in December. Flexible working policies, which allow staff to do the school run, attend medical appointments or go to the gym, helps them establish a good balance between work and home life (73%, a top 20 result). The fact that meetings do not start before 10am or after 4pm and none are held on Fridays also helps staff meet their domestic obligations (72%). Employees can accrue time and take up to 12 additional days' leave per year which contributes to the feeling that they are not spending too much time at work (62%). Directors make sure people know the key business objectives. This, and the firm's training programme, which staff say benefits them (68%), means they know exactly what is expected of them (77%). They also say they are not bored (75%) and everyone is treated fairly (68%). Employees believe that managers would respond quickly if staff showed signs of being under too much pressure (72%) and say their health is not suffering because of work (78%). harvesthousing.org.uk
