Meeting the Competence and Conduct Standard

Thank you to everyone who's shared feedback about the work we've been doing to meet the new Competence and Conduct Standard which went live today.

At Leeds Federated, we have a Colleague Circle to highlight and help track the behaviours we want colleagues to meet. We've used feedback from colleagues and customers as part of the consultation around the Competence and Conduct Standard to refresh our Colleague Circle and make sure it includes the right behaviours. This includes feedback from customer surveys and conversations, as well as from complaints and Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs).

Here's a copy of our refreshed Colleague Circle:

We're always looking for ways to do things better, so if you notice behaviours missing from the Colleague Circle that you'd like us to meet, or have improvements to suggest, you can complete this short survey at any point to let us know.

In a survey earlier this year, we asked customers to share words that describe how they wanted to be treated when they get in touch with us. The three words most commonly suggested by customers were fairness, respect and kindness.

Today, we held our annual learning conference with colleagues and chose to focus the theme around fairness, respect and kindness. During the day, we looked at what fairness, respect and kindness mean for colleagues and how they show those behaviours in their work - from exploring how excellent communications and customer service feel to considering what fair services looks like.

In October, the new Professionalisation, Competence and Conduct Standard comes into force. The work we've shared on this page so far supports the Competence and Conduct aspect of the Standard which is about embedding the right culture, behaviours and continuous professional development across the organisation.

The Professionalisation aspect of the Standard is about ensuring people in certain roles have specific skills and qualifications. We have 3 years to fully meet this aspect of the Standard.

To prepare for the new Standard coming in, we've developed an overarching policy to make sure we have oversight of both aspects of the Standard in one place.

Earlier this week, Megan Henderson, Head of Corporate Services, took the Policy to the Customer Voices Panel for review and feedback. You can read the presentation Megan gave to the Customer Voices Panel here.

Following the presentation, Megan opened the session up for a Q&A. In summary, the Panel asked:

Q. Have the cost implications associated with the Professionalisation aspect impacted services to customers?

A. While the Professionalisation aspect of the Standard has increased costs, we've tried to use the budget we already have to deliver the study requirements. This means we've put some new training requests on hold if they aren't a requirement under the Professionalisation aspect.

Q. Will everything be in place for the new Standard coming in?

A. Yes. Over the 2 years, we've been working in the background to get everything ready.

Q. What constitutes consultation with customers and what has happened so far?

A. To help us develop our work around the new Standard, we've:

• run a Time to Talk session about the Competence and Conduct apect of the Standard (Time to Talk was a monthly online session where a colleague led a presentation on a particular topic and customers could share real-time feedback)
• taken relevant updates and documents to the Customer Voices Panel for review and comment
• created this page on Your Voice to keep customers updated and invite feedback
• asked for direct feedback from customers about our Colleague Circle and behaviours when they phoned our Contact Centre

The Panel added that they were pleased to see what we'd put in place to support the Standard and how thoroughly we'd responded to it.

We've now completed our customer survey - thank you to everyone who took part!

During the survey, we explained that we were reviewing our organisational values and behaviours to ensure they reflect what's important to you. We asked what words describe how you want to be treated when you get in touch with us.

69 customers shared their feedback which we've summarised in the following wordcloud:

From the survey, fairness, respect and kindness were the words most commonly suggested by customers.

What will happen next?

• We're going to take the words fairness, respect and kindness forward to shape a new version of our current Colleague Circle, which we use to inform and track the culture of the organisation. We'll share the new version of our Colleague Circle on this page when we launch it in October.
• We'll also be focusing on the words fairness, respect and kindness at our learning conference for colleagues later this year.