Delivering Southern Housing’s merger – a balance of pace and risk

Governance

Our board is drawn from pre-existing board members of legacy businesses. We’re currently finalising the recruitment and appointment to our resident strategy group, and to the resident scrutiny groups we are establishing. There’s some work to do yet, as we look to rationalise our group structure.

Our integration programme is overseen by a sub-committee of our board, and we have a whole new set-up of planning and delivery management to support the scale and pace of change we’re looking to deliver.

Strategy and policy

Our new corporate strategy is now online, and through workshops we are supporting colleagues to think about how they embed strategic objectives into their personal objectives for the year ahead. Our next step will be the development of operational plans at the department level to ensure the whole business is pulling in the same direction. 

We identified a list (53!) of business-critical policies for merger legal completion, and delivered these with engagement from colleagues and residents. We’ve still got work to do to consolidate all policies, many of which will be carried out as part of our integration programme as it delivers people, systems, process and data integration over the next 30 months.

People and communication

Executive and director-level posts were appointed ahead of merger, which ensured clarity and accountability right from the off. We were able to draw on internal talent for the vast majority of these roles.

Our ambition is for all colleagues to go through a people change process and move onto our new improved terms and conditions over the course of this year. Colleagues are aware of the timetable, and so far things are progressing well.

We consulted colleagues ahead of merger on the development of our shared values: honesty, efficiency, accountability, respect and trustworthy (‘HEART’). These are now underpinning customer service training, which all colleagues are going through, including us.

Communication of our integration programme continues to evolve, drawing on the input of our ‘sounding board’, a group of engaged colleagues that make sure we get communication right.

Technology

We’ve been through an appraisal of our key business and resident-facing applications, and our core IT infrastructure. This process has weighed up a wide range of factors including: colleagues’ views, residents’ views, cost, integration with other systems, cyber security, complexity, functionality etc. At the end of March we delivered a view on our end state once business integration is concluded.

Hundreds of colleagues and residents were involved and we now have a pretty good picture of where things will end up, and a timetable to go with it. Over the year ahead we’ll be focusing on our housing management and asset management systems, together with the principal systems used by finance and HR. Our CRM, repairs and resident-facing systems will follow, together with various systems ancillary to the large ones. All underpinned by our new cyber security strategy.

Only in a few cases have we decided to ‘greenfield’ and go for a new product rather than something already in use by either legacy business. These are all resident-facing systems and in direct response to feedback from residents and colleagues.

Over the next 30 months we will deliver a significantly improved technology offering for residents while building a platform for some exciting future transformation to explore new technologies and ways of working.

Data

With one of our legacy businesses on a ‘G2’, we’re determined to ensure good data is the rock on which we build our systems and processes. Each department in the business is producing a data assurance plan to support system integration and embed best data practice.

Preparation for systems integration is starting with process mapping and all things data. We’re looking at data models, data hierarchies, mapping data fields between old and new, assessing data quality and a data cleanse (via a Marie Kondo mindset), alongside data retention and data archive planning.

Processes and design 

Understanding how we work now and how we will work in future is essential to successful system roll-outs and to ensuring clarity and ownership of customer journeys and the business processes that enable them. As we go through this integration process, we’re picking up a wide range of ideas for future incremental improvements – because this integration phase is just the start of a longer-term business transformation to put residents at the heart of everything we do.

To conclude…

We have a plan. No doubt it will change as things progress.

Underpinning it all is the commitment to managing change for our residents and colleagues in the most transparent and constructive way possible, while moving at pace and not taking on unnecessary risks.  

Wish us luck!

Tom Paul, executive director of strategy and change, and Paula Steel, head of digital strategy and delivery, Southern Housing