People Strategy

Purpose 

One Manchester is more than just a landlord. We provide good quality homes, great services and real opportunities for our customers and communities. 

Vision 

Our vision is to create inclusive, connected, and sustainable places where people can thrive and live well. 

The Best Team 

Our people are at the HEART of everything we do. To create the best team to deliver the best service to our customers, it’s important that One Manchester is a great place to work and has a competitive people offer. 

Our aim is to create an inspiring and rewarding working environment built on trust where colleagues feel safe, listened to and valued and able to perform at their best. We aspire to have a culture that celebrates Equality, Diversity and Inclusion where everyone is able to be their true selves and supported to explore, learn, grow and help shape our future. 

Our People Strategy for 2024-25 supports the delivery of One Manchester’s corporate plan, and links our people activities to the needs of our organisation, colleagues and customers through four overarching people promises: Culture; Reward and recognition; Leadership and talent development; and Listening and learning. 

Ultimately, we want everyone to feel proud to work for us and to be committed to delivering the best service and making a positive difference to our customers and communities. 

Our key priorities are presented in appendix A. 

Culture: Creating a culture that everyone can be proud of. 

We strive to create a culture that everyone is proud to be part of where we all feel engaged, connected, and committed to delivering great customer service. We will ensure our values and positive behaviours are at the HEART of our organisation and everything we do. We recognise the importance of creating a diverse and inclusive culture where colleagues can thrive and bring their true selves to work, to enable us to be representative of the communities we operate in. 

We will achieve this by:

• embedding our values and behaviours through the colleague lifecycle: 
  • recruitment, onboarding, and induction; 
  • ensuring our people policies and procedures are in line with best practice; 
• updating and implementing our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and action plan;
• crafting and communicating a compelling story to share and connect with colleagues; 
• developing and building on a performance-driven culture;
• introducing One Manchester’s new tone of voice;
• launching and implementing an Internal Communications Strategy;
• launching and embedding agile working;
• creating opportunities for colleagues to get together;
• regular 1 to 1’s with line managers;
• introducing 360-degree feedback; 
• facilitating open culture feedback. 

Reward and recognition: Offering a comprehensive package to attract and retain the best talent. 

It’s important that our colleagues feel appreciated and are fairly rewarded for the work they do. That’s why we want to offer a total rewards package that’s competitive and of value, and create more opportunities for recognition. 

We will achieve this by: 

• implementing a job evaluation framework;
• reviewing our benefits offer;
• promote our health and wellbeing offer; 
• launching a new performance framework;
• introducing a recognition framework; 
• recognising colleagues through awards;
• communicate through a total rewards statement; 
• reviewing salary structures. 

Listening and learning: Having a meaningful voice that makes a positive difference for our customers and colleagues. 

We will encourage colleagues to share their views and opinions and enable them to have a meaningful voice through a variety of colleague networks. We expect colleagues to use their voices to help shape our services for customers and enhance our colleague experience. It’s important to us that colleagues are involved in our decision-making, and we are open and transparent about what we do. 

We will achieve this by: 

• continuing our People Pulse survey and turning the insights into positive action;
• maintaining our Colleague Voice, Inc. and Colleague Coalition groups;
• creating new communications channels that are fit for purpose and give colleagues a choice of how to share their views;
• implementing a new colleague intranet that is easy to use with up to date and relevant content; 
• ensuring that we continue to benchmark ourselves against other Housing Association and organisations within greater Manchester. 

Leadership and talent development: Empowering our colleagues to be the best they can be at work, both now and in the future. 

We will grow our own leaders and develop our talent by supporting colleagues to be the best they can be at work, both now and in the future. We aim to develop more diverse leaders and teams through apprenticeships, succession planning, mentoring and future leadership programmes. We aim to provide purposeful work, lifelong learning opportunities and facilitate open and honest conversations about performance and personal development. 

We will achieve this by: 

• improving our recruitment experience for both hiring managers and candidates;
• enhancing our learning and development offer: o leadership development programmes;
  • pre-promotional managerial training; 
  • a Training Academy initially for our Neighbourhoods and Contact Resolution Centre and Repairs teams; 
• creating engaging learning material;
• offering opportunities for apprentices and work experience students; 
• offering mentoring programmes that inspire and motivate colleagues;
• supporting professional training and development through qualifications memberships and accreditation;
• implementing talent management approaches and succession planning. 

People metrics: Using data to make insightful and meaningful decisions 

We will maintain our focus on business performance and growth through our people by monitoring our people measures to ensure that we keep on track holding individuals and teams to account for the roles they play. 

We will achieve this by: 

People measurements