Avoid if you value your wellbeing and mental health - Coordinator Bromford Employee Review

I can see that Bromford still receives some pretty good reviews but I've noticed that these tend to be from new colleagues - it's pretty rare you'll see 5 stars from colleagues who've been in their role longer than around 3 years. This will likely be put down to longer serving colleagues 'resisting change' or suchlike. I can assure you that this is not the case for me. When I first joined Bromford I felt a real sense of pride at being part of such an amazing organisation - there was a brilliant culture, people genuinely cared about each other and about Bromford's overall purpose. I felt like I belonged to one big family with shared values and colleagues literally oozing the DNA it prides itself on. Social housing is, by its very nature, a challenging environment so it's absolutely essential that people work together as one team, collaborate, have each others' backs, receive clear direction and communication and always have the end goal in sight at all times. Sadly, this is not the case now. For the last 2 years of my employment, I found almost every single day draining and frustrating. Nobody knows who does what, there are lots of "it's not my job" and the poor neighbourhood coaches are constantly hung out to dry by senior management. As for the DNA - well, it seems that this is now just a pretty set of graphics to impress new starters. Many colleagues still live and breathe the DNA, some still have Bromford running through their veins, but I don't feel that this is modelled by the senior leadership team. Yes, change is absolutely necessary (and important) but the rate of change and knee jerking that goes on at Bromford is just ridiculous and unsustainable. Many of the execs have no social housing experience but that's apparently okay because that's what their directors/heads of are for. Which would be fine ... if only they actually empowered and listened to those people! Perhaps, instead of trying to aspire to be like Virgin, Amazon or some other corporate giant, the focus should be on actually getting the fundamentals right first. Customers are social housing tenants - they don't have a choice which housing association they go to, they get what they're given and all they want is a safe, warm, affordable, home. Of course, there's nothing wrong with aspiring to be the best but I think Bromord is a long way off - tasking neighbourhood coaches to run around their patches before Christmas, frantically fitting Co2 alarms into their customers' houses (because of another team's failings with compliance) does not feel like a Virgin or Amazon way to conduct business. Neither does the way the attempted cyber attack was handled. Yes, from an IT perspective it was dealt with excellently and could have been far worse - but, yet again, those on the front line were left to deal with the fallout of this, with no tools or guidance to help them navigate their way around the many difficult conversations they had to have with their customers. It's always the same - those on the lowest pay get the rawest deals. Those driving around in their Teslas would absolutely not want to have some of the difficult conversations with customers that the neighbourhood coaches are forced to have. Going out shadowing once a year and visiting one or two customers does not cut it. It took me some time to find the confidence and strength to start seriously looking for another job as, aside from everything else, I gradually became deskilled - my role was unrecognisable from the job I originally came to do and there was no consistency in the expectations of the job either. Initially, I protected myself from everything going on by concentrating on my own 'bubble' - I believed that as long as I just focused on my immediate team and ignored the bigger picture I'd manage. But even the bubble developed punctures in the end because, sadly, toxicity and negativity has a way of filtering through. I am just so grateful that fate stepped in with an amazing job opportunity and that I got out before any further damage could be done. So, my advice to anyone thinking of joining Bromford is do so at your own peril. It depends what kind of culture you want to work in, it will suit some people as everyone has different expectations. Of course, it might even turn itself around again one day in the same way it does when there's a new government. Who knows? I do hope so for the sake of those who've stayed loyal.