Member Article

Housing staff and customers improve customer service

Staff and customers from Together Housing Group (THG) have attended a disability equality awareness training course to understand more about disability and delivering a more inclusive and accessible service in their communities.

The bespoke training, which is tailored specifically for housing sector organisations, outlines five different areas of disability such as physical disabilities, mental health, learning disabilities, ranges of deafness/communication methods and blindness/partial sight.

The course was delivered in two half-day sessions by award winning workplace training and consultancy company, HearFirst. As part of THG’s commitment to raise awareness and improve customer service, the training was delivered during National Customer Services Week.

The practical, hands-on course is facilitated by tutors who themselves have a disability which adds relevance and depth to the training. The course is designed to help staff and customers feel more confident and professional when working and dealing with people who have disabilities.

Julie Ryder, Director and Founder of HearFirst, said: “We have delivered this course to a number of housing providers across the country and continue to receive positive feedback from delegates. There is more emphasis on organisations to deliver inclusive and accessible services and as Together Housing Group provides a housing service to over 50,000 people in some very diverse communities, this training will help them to achieve their vision of offering customers consistently brilliant services.”

“Many of the participants had a good understanding of some areas of disability through their own experiences but the training helped to broaden their knowledge on a wider range of disabilities and helped them to understand how decisions made by the Tenant Scrutiny Group might impact other tenants in their communities.

“The duration of the training course is one full day however, to meet the needs of our client and accommodate concerns about the length of the training and to minimise the impact on their day-to-day jobs, we re-structured the full day sessions into two half days, which was very well received by staff and tenants.

“National Customer Services Week is about improving customer service so what better way to do this then customers and staff learning together in a friendly, productive and dynamic environment.”

Following the successful delivery of the training, one of the delegates suggested that the changes the organisation could make as a result of the training is to be more aware of customer needs and looks at ways they can improve this while another delegate said the training helped them to be more aware of unseen disabilities and act accordingly.

Mandy Hooson, Tenant Involvement Officer at THG organised the training for staff and customers. She said: “In June this year I had some members from Pennine Housing Tenants groups attend the Understanding Deafness Course run by HearFirst. Everyone who attended was so impressed with the training they received, they asked me if it would be possible for them to attend some more training on other disabilities.

“HearFirst tailored the training to suit the needs of the delegates and everyone who attended found the course very informative and have said it will help them within their roles in their Tenants Groups.”

Tenant and secretary of her local tenants’ association, Val Barker from Mixenden in Halifax attended the training and said: “This is the second HearFirst training course I have attended and I have been very impressed with both. They have both been very useful and helped to raise awareness about disability, which I will now feed back to the rest of the group. One of the key factors I learnt is to talk to the person and communicate to find out what help, if any, they need and how we can improve their customer experience.”

THG manages 37,000 homes across the North of England and comprises of seven companies including Chevin Housing Association, Green Vale Homes, Harewood Housing Society Limited, Housing Pendle, Newground Together, Pennine Housing 2000 and Twin Valley Homes.

HearFirst provides a full range of equality and diversity training courses to organisations across the UK. For more information on deaf, disability awareness and BSL training, please contact Julie at HearFirst on 01706 872 816 or visit www.hearfirst.org.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by HearFirst .