About Homes for Haringey

The senior management team (Leadership team) have become much more visible and accessible to employees in the last twelve months, through Breakfast Briefings, Chief Executive’s Sounding Board and Adopt-a-Service. These initiatives are in part a response to colleagues’ desire for more face to face communications. The Chief Executive Officer, Paul Bridge, believes in providing opportunities for all employees to grow, try new things, and to be free to fail. He frequently states that as an organisation that manages but does not own properties, their people are their number one asset. He is committed to investing heavily in all staff. He holds all employees to a standard of excellence through their company behaviours and consistently rewards and encourages customer-focused behaviour.

Their talent development programme includes a range of learning and development opportunities: the Aspiring Managers’ programme for individuals who have been identified as potential future leaders; the management development programme for practising middle managers; and quarterly management seminars and events. These are crucial to building the capabilities of leaders across the organisation and to strengthening leadership capacity. They are building on the success of these programmes and further demonstrating commitment to their staff’s development by introducing nationally accredited ILM qualifications for future programmes. This will allow them to continue to develop managers' and leaders’ skills and knowledge, whilst at the same time providing them with a recognised and highly valued qualification.

Last year’s Big Conversation project involved the whole company in setting business objectives for the future. CEO Paul Bridge toured the business discussing opportunities and challenges with all employees hearing their views and ideas. Feedback from these information gathering sessions, workshops and consultations with staff, residents and partners, led to seven priority projects being chosen. These set the direction of the company for the next 12 months and beyond. This substantial piece of work was unique in that it was a high-level planning exercise that is traditionally done by executives. It was opened up to everyone in the business, in line with their first value of learning from experience. They believe that the collective knowledge of the employees who work throughout the organisation is a valuable resource that must be used to shape its direction.