Stonewater

In our last Podcast episode of 2024, I am delighted to introduce you to Cordelia Johnney, award winning, Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion from Stonewater, a leading social housing provider. This episode is a must listen and please share with anyone who truly cares about ED&I but who is struggling to see the shifts in their selves, team and organisation, Cordelia takes us through a journey from an initiative that didn't quite cut it, said all the right things but didn't see the change to that of thought leadership and significant cultural transformation. Cordelia joined me fresh from parliament and after some very significant wins for both herself and her team at the Ethnicity Awards. Cordelia was was recognised as one of the top ten individuals in the exceptional inclusion category and Stonewater were recognised as a top ten employer. 👏 Cordelia talks openly about her own journey, which includes coming to terms about her own complex disabilities as an employee and individual and how Stonewater’s approach to EDI is rooted in authenticity, allyship, and continuous learning. "EDI is not just a responsibility of the individual who's got EDI in their job title. It's the responsibility of everybody within the organisation. From your board, all the way down to the last person you recruited" From breaking down barriers for employees with disabilities to fostering a culture where people can bring their whole selves to work, Stonewater’s journey is an inspiring example of what’s possible when inclusion becomes a strategic priority. Thank you to Cordelia again for her time and shares. Catch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/eA7RBbby #Inclusion #Equality #Diversity #Leadership #EDI #WorkplaceCulture #StonewaterHousing #TheImpactRoom

I was delighted to see Keir Starmer continue to provide the sector with assurances that housing remains at the heart of his Government’s priorities in his speech in Buckinghamshire.   While the target to build 1.5million homes in this Parliament is not new, the Prime Minister addressed the scale of the task facing his government and providers in delivering these homes.   We warmly welcome the new announcement that there will be fast-tracked planning decisions on at least 150 major economic infrastructure projects, more than double the number decided in the previous Parliament – a real statement of intent.   The speech comes as we eagerly await the upcoming changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, which Starmer again confirmed will be published by the end of the year. We hope our recommendations made during consultation, which you can read below, will be included.   It was also good to see the Prime Minister pledge to deliver investment and diversify the housebuilding system by working, and partnerships, with housebuilders, local leaders and infrastructure developers.   Partnerships lie at the heart of Stonewater’s ambitious development plans and are key to delivering more homes for those who need them most.   Another notable announcement for Stonewater was the target to raise living standards in the UK by driving innovation while helping people stay in work. I hope this will be realised, giving people the long-term certainty that they can afford a warm, comfortable home.   At Stonewater, we look forward to helping the Government deliver its missions on behalf of our customers and those who need safe, warm and affordable homes. #AffordableHomes #HouseBuilder #NewHomes #UKHousing

It’s been a year since Stonewater launched Stonewater.org, so we are putting our new website through its ‘MOT’ to see how it’s running for customers, as well as thinking about where we could take it next. The new platform hosts sleek, customer-tested navigation and IA, updated search and filters, colour psychology to engage with our visitors on an emotional level, and authentic customer and colleague imagery to showcase who we are as an organisation and bring our content to life.    Having now put our analytics against our original objectives, we’re delighted with how it measures up. ·       Stonewater.org now loads in less than one second, so much faster that the old site. ·       We’ve seen a year-on-year increase in customers being able to find information about repairs. Our Repairs and maintenance page is a top 10 performing page with a massive 92% engagement rate. ·       And there’s a clear increase in the number of customers being able to find information to resolve other queries – engagement with our top visited pages averages between 70% and 90%, and the average engagement rate for the whole website has increased by 46% overall. ·       The new Get support section of the website has had 33,000 visits and an engagement rate of 77.19%, with users easily accessing the content through organic search via Google or another search engine. ·       Our customer portal, MyHome, is now easier to access from the website. We’ve had 11,000 clicks on MyHome links from the homepage in the past year as we support customers to self-serve digitally when they can. ·       Our user journeys are shorter, with more users accessing and completing our contact form directly from the search results or direct from our homepage. ·       Users are finding us more easily via search engines, too, with the website getting 175% more clicks from Google searches.  ·       We rank first page on organic Google search for phrases around “Rent to Buy” and “general support”, as well as for the phrase “Stonewater”.  Stonewater.org keeps performing through the support of our specialist content editors in the business, trained and empowered to keep their own sections of the website up to date. This has reduced the time taken to introduce new functionality and update pages. Meanwhile, we also benefit from the specialist knowledge and support of the team at manifesto, who’ve helped us reduce the time taken for bug fixes, as well as any major technical changes, and SEO and design wizards at Cavendish. By analysing the website data weekly, implementing extra tracking for key buttons and areas of the website to ensure users are able to access key pieces of information easily, we’ve kept our customers front and centre of the work we do on site. One year in, we’re about to set the targets for next year – all based on data and customer feedback, as well as business need. We’re excited to see where we can go next.