Supporting growth and cultural change at Get Living

In 2013 Get Living was created following the acquisition of the former London 2012 Athletes’ Village. They were one of the UK’s first property investor, developer and letting businesses with a consumer facing brand.  Managing close to 3,000 market rent homes in East Village E20, Elephant and Castle and New Maker Yards in Manchester, the company has developed a revolutionary model for rental housing. With a further 5,000 homes in the company’s identified pipeline, Get Living’s ambition is to take their total portfolio quickly to 12,500 across the UK.

 

Remit

Get Living had reached a point in its evolution where an agreement was needed amongst the Executive Team and Investor Group to design a longer-term operating model. The leadership team wanted to change the culture of Get Living into one that empowered its people to drive the quest for ever greater improvement in resident experience, operational efficiency and ultimately investor performance.

Get Living had arrived at a stage in its development where the current company structure would not support their longer-term growth ambitions.

They, therefore, required a talented and capable interim HR Organisation Design Consultant. Someone with the stakeholder management skills to navigate through the internal nuances of an executive committee and the senior level skills with investors to design a longer-term operating model and organisational structure.

 

Solution

Get Living instructed BIE to find the right candidate and to help the Executive Team create the profile for the position.

The candidate was required to help and support the Executive Team create a business case to be presented to all shareholders. They would help secure investor support, gain budget sign-off and create an operational plan to be delivered.

The successful candidate was Ali Humphries. A highly commercial and skilled Group HRD with good organisation design experience, plus both public and private investor exposure having worked as part of the Executive Team that IPO’d Aldermore Bank.

 

Results

Ali worked closely with Rick de Blaby and Greg Hyatt to gain investor commitment for a new Executive Team Structure. She focussed on leadership effectiveness and coaching support. She also supported Get Living to design more efficient teams under those leaders.

Ali’s contract was subsequently extended to the end of FY2020 on a part-time basis. She continued to support Get Living on some of the day-to-day people and HR activities, hiring a number of roles, and ultimately replacing herself with a new Director of People and Culture for the business.

 

Further Appointments

Following Ali’s successful appointment, the BIE team continued to support the Get Living CEO, Rick de Blaby, and the wider executive committee in the following areas:

Finance

BIE has sourced both interim and permanent candidates for the finance function, placing an interim number two in finance to allow the CFO to lead on the future planning of the business, and a permanent Finance Director who reports into the CFO.

HR

BIE has placed their new permanent Director of People & Culture; whose remit is to create a small and efficient HR operation. BIE has also sourced several people in the HR function to support with change consulting.

Transformation

BIE has placed several interim Programme/Portfolio Management/PMO consultants to help Get Living build their change capability across both corporate functions and their neighbourhood operations.

Get Living is an organisation with huge capital value, however a relatively small headcount of <120 staff. Through placing just eight individuals into permanent, interim and consulting roles, BIE Executive has supported the creation of a structure to enable future growth.