Welcome John Smith; before you start I would like to inform you about the Homes organisation. Homes is an Arm’s Length Management Organisation (ALMO), set up Enfield Council in April 2008 to manage its homes and improve housing services. The agreement is due to end in July, all housing services will then be returned to Enfield council. Maintain how many homes?

Homes Services, Goals/Vision & Main Customers
Homes offers rented accommodation to people facing homelessness, single mothers, immigrants and various retirement living projects such as xxxxxxxxx. Depending of the conditions of the person/family needing support Homes offers flat, houses, bungalows and various ‘support housing ‘schemes. Our primary service is to provide tenants with affordable, safe and well maintained homes.

Our main customers are our existing and potential tenants.

Homes mission is to provide its tenants with quality homes, excellent services and successful communities. The mission statement captures our ambition to go beyond our currently defined role as a provider of excellent services and prudent assess management and to play a major role as community leader in improving the lives of our residents.
Homes vision is to:
• Create a clean and safe environment
• Keep homes maintained to a high standard
• Offer value for money for services provided
• Offer homes and services in which tenants, leaseholders, staff and all stakeholders take pride.

Our vision recognises the central role that our customers play in driving Homes forward; the requirement to use their money effectively and their desire for us to deliver services that meet the needs and standards.

External Factors and their impact on Homes
The organisation has recently undertaken a PESTLE analysis to identify some external factors that may impact the company. After completing the PESTLE analysis the following four factors have been identified:

Welfare Reform
The Welfare Reform is a political factor which will affect Homes when It comes into place. The Government has changed the way housing benefits are paid. Currently if a tenant receives housing benefits the rent is paid directly from the local authority straight to us, this erases any possibility that rent may be unpaid. From July 2013 all benefits will be paid via one lump sum to the tenant themselves, the tenant will have a responsibility to pay Homes the rent each month themselves. The is also a £500 benefit cap that will come into place for each household. This is guaranteed to create rent arrears from our tenants causing a decrease in our income and more time consumed for our staff chasing payments. To help overcome this Homes have established a Welfare Reform Information Team (WRIT) to help customers prepare for the changes. The WRIT will provide tenants with information about how to pay their rent, how to manage budgets and what happens if they fail to pay or make a late payment.

Technological
This is a technological factor with the introduction of the Welfare Reform we are expecting our sites to become very busy over the coming weeks, especially in July when the changes will take place. Homes & Enfield Council have introduced a way of making rent payments online, Self-service machines have also been introduced to our sites in Edmonton, Ponders End & Enfield Town; with the aim to ensure that queues and waiting times are kept to a minimal. All sites will have dedicated staff on the floor to respond to any queries the general public may have and also to assist with the use of the new technological systems in place.

The Economy
The country’s economic downturn continues more and more businesses suffer. Naturally, as business suffers they close down and downsize which means increasing unemployment. Enfield council has an employment level above the London average, the national unemployment average is 8.4%, Enfield has an unemployment rate of 11% and rising. This results in more people and families needing Housing benefits, this has result in an increase of enquiries from potential tenants. To cope with the increase, more staff has been employed and as above new technology has been introduced.

Multi-Cultural Community
This is a social factor which currently affects Homes sites and will continue. The London Borough of Enfield is a very ethnically diverse community. A large proportion of Homes Tenants are not British which means we have a responsibility to ensure that support and information is available to everyone. We continue to create brochures translated into several languages, our website pages are available to be translated to over 60 languages and this continues to grow. Upon request we will provide translators within our own staff and hire some agency in.

Structure of Homes & Functions within
Homes has a tall hierarchical structure; from the bottom of the structure chart to the top each member of staff has a direct line manager. There are four main services within the organisation within them contains more several functions. The general function includes, HR, LD, Customer Service, IT, Business Improvement, Welfare Reform Information Team & Community Engagement. Finance and resources which included payments team. Housing operations includes, communal services, income collection, leasehold services, sheltered housing, anti-social behavioural response. Finally the technical and property services which includes AIDS & adaptions, Asset management, Clerk of works, maintenance services.

Functions working together
An example of two functions working together is Customer service and Sheltered Housing. When a tenant is finding it difficult to manage in their present accommodation, but would like to keep living there they inform the customer service desk at Homes, the Sheltered Housing scheme team provide support and an alarm service for older and/or vulnerable people in a safe environment where resident can live independently and take part in social and community activities.

Another example is the Resident Liaison team which as you would expect liaise regularly with tenants so they will be aware of any anti-social behavioural issues that may not have been reported for whatever reason. The issues will then be sent to the ASBR team (Anti-Social Behaviour Response Team) to solve quickly and efficiently.

A further example is the Maintenance Surveyors, when the maintenance Surveyors survey properties they might report and fault with the property that the tenants has either not noticed or just ignored. When they find a fault they will then report it to the Health & Safety and Mechanical Engineer team to act upon the fault accordingly.

A final example is with the Learning & Development team; with legislation constantly being updated it is the learning & developments responsibility to provide training for the changes. For example with the Welfare Reform legislation that will be put in place the Customer Service team has been on training set up by the L & D team to ensure that they are able to answer any queries that will inevitably come their way.

Homes Culture
With Homes being a relatively large organisation with over 25 teams performing specific roles within the community, it has a ‘role culture’. A role culture is a culture which people’s activities are strongly influenced by clear and detailed job descriptions and other formal signals as to what is expected of them.
In a role culture organisation each job role as its own tasks which are clearly outlined in the job description. Each employee is made aware of what is expected of them, it is not uncommon for an organisation to include targets that need to be met in staff reviews.
There are many ways in which the culture of an organisation can affect its operations, below are two examples of how the culture affects Homes.

Recruitment Procedure
When a job vacancy becomes available in any team within Homes they are always advertised internally to the whole of Enfield Council before anywhere else. This gives the existing staff within the Council an opportunity to progress. This is why staff turnover is low which is why there is an ageing workforce within the council which is currently being assessed. If the Internal applicants are not deemed suitable for the role advertised then the vacancy will be advertised externally on job recruitment websites and in local newspapers. If a specialist person who is not in the council needed for a specific role then the first stage of recruitment can be bypassed and advertised externally straight away. We follow a procedure of a written online application, followed by shortlisting. Shortlisting is completed by selecting the candidates who have met the requirements of the role and have the skills and experience to suit the vacancy. The shortlist candidates are then interviewed and answer further questions to see which candidate would best suit the role.
Decision Making Process
As Homes has a tall hierarchical structure when decisions need to be made operational staff are the people who will act to resolve the problems. When major decision need to be made there are processes that have to be followed. The management team at Homes meet once a month at an external venue and any major decisions will be flagged up there. For example within Homes if a training programme is being discussed about being produced the management will need to discuss at the meeting and forward to the appropriate staff at a higher hierarchical level.

Learning & Development in Homes
The Learning & Development (L&D) team within Homes is linked with the Learning & Development team within Enfield Council. Training needs of Homes staff are met by the L&D team within Enfield Council.
• One of Homes aims is to ‘provide quality homes’ in order to achieve this all Mechanical Engineers who perform repairs and maintenance are trained to the highest level. The L&D team keep the engineers trained by through tout the year commissioning training courses related to their job, each course is made mandatory and needs to be completed each year.
• The L&D team also run a number of Professional Development training courses specifically for Homes staff. For example a ‘Understanding & Applying HHSRS’ course was run by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) for Housing staff to meet the decent homes standards with the new legislation. When any changes of law or legislation change then briefing/training sessions will be commissioned to train staff so that they can help the public with any queries from an informed platform.
• A final key way that the L&D team supports the organisation at the current time is succession planning, as I had mentioned before in the organisations culture the Council has a very high average age. As an organisation we are currently in the process of restricting and building for the future, we are doing this by encouraging teams to take on apprentices, since the beginning of 2011 more than 200 apprentices have been taken on by the council; in theory the apprenticeship scheme will build for the future of the organisation and help the councils young people’s unemployment percentages decrease.

Learning & Development Supporting Line Managers
The Learning & Development professionals support line managers in many ways, below are three of them.
• L&D professionals work with all staff across Homes and the Council. For example a Housing specialist is currently carrying out a needs analysis on Homes, this has helped identify training that staff have required; project management, complaint & abuse handling, allocation, coping with change and stress management courses have been provided to assist the teams.
• The L&D team run reports of training elearning and face to face training to staff managers, the reports can be tailored to each line managers needs but generally contain training records of the staff in the team and courses which needs to be attended but hasn’t been by some staff
• Finally L&D support line managers by holding a session with all managers before the start of the year to gain the operational staff opinions on what training may be required throught the year. If legislation is due to be changed sessions will also be arranged for line managers so that they can inform their staff.