Case Study

How we helped CHC create a culture of innovation and impact

CHC represent more than 70 housing associations across Wales and are the leading voice of the social housing sector, promoting relief of financial hardship through housing construction and improvement

70

Organisations innovating together

256

Registered innovators

+50%

Increase in engagement

Challenge-led innovation is enabling us to build innovation capacity, build a culture of collaboration and explore new products, services and approaches to tackle systemic challenges within the housing sector.

Edwina O’Hart, Assistant Director of Membership, Community Housing Cymru

Background:

Helping CHC become ‘Fit For The Future’.

Summary:

1

Ensure CHC is ready for the challenges of tomorrow

2

Create a culture of innovation

3

Help CHC achieve its ‘Fit For The Future’ objective

Business as usual was no longer an option for CHC and its members. Getting everyone ready for the challenges of tomorrow was a strategic priority.

Surfacing new and innovative ways of doing business can be difficult. Particularly at the scale of CHC and its members. They identified the following obstacles:

There wasn’t a clear focus of ‘innovation’ or implementing innovation
Ideas were not easily shared or scaled amongst members
A coordinated, partnership approach would be needed to solve systemic problems

CHC wanted to create a culture of innovation. A space where resources pooled centrally could be leveraged to develop new approaches, fit for the future.

Solution:

Partnering, ideas and a culture of innovation

Summary:

1

An innovation programme that solves systemic problems

2

Supporting the behavioural change needed for innovation

3

A simple way to engage a wider audience

Even when there’s a will, behavioural change is difficult for any organisation. Making this straightforward is key to what SimplyDo, do.

With our team working closely with CHC members, we built an innovation programme that focused on solving systemic challenges within social housing. The SimplyDo platform allowed CHC to scale the programme with not only members, but tenants and the wider housing industry. The SimplyDo platform became the glue that held their innovation program together.

We saw a dramatic increase in innovative ideas being submitted. We think this is how we did it:

Creating challenges

Our challenge creation process guides you through every step of creating great challenges. We were able to help CHC structure challenges across multiple phases.

Capturing ideas

Encouraging people to be part of innovation is key. That’s why our people + platform approach is essential. We supported CHC in creating online and offline engagement plans for all potential contributors.

Impact:

The Home Manifesto and our next phase

Summary:

1

Mental health and wellbeing of tenants

2

Communication with tenants

3

Decarbonisation of the supply chain

With so many great ideas - many being small, yet scalable - our platform was able to automate the tracking and identification of scalable solutions - all helping to reduce the time, cost and risk associated with innovation.

Our first phase with CHC was a great success, kick-starting and powering their ‘Fit For The Future’ strategic priority.

With a new momentum and a clear understanding of trends and challenges, we launched the second phase of our program: the Home Manifesto.

By using the SimplyDo platform, CHC identified 3 key challenges to be solved in their Home Manifesto:

How to better support the mental health & wellbeing of tenants
How to better communicate between associations and tenants
The need to decarbonise the supply chain

With the success of phase one - and the culture of innovation that’s being built - we’re confident and excited to see the next set of innovative ideas from CHC, its members and tenants.