Barney Smith, our Head of Housing shares his experience of working for Co-op Homes.
In my 15 years working for local authority’s, I always felt like a small fish in a big pond, a bit of an irrelevance. This was in part due to my previous roles - slap bang in the middle of middle management –this meant I was always nearer the front line than the middle or the top so I didn't get the kind of exposure to new responsibilities or change that I craved.
Some departments I hadn't ever seen or interacted with, others only ever existed in the ether via email or phone. There was a real sense of scale but not of much progress or of making much of a long-term difference, for every KPI hit and breakthrough made there were several setbacks with no real plan on how to improve.
I and other teams assumed we knew what residents wanted but we rarely asked them, any feedback we received was usually in the form of complaints. I felt a bit out of touch, like I could connect with residents but only on a surface level.
The result was that I developed quite a closed mindset, I understood how social housing worked but outside of this safe space things were a little fuzzy.
Working for a smaller company was something I hadn't ever considered, small seemed to equal bad from my predominately local authority perspective. It's a view that appears to be shared - on offering a role to a candidate from a local authority they stated that they didn't want to accept as we were "too small" and they perceived that the size of the company would harm their career prospects.
Now I'm here in a small organisation I can say that my personal perspective has definitely changed. One of the things that struck me was that there is much more exposure to all levels of the business, from the inner workings of the finance team, to the planned works of the repairs team and drawing on the expertise of the board - I'm learning about how a business functions and operates in addition to my duties as Head of Housing. On Our client Co-Op side (where we manage services for Housing Co-operatives in London and the Thames Valley) Our aim is to provide more bespoke, people-centered Housing Services where we build strong working relationships with Management Committees to support them with their decision making and allow their Co-op to thrive.
In an increasingly more impersonal and automated world there’s a growing appreciation for smaller businesses that offer a more personal, human touch. Smaller organisations, like Co-Op Homes are well-positioned to deliver just that.
