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Becoming Amplius: reflecting six months on
It’s been six months since Longhurst and Grand Union merged to form Amplius. Julie Doyle, chief executive of the new group, reflects on the progress made so far
Julie Doyle is chief executive of Amplius
It’s been six months since Longhurst and Grand Union merged to form Amplius. Julie Doyle, chief executive of the new group, reflects on the progress made so far #UKhousingOur first six months as Amplius have been busy and challenging, but extremely rewarding.
We want to be a sector-leading housing provider that goes further and does more for our customers, and I’m confident that we’re well on our way to achieving that.
When the merger was first discussed, we knew how much work it would involve, but we’ve absolutely embraced that challenge. I feel we’ve struck a good balance between taking the time to consider things with care, and being agile and decisive. As a result, we’ve achieved a lot more than many people thought possible.
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As well as delivering the merger, we also launched a whole new brand. This includes a new name and full visual identity, which we developed using feedback from hundreds of colleagues and customers.
Having a strong new brand has been culturally significant, and helped our colleagues feel like they’re working for a new organisation. It also perfectly aligns with our new vision, which we launched in March, to go further and do more for our customers and communities.
“We want to be a sector-leading housing provider that goes further and does more for our customers”
In addition to our new brand and vision, we also announced our new values on day one as Amplius, which, again, were informed by colleague feedback across both legacy organisations.
Everything we’ve been doing since day one – and that we continue to do now – is driven by these values. They are: people come first; do the right thing; in it together; driven to do more.
We believe this ethos will help us deliver the services and housing that our customers deserve. Our teams are also working on various new strategies which will be launched throughout this year. Alongside our new corporate plan, which we will launch in July, these strategies will include more detail about what we want to achieve and how we’ll go about doing it.
We’re already seeing positive outcomes. Our development and sales team achieved 896 new build completions – just shy of its strategy target of 1,000 new homes each year.
It’s been a fantastic start, but there have been some obstacles along the way. Bringing two organisations together was always going to throw up some challenges that we needed to overcome.
From working across different systems, to holding varying levels of insight and data about our customers, we’ve had to find workarounds and ways to ensure our service provision wasn’t negatively impacted. Work is well underway to align our systems and harmonise the way of working across both legacy organisations, which will make life easier for colleagues and help us provide an enhanced service to customers.
“We’re utilising data, insight and technology to better understand our customers, so we can deliver the homes and services they need”
We’re also utilising data, insight and technology to better understand our customers, so we can deliver the homes and services they need. We’re moving to a position where our services and communication with customers will be more tailored to their needs, which can only be positive.
As a larger organisation which will work more efficiently, we think it’s important to retain our local focus. We’re moving towards a regional management model for our operational teams in communities, and we’ve even relaunched our neighbourhood walkabouts to make us more visible and give customers a chance to engage with us face to face.
Having highly motivated and high-performing people working for the organisation is imperative if we’re to get where we want to be, and we have lots of exciting projects that will help us make that a reality.
The past six months have been of a whirlwind of activity, but they’ve also been extremely positive. I’m immensely proud of every single colleague at Amplius for the work they’ve done to get us to this point.
We know there’s more to do, but we’ve ensured the organisation is in a strong position to deliver real benefits and improvements for our customers so that we can continue to provide homes and services that make a difference.
Julie Doyle, chief executive, Amplius
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