Our updated strategic objectives

The world and our environment have continued to change at pace. While the impact of Brexit, building safety and the climate emergency have continued to grow and dominate, we are now dealing with a global pandemic. At the same time, we are responding to expectations for better engagement and transparency with residents. As a result, we’ve updated our strategic objectives to reflect this changing context and our renewed priorities as a business.

Our social purpose and mission remain the same. The new objectives are similar to our existing five strategic objectives but clearer about what we want to achieve. We’ve also maintained a measure of performance against each objective, which in most cases we’ve redefined.

Our revised strategic objectives

Increasing the number of homes for people in housing need

Previously ‘Maximising growth within our resources’. We set a new target to start a minimum of 1,000 affordable homes by March 2023 with an ambition to do more if market conditions and grant funding allow. This better articulates what we are trying to achieve and reflects our drive to build quality affordable homes in the right places, that stand the test of time. The measure focuses on affordable homes built rather than overall numbers.

Increasing our financial resilience

We’ve changed ‘Increasing financial strength’ to Increasing our financial resilience – increasing our operating margin year-on-year. The measure is improving operating margin, rather than a set target. To fulfil our social purpose to our current and future residents we need to be able to operate for the long-term. Our financial resilience - our ability to stand strong in the face of external pressures – is key to this.

Delivering reliable resident services

We’ve updated ‘Delivering first class customer service’ to Delivering reliable resident services - resident satisfaction of at least 90%. It’s important we set realistic expectations with our residents along with the desire for reliability that has been consistently expressed by them. It’s also a move away from the term ‘customer’ which does not reflect the legal position with most residents, and which is a term we know many residents don’t identify with. The measure remains as a 90% satisfaction target.

Building a great organisation

This objective remains the same, but we’ve changed the measure to focus on our people’s pride in working for Network Homes, instead of a Best Companies engagement score. We’ve set a target that at least 87% of our colleagues feel proud to work for Network Homes.

Strengthening residents’ trust in us

This is a new objective we added earlier this year. We’re currently working on a baseline trust score and the performance measure will be to improve this by 10% year on year. Our focus for this objective is about being transparent, open and honest in all our conversations with residents. It’s about communicating better, more often and keeping our promises to deliver the basic principle of trust.

We’re committed to supporting residents to live in a safe, secure and affordable home. We also want to ensure the organisation and our homes stand the test of time so we can provide affordable homes for future generations. These revised objectives will give us the clarity and focus to successfully achieve what’s best for our business, our people and the residents who live in our homes.