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Finding new and innovative ways of working has always been central to our cultural journey. With Covid 19 acting as a catalyst to further accelerate our business transformation, we are using the opportunity this presents to ensure that we are best placed to respond to rapidly changing customer and colleague expectations – so that we come back better and stronger than before. For our customers, this means ensuring their voices, ideas and interests continue to be reflected in everything we do. We are committed to ensuring wider diversity in our involved customer groups and we will make it even easier for our customers to share their opinions and shape the services we deliver through our Customer Services strategy. To help us with this work, we’re delighted to welcome Dr Nicola Millard, Principle Innovator at BT who will be joining us this week to discuss how we move good customer service to great customer service by focusing on people-centred customer experience and digital workplace innovation.
We have recently supported Andover Crisis and Support Centre by helping families during the Coronavirus outbreak by arranging emergency accommodation for a family in need. Aster organised for the family to move into a property when one of the children started showing symptoms of Coronavirus. The quick actions meant the family could self-isolate safely and protected other families and staff at the crisis centre. Staff also received a boost to the critical work they do after we donated six repurposed laptops after hearing about the difficulty staff were having using outdated computers. The Group will also be further supporting the Crisis Centre by providing training to staff around mental wellness and resilience. If you need support or would like to find out more about the Andover Crisis and Support Centre visit their website: http://www.andovercrisisandsupportcentre.org.uk/support/.
We have built more than 1,000 homes in 12 months for the second year running, giving almost 3,000 people access to new affordable housing. Over £210m has been invested with 1,067 completed houses in the year to the end of March 2020. 955 of these are affordable homes, with 524 for social and affordable rent and 431 for shared ownership. The remaining 112 were built for open market sale. Amanda Williams, Group development director at Aster Group, said: “Despite the impact of Covid-19 towards the end of the financial year, our development programme delivered strong results, including our highest ever sales of shared ownership homes.
Emma O’Shea has recently joined us as group customer services director and a member of the executive board. Emma joins us from Peabody Group, where she was director of asset and housing strategy. Her role at Aster will be to lead the new Customer Services directorate, further strengthening the Group’s strategic customer focus, transforming the way homes are managed and maintained. With more than 15 years’ experience in operational and strategic leadership roles, Emma has led several large-scale transformation programmes, creating long-term business sustainability and improving customer service and experience. This has included successfully overseeing the merger between Peabody and Family Mosaic, to strengthen its customer focus by coordinating repairs, housing and customer services.
Nominated for two awards from the Reward & Employee Benefits Association (REBA) ‘Most Effective Development to a Wellbeing Strategy’ and ‘Best Mental Wellbeing Strategy’. Members of the Employee Experience team were announced as winners of the ‘Best Mental Wellbeing Strategy’, the award recognises employers that have gone above and beyond to improving employee wellbeing and the culture of their organisation through their reward and benefits offerings. Of the win, Julie Cridland, health and wellbeing lead said “Since signing the Time to Change pledge over two years ago to help tackle the stigma still surrounding mental health, Aster has trained around 130 mental health first aiders within the company” Through other initiatives, as well as the Aster Foundation, the business is committed to continuing its investment in ensuring that not only does every colleague feel fully supported and able to talk openly about their mental health and any help they may need, but that its customers do too.
Housing associations, Aster Group and East Boro Housing Trust, (East Boro) have completed their partnership agreement. The new partnership will enable the two organisations to increase their capacity to build homes, invest in their communities and provide customers with increased efficiencies and an enhanced digital offer. Bjorn Howard, group CEO of Aster Group, said: “There are huge challenges facing the UK to improve the housing market to make it fairer, more efficient and more accessible. By joining together, we increase our ability to build more homes and invest further in our communities” Kevin Hodder, CEO of East Boro Housing Trust, added: “The aim of this new partnership is to play to the strengths of both organisations. I’m proud to say that East Boro’s strong brand and ethos will remain and continue to thrive with our customers remaining at heart of every decision we make. While customers and colleagues won’t see any immediate changes, the long-term improvements in their experience will be significant”
Aster Foundation is the work we do above our work as a landlord and developer. Our purpose is to invest in activities which enable local people in our communities to improve their own lives. Our new website shows the work we’re doing to enable local people to improve their own lives. There’s information around partnership working and how other organisations and businesses can get involved and support our work, and how we’re innovating with the Housing and Health Collective. We’re also introducing the six customer services that will underpin a lot of the work going forward, making it easy for both colleagues and customers to access. This includes the Into Work service which will see us work with our customers to help them find employment, including opportunities here at Aster, the Digital College which will help them learn new digital skills, the Financial Wellbeing service which will support customers to have a healthier relationship with money and access the benefits they’re entitled to.
Local students from Andover recently took part in our very first Work Experience Week. Pupils from Harrow Way Community School, John Hanson Community School and Winton Community Academy spent the week with us to find out more about Aster and the careers available within the housing sector. The week kicked off with a ‘bingo’ ice-breaker and ‘career speed dating’ session where the students had three minutes to talk to a range of colleagues from Group services. They heard about our work towards our vision of, everyone has a home and learnt more about the various housing options we offer, including rental properties, independent living schemes, open market and shared ownership. There were sessions around the importance of budgeting and how we support our customers to manage their money, what goes into the planning process and the development of a new site, and how to manage a successful marketing campaign.
Over 50 colleagues joined us at our recent Innovation Cafés in Devizes, Andover, Wareham, Poole and Wells, to share your thoughts and ideas on how we use our offices. Lots of you also got involved with the chat on the Employee Voice Hub, giving us lots of great ideas to take away and consider. We’ve shared all of your suggestions, feedback and ideas with the team who look after the Corporate Building Plan, the Facilities team and the Employee Experience team – you’ll be able to hear about some of the things that are going to be happening in response to your contributions next week.
