Over 150 staff members of Kingdom Housing Association attended its annual study day which began with a motivational speech from a speaker who went from being a homeless rough sleeper to an award winning businessman.
The study day is part of Kingdom’s business planning process and provided the staff with the opportunity to hear more about the aims, objectives and challenges facing the Association and provides an opportunity for staff to directly feed in their views and experiences and influence the strategies being developed.
Bill Banks, chief executive with Kingdom, said: “The day was a great success. We feel this is an essential part of our business planning process and we really appreciate the input that all staff made as part of the event.”
Bill added: “Although this provides an opportunity for staff to get involved, business planning can be perceived as a bit of a dry subject and some staff felt they would not be able to make much of a contribution to the discussions. To try and address this we invited along Mike Stevenson, from Thinktastic, to kick the day off with a motivational session which really got everyone thinking.”
Mike Stevenson, who is managing director of Thinktastic, told the group about his personal journey that has taken him from sleeping rough in London to becoming an award winning entrepreneur, who has worked with a vast amount of large and small organisations.
The purpose of Mike’s session was to get the staff to think about how their personal contributions impact on the work Kingdom delivers and to generate a collective sense of renewed excitement and possibility around the future. As part of Mike’s presentation he encouraged staff to see the wider possibilities, to think creatively about business priorities and to recognise innovation and collaborations as their responsibility.
The event covered a full range of areas and provided staff with the opportunity to suggest ways that Kingdom could build on its current successes and improve services to customers, through better integration of staff at all levels in the business planning process.