Case Study

Get Living – Operating model and leadership team review

The corner of a yellow sofa, with a marble background.

In Summary

Get Living is the UK’s most experienced and progressive build to rent operator of large-scale residential neighbourhoods. In 2013, Get Living was created following the acquisition of the former London 2012 Athletes’ Village. It was 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.

The Situation

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 also wanted to create optionality for an IPO sometime in the near future, and had arrived at a stage in its development where the current company structure would not support their longer-term growth ambitions.

Get Living, 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.

The Solution

BIE sourced an experienced OD consultant with a background in operating model change and leadership team coaching, Ali Humphries. Ali’s role was to assist in:

Defining the current leadership team capabilities
Review of the operating model across the organisation
Meet investors to understand appetite for and potential resistance to change
Recommend the restructure of the leadership team and level below

The Outcome

Through working closely with Rick De Blaby and the leadership team, BIE delivered:

Investor commitment to a new operating model including new executive
team structure
Development of an organisation design with executive team succession
Creation of new short and long term management incentive schemes
Establishing a people structure to support future growth

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

BIEsourced 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 reporting into the CFO.

HR

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

Transformation

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

Candidate's View

“Get Living is a great business and I think the best is yet to come. It was a unique opportunity that BIE presented to me, and Get Living and their investors gave me the room to be brave and help them make some significant step changes to enable them to be future fit. BIE demonstrated a deep understanding of the client and I was delighted that they always took the long-term view and built a partnering relationship and delivered some great candidates.”

Ali Humphries, Interim HRD

Client's View

“At a time when we’ve sought to achieve a real step change in our growth and on-going performance, the culture change and organisational design were critical. BIE really took time to understand our business, our people and our ethos, so that they could present us with candidates they knew would fit and be key players in all that we aspire to attain.”

Rick de Blaby, CEO, Get Living