Creating a new organisation during a pandemic

Covid-19 presented a newly created housing provider with the opportunity to experiment with a brand new operating model

Combining two businesses into one is difficult at the best of times. During a global pandemic, however, it takes real ingenuity.

Abri, a 35,000-home association in the south of England, was created by the combination of Yarlington and Radian. Although the partnership went live in November 2019, before Covid-19 emerged, many of the decisions about how the new organisation would look and function began to unfold during the pandemic.

‘Largest social experiment’

“The partnership prompted us to take very seriously the question of what is the optimum operating model for the business now,” recalls Abri Group’s executive director of strategy, business intelligence and HR, Andy Skarzynski. “But the massive driver in terms of acceleration is Covid, which just opened the lid on two things: [thinking about] what is the best operating model and how does that link to ways of working, but also just [giving] permission to run experiments.

“It feels like Covid has provoked the largest social experiment in terms of work styles that the country's seen for many, many decades. It feels like we've got an opportunity to rethink how people engage with this thing we call work.”

So how did Abri make use in this once-in-a-lifetime chance to experiment?

“The things that we knew at the point of inception of the partnership were that we wanted to architect an operating model that essentially drove, yes, all the obvious things: efficiency, and value for money. But we also wanted to build in some scalability,” explains Skarzynski.

“The challenge I think that we see in larger operations is sometimes [they can] lose touch with the customer at the local level. So the idea of ensuring the operating model allowed us to be big but also local was always the key.”

Andy Skarzynski Executive Director of Strategy, Business Intelligence & HR, Abri Group

“It feels like Covid has provoked the largest social experiment in terms of work styles that the country’s seen for many, many decades. It feels like we’ve got an opportunity to rethink how people engage with this thing we call work.”

Hub and spoke

What Abri is building, is a more ‘hub and spoke’ model, where there is central support and control, but where the emphasis is very much on the local – or ‘spoke’ – side. Staff are now encouraged to work out in their communities, in a range of what the organisation calls ‘touchdown spaces’, which it holds in a directory, as well as from the key central locations, where colleagues can meet and collaborate on projects and build a shared culture.

The other major change at Abri has been the way it has provided services since the start of the pandemic. The ‘Optimum Abri’ model was developed in part to mitigate some of the financial pressure brought about by Covid.

“One of the things that most housing providers were forced to do during lockdown was turn off services, replan maintenance and other aspects of what we do,” explains Skarzynski. “That has some pretty big financial consequences: there'll be very few organisations at our scale and beyond that didn’t count the cost of that in the many, many millions of pounds. So, from an operating model point of view, we had to rethink to ensure we could effectively manage that change.”

Flexible services

The way Abri managed this challenge – which was one of both financing and resourcing – was to scenario-plan a flexible services model, ‘Optimum Abri’. This was about ensuring the business continues to provide safe, decent homes for people but it can also flex spending commitments to ensure this is directed to the areas of greatest need.

This model is about building in flexibility, rather than cutting services. And, as Skarzynski points out, it’s about planning for worst-case scenarios and extreme situations, like Covid.

“Thankfully we haven’t had to hit the button on some of those more extreme versions of that plan,” he says. “But it is our responsibility to make sure that Abri is financially stable and sustainable long into the future. We’re just custodians of Abri.”

image

SHARE THIS PAGE

image