Client : Yorkshire Housing
Yorkshire Housing wants to ‘make Yorkshire feel smaller’ by strengthening local communities. To do this, they were considering setting up a scheme of ‘community champions’; people already living in their communities who could build a bridge between customers and the organisation, offering more opportunities for engagement and feedback.
The Challenge
Although Yorkshire Housing thought they might be onto a winner with this idea, they want to ensure they have a transparent and trusting relationship with customers. With that in mind, they wanted to explore the idea through engaging with customers and front-facing colleagues. That way they could explore different ideas and create something meaningful.
The Workshop
As workshop facilitator, Claire Blacka used a range of activities to pull out ideas and refine them into an action plan. As well as work in smaller groups, there were several rich discussions involving the whole group, pulling out expertise in equal measure from both customers and colleagues.
Outcomes and Key Achievements
The session generated a wide range of thoughts and ideas, with some great detail around the safety of the community champions, and also some emphasis on how senior leaders can support roll out.
In one of the activities, we create a vision of what the ideal scenario would look like. It was interesting to see both customers and colleagues emphasise a feeling of togetherness, challenging the often held view that scrutiny and engagement are focussed around criticism and complaint.
Ideas development
The three ideas the group decided to develop were:
- Developing a role profile to make sure champions were clear about what they would and would not do.
- Defining what support champions would get from Yorkshire Housing, ensuring that colleagues could see the benefits and be proactive.
- Creating a training package so that champions feel confident and comfortable, with an emphasis on continuing development.
Participant quote
“I just wanted to take a moment to thank you both for such an incredible, informative, and productive day. It was not only a great opportunity to collaborate, but also a fantastic learning experience – hearing everyone’s insights and perspectives was truly valuable.
“Moving forward, it feels like we’ve laid a solid foundation for our customer engagement champion framework. I’m excited to see how we can continue to build on this and bring our ideas to life.”
Phil, customer.
