About Peabody housing association
Peabody is one of the UK’s oldest not-for-profit housing associations. In April 2023, a merger between Catalyst Housing and Peabody was finalised, bringing over 4,000 employees, 108,000 homes and 22,000 residents together under the Peabody name.
Together, the organisation aims to better serve the communities in which it operates while ensuring residents remain at the heart of every decision. Offering well-designed homes and vital care and support services, Peabody strives to create vibrant communities where people can flourish.
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The challenge
The months following the merger brought significant change to existing teams and structures. The transition to a much bigger organisation, paired with the internal and external demands on colleagues, impacted employee engagement and culture, according to Carl Byrne, director of transformation at Peabody.
“The work to bring the two organisations together required significant time and resource. While this commanded the leadership team’s focus, our colleagues voiced that their day-to-day experience was being overlooked somewhat. They didn’t feel sufficient attention and consideration was being given to the practical changes that mattered to them and our residents and wanted to see these issues bought to the fore.”
With this in mind, Peabody set out to address the budding challenges and help create a cohesive culture post-merger.
The solution
Carl and the team started by engaging the leadership team of executives and directors, followed by all the organisation’s 800 managers, in face-to-face sessions to learn more about their experiences and challenges.
“While we were all very much on the same page with the direction we want to take Peabody, the consensus was that we also needed to recognise and celebrate the incredible team and talent we have,” said Carl. “We identified a need to bring everyone together physically and help everyone develop a greater understanding of one another through a team building activity.”
Peabody’s customer experience agency, SignalCX, recommended Team Tactics after another client of theirs had spoken highly of their team building experience. Introductions were made and it was determined that the Bigger Picture event, which challenges teams to work collaboratively to recreate a large work of art, would be a good fit for the housing association and the brief.
While a proportion of Peabody’s team carries out office-based support functions like finance and HR, most of the workforce is made up of operational caretakers, grounds maintenance, housing managers, repairs, and care staff, who support people and places in a wide variety of ways. Carl and the team wanted to ‘cut out the stuffiness’ of big corporate strategic events. Instead, the focus was on bringing people together, giving them an interesting collaborative challenge, and making the day fun and entertaining.
While Peabody had carried out large team events over the preceding months, bringing together 3,200 employees across the organisation was a challenge on another scale altogether. And, with less than two months to pull the event together, Peabody required many employees to take on responsibilities in addition to their day job.
Carl said, “We had some dedicated resource but the majority of people who made Bigger Picture happen were those in full-time roles focusing on other areas. Our assistant director of technology was coordinating the transport, while our culture and organisational development lead was assisting people with additional needs to get to the venue. It was a mammoth logistical feat, and they all played a huge role. This was a big win in itself, uniting colleagues behind a shared mission was a big morale boost and allowed us to demonstrate our teamwork and values.”
The event was split across two days, with four lots of 800 employees working together on the task at a time. Teams were tasked with recreating a section of a larger piece of artwork on smaller canvases and had to communicate carefully with other teams to ensure their sections would align correctly. The Bigger Picture was a bright, vibrant housing and community scene, and at the end of the allotted time, each team’s canvas was assembled in a giant frame for the grand reveal.
“On the day itself, there was a sense that you couldn’t distinguish between Team Tactics and our colleagues. They were all really friendly, mucking in and making things happen,” commented Carl. “The simplicity of the exercise in itself was excellent. Some colleagues felt daunted by the idea of painting or drawing at first, but Team Tactics quickly deformalised it and made it fun, which helped make participants feel comfortable to get stuck in.”
Results
The Bigger Picture events ran smoothly across the two days and received positive feedback from Peabody employees, with most scoring it fours and fives out of five.
“Employee feedback was that they enjoyed seeing other colleagues and the informality of being together. There’s an intrinsic value to that time together that’s often underestimated. Many of our colleagues don’t have an office environment or set working location, and for them it was especially enjoyable. We hadn’t held an event like this for three or four years, so Bigger Picture was a valuable team building opportunity not just post-merger, but post-COVID.”
An employee survey showed an increase of 4% in engagement since the event, and the positive direction of travel has been recognised and echoed around the team. There have been increases in colleagues’ scoring of their pride to work for the organisation, the extent they feel their voices are being listened to, and how far they see a future working with Peabody.
“While it’s still early days, the results are very positive. Colleagues are saying they feel more listened to and heard, which we see as a vital foundation to go on and improve other areas,” said Carl.
“We’ve brought certain teams together to identify where processes and responsibilities were crossing over and introduced more intuitive workflows and structures. This is not only important to improve experiences for the team, but it also aligns with our overall mission to work with residents, provide the support they need, and do the right thing.”
“We’ve had some strong commitments about ways of working and how we’ll value colleagues’ workload and wellbeing. Everyone is on board with the vision, and we need to make sure we’re following through with it and holding ourselves accountable.”
