About City South Manchester Housing Trust

City South Manchester Housing have a clear Learning & Development strategy in place that has been developed through internal feedback. This offers lifelong learning opportunities, job skills training and further/higher education opportunities and continuous professional development. All learning styles across the organisation have been widely catered for through a range of methods from face to face/facilitated sessions through to e learning functionality. They have created development opportunities by creating a train the trainer approach which has enabled internal coaching and mentoring support, on the job training by specialists. Creating these opportunities for people to develop their training abilities enhances their social capability and allows them to utilise their skills to develop others in the business and in the wider community.

The most innovative point of CSM's work which truly gives back to the local community is the sheer range and depth of the menu of opportunities CSM's present to local residents, and the fact that they work in partnership on that menu with local private and social businesses. Some examples of the range of this work include: The award winning and highly effective "Works" which they set up in Moss Side in partnership with local employers and which has already delivered over 1,000 residents into jobs or training. The wide range of training into jobs or setting up in your own business they are providing local residents in south Manchester. The launch of the newly opened Pod in Moss Side, which is a hub for start-up business and was set up by CSM in partnership with Bubble Enterprises and Mosscare Housing. The launch of the South Manchester Enterprise Network which brings together private and social SME's in this part of Manchester and has acted as a trail blazer for business working in the community. CSM set it up and administer the Network on line and on the ground. A CSM Youth Network which is highly active, growing fast and award winning. A unique range of cultural offers, including a major partnership with the quality Royal Exchange Theatre which has led to over 1,500 cultural offers being taken up in the community including back stage tours, meet the author and actors and performances of drama.

Feedback from their last annual staff survey told them that CSM needed to better engage with employees and their CEO reported at the last conference that this would be the focus for this year. An engagement strategy was developed and implemented and a range of activities have taken place. Examples are: forum sessions have been held with staff groups across the business, appreciative enquiry interviews were held with the Leadership Team, tenant focus groups have been held, regular updates have been given on engagement at departmental meetings and engagement is a standing item on team agendas, the senior management team has concentrated its efforts on being more visible, "walking the floor" and "going back to the floor" - the Director of Operations spends an afternoon a month in the call centre, they worked with their apprentices to develop a new and improved apprentice and trainee offer, their CEO held an interactive session with all operative staff to get their views on how the service could improve and feedback was given to all involved to inform them of actions taken and progress and this continues now on a regular basis.