June 2017
We’re leading the way in the housebuilding industry’s supply chain engagement, with the pilot of a new programme that aims to improve the support offered to subcontractors and to help them grow their businesses.
We have collaborated with trade association, the Home Builders Federation (HBF), to pilot supply chain engagement events as part of a wider development programme.
More than 60 of our subcontractors attended the first event, which was held at Durham County Cricket Club and hosted by our North East Managing Director, Ian Worgan, and his regional management team.
Subcontractors had the opportunity to learn more about our current performance and regional growth plans, feed back on working with us, and hear about our supply chain development programme that will be launching soon. The programme will include the option for supply chain partners to work with training providers to address any training needs within their businesses.
With a commitment to maintaining the high quality of our homes and customer service and retaining our five-star HBF customer satisfaction rating, we identified that our supply chain partners are integral to these priorities, so looked at ways to engage with them more effectively.
We sought feedback from partners in the North East around their forthcoming focuses, their confidence levels and the help they needed, and received a response rate of 70% which suggested that there would be a high level of interest for events and other support.
Fran Stott, our Group HR and OD Director, said: “We believe that creating a sustainable future for ourselves as well as our supply chain is vital. Supporting and developing our valuable supply chain partners is now more important to us than ever, as we plan to build a landmark 1,000 new homes in 2017/18. In order to deliver high quality homes, we need to have a strong, reliable supply of partners who feel a genuine commitment to our customers, values and business.
“As well as the engagement events, we will also be working on a package of longer-term support as we know this is just as important to our supply chain. This could potentially cover areas such as health and safety, IT and customer service training, and assisting with the recruitment of apprentices by using our experience and established process.”
Jason Doyle, Regional Manager at Designer Contracts who attended the event, said: “As we are a new contractor to Story Homes, it was beneficial to hear about the company’s impressive growth plans, have the chance to meet key Story Homes contacts and find out about the training on offer. Training and development is very important to us as a business, so this is definitely something that we will be taking up.”
Following this pilot, we plan to roll out a programme of regular events across all of our regions; Cumbria, South Scotland, the North West and the North East in the near future.
