Case Study - Adullam Homes

Adullam Homes

The Challenge

Adullam Homes Housing Association Ltd was formed in 1972 by Walter Moore MBE, with the acquisition of a single home. Walter bought the house with his own money in response to God’s calling to work with homeless people.

Since 1972 Adullam Homes has expanded considerably and provides services that range from housing and resettlement to benefits advice employment skills and many more. All these services are based on a foundation of providing high quality accommodation ranging from hostels, self-contained flats, bedsits through to houses.

Until the last few years supported housing was considered to be a stable environment for planning and growth with considerable government commitment behind it. In recent years as a result of the macro economic climate changing and the government austerity measures change has come to this sector leading to a much less stable environment.

Instead of reliable funding enabling long term planning and investment the environment is now one of tendering for every contract. The competitive market place that the government has sought to create has lead to reduced fund being available and, in some cases, contracts being altered and funding reduced part way through.

All of the above has led the Senior Management team at Adullam Housing to take responsible actions to reduce costs. There has been a recent restructure at senior management and management levels followed by terms and conditions for all staff being altered.

In accordance with their Investors in People accreditation the Hr Director was concerned that the whole team could do with some support in dealing with change and remaining emotionally resilient during what looks like an inevitably continually changing environment ahead.

Calm People & Adullam senior management talked about possible options for supporting teams they settled on the following starting place for discussion –

• Essential Emotional Resilience Skills workshops for all staff
• Additional support for managers in identifying team members who need help and providing appropriate support.
• A separate intervention for Senior Management team to enable all other team members to participate in development with complete authenticity whilst developing the management team in its communication and engagement with each other.

The Solution

A comprehensive package of workshops was agreed that would impact upon every person in the organisatoin thus starting enabling a shared language of resilience and wellbeing throughout the organisation leading to real cultural change.

Essential Emotional Resilience for all front line staff and middle managers

A one day workshop dealing with core resilience subjects namely stress and self esteem delivered in an experiential workshop style.

Core content is as follows –

Stress

• Recognising it
• Its implications
• Where it comes from
• It’s impacts
• Stepping out of Stress – Our Unique 3 pronged strategy for dealing with and taking responsibility for stress in the short, medium and long term.

Self Esteem

• Understanding our emotional needs

• Understanding our coping mechanisms and behaviours

• Taking responsibility for our own needs

• Taking things personally
• Reversing negative programming

Commitment to action

Provided for approximately 177 front line staff and their managers this requires 15 one day workshops

Supporting others through Stress for middle managers

A one day workshop designed to equip managers with essential skills to support their team members in dealing with change.

Core content is as follows –

• Change and its impact on behaviours
• Spotting the signs
• What interventions are available
• Documenting interventions
• Making effective interventions
• Essential Coaching skills and practice.

Provided for approximately 25 staff this requires 2 one day workshops

Workshop for Senior Leaders – Improving Efficiency Through Honest Communication

A two day workshop which takes a team through a series of personal development sessions dealing with the key triggers for conflict such as stress, self esteem, criticisms and judgements and negative beliefs finally building to a model entitled “Clearing the air” where delegates learn to communicate anger and other feelings in a healthy way without hurting, shaming or blaming others.

This workshop works best with a 1 week to 10 day gap between day 1 and day 2 to enable assimilation of learning and review to maximise effectiveness.

Core content is as follows –

Day 1

• Understanding Anger including
• Triggers for conflict
• Self esteem
• Stress
• Criticisms and judgements

Day 2

• Dealing with emotions including
• Emotions & feelings
• Communicating feelings
• Healthy assertive communication – Clearing the Air
• Listening with empathy

• Commitments to implement learning including facilitated agreement of a contract of honest communication, challenge and support and clearing the air within the team.

A 2 day workshop provided for 13 senior team members

The Outcome

A series of workshops were run over a period of a month. The initial feedback from team members was very strong. A series of comments is below.

Evidence of all feedback can be provided on request.

“All of the material and exercises were useful. I think I will go on to use could/should and the steps out of the stress method. “

“I had a breakdown in November 2014. I am still struggling to get back to me, myself and I. The course has given me alternatives.”

“Every session was brilliant and helpful.”

“Thought provoking but extremely enjoyable. “

“Be prepared for challenge! Thanks Julian- I needed this more than you could’ve imagined. “

How do you measure impact?

Whenever an organisation buys into the Calm People way we ask if we can measure results after the workshops.

We are well aware of the halo effect that can cause positive feedback to be given at the end of a workshop on the delegate feedback forms. This coupled with the human desire not to offend the facilitator means that scores immediately after a workshop are not reliable other than for measuring the overall experience.

At Calm people, where organizations allows us, we survey delegates 3 months after the workshop across 11 statements which they score how they were pre and post workshop. This enables us to produce definable data and prove that their is more than simply a feel good factor to our work.

Outcome data – Taken 3 months after the workshops

The data below is based upon a scoring system of 1-10 with each delegate asked to give their score pr-workshop and post workshop for each statement. Even a 0.5 point improvement on a given area can be considered a strong. This provides effective gap improvement analysis, demonstrates value for money and also emphasises the long term effects of the workshop.

Sample 49 respondents out of 173

Return on investment

For emotional resilience work measuring a direct return on investment is difficult because other initiatives that are concurrently being run will have an impact on areas that improve. These workshops directly affect the following as demonstrated –

• Individual’s ability to deal with stress.
• Individual’s ability to take responsibility for their wellbeing
• Individual’s ability to deal with difficult emotions
• Individual’s self esteem

Other areas that are directly impacted by these workshops but in conjunction with other initiatives are –

• Absence & Illness
• Staff Turnover
• Employee morale and staff engagement

Further evidence of senior management buy in to the returns they see from these workshops is the fact that we are invited back each year to deliver more workshops to new starters