Our work as People Development Advisors
We find intuitive ways to encourage our people to want to grow professionally and personally.
We work closely with different departments to understand what their individual and collective needs are; wellbeing and stress management are always high on our agenda, so we always seek ways to incorporate these themes into our delivery of programmes, alongside professional development opportunities.
We always look to provide opportunities for our colleagues who want to progress to another position within the business; ensuring they are supported with a toolkit of learning opportunities. Learning isn’t always a linear process so we ensure our people have transferable skills which will aid them in future roles. This is why we always listen to our colleagues through our Staff Forum and the Peakon Survey; looking at where we need to focus.
Get Curious
Get Curious is a new programme of inspiring talks that has been developed in association with our Chief Executive and Staff Forum. We know that people engage with evening and weekend sessions led by speakers who can share their knowledge and wisdom, and we wanted to introduce that into our work climate. We want to move away from the idea that it’s a traditional training session and instead encourage people to get curious about different topics.
The seminars will involve both internal and external speakers meaning that we can mix up the content and give colleagues a platform to share their areas of expertise with us, Sessions can cover anything from wellbeing and healthy eating to autism awareness. We’ve prescribed these first sessions as a pilot, but we want people to subscribe to them. To ensure this, we’ve gone out into the business to hear from people about what they want to learn, so it’s very much based on demand.
Challenges in the sector
The housing sector is fluid; our colleagues are always on the move, so we need to engage people accordingly. We aim to offer a combination of face-to-face and remote tools to ensure we are reaching as many people around the business as possible.
As we shift more towards digital toolkits, we see that while there are lots of opportunities to take hold of, we continue to study how we can integrate them into our work and help us to deliver our initiatives.
To make it easy for our colleagues to learn and develop in the way that they want to, it’s on us to curate the information that is available. It’s about making things attractive and easy to use, and that’s why Get Curious is important.
Striving for a social learning culture
Change is inevitable in any walk of life, especially in work, so keeping up to date with developments in the sector is integral. We must embed a social learning culture in our business. It’s not just about what we as a team can offer people, it’s about what colleagues can offer each other.
People Development Advisor