Case Study

Clarion Housing Group is the largest housing provider in the UK, providing affordable homes to over 350,000 people. The Group operates in 170 nationwide authorities in a multitude of office buildings and community hubs, each requiring professional facilities management handling.

Their locations range from large corporate buildings to smaller local offices and centres.

The Challenge

For Clarion Housing Group, the scale of their organisation presents a challenge. Quality standards can widely fluctuate across a large team of cleaners in multiple sites, and the uptake of new processes can be slow. Encouraging unified employee engagement and a high level of service consistency had been an area of ongoing difficulty in the
previous contract.

Smooth communication had been a major issue with the previous incumbent, and this is required across all sites to ensure that processes are consistent. Despite having had the use of a dedicated account manager previously, Clarion Housing Group required a truly hands-on approach that would be able to unite their offices to achieve high service
and cleanliness standards across their organisation.

As a large organisation with a lot of employees and a large community outreach, Clarion Housing Group also wanted to ensure their environmental and social governance was first-rate and, therefore, a priority to their facilities management supplier.

Major focuses for the Clarion Housing Group and Samsic partnership therefore needed to be:

The Solution

To create the long-lasting change that Clarion Housing Group required, Samsic provided a dedicated account manager, to prioritise the account with the utmost attention to detail and service and collaborate with Clarion Housing Group management. This approach would foster close-knit relationships between sites and seamlessly fit into Clarion Housing Group’s own facilities management team to enhance communication.

Weekly meetings with site managers and monthly meetings with Clarion Housing Group senior management were introduced. Regular meetings ensured constant communication between the account manager and the 15 facilities managers, with issues addressed quickly, problem resolutions and ideas shared amongst the wider team, and consistency of service encouraged.

To improve quality standards on all of Clarion Housing Group’s office and community hub sites, we introduced the use of ECAT, our Electronic Compliance Audit Tool. ECAT allows us to provide real-time, accurate, consistent, and comparable performance data. All audits are supported by photos and are time-stamped to evidence areas of improvement and ensure accountability. By introducing ECAT, we can resolve issues quickly and enable staff training where required.

Through ECAT, we have also presented KPIs (key performance indicators) to Clarion Housing Group in a detailed monthly report; each report including every site under the current contract. The KPIs also help to improve Clarion Housing Group’s social and environmental governance through process efficiencies and eliminating the need for paper, as well as ensuring we are performing a world-class service.

KPIs for Clarion Housing Group include:

• Average Audit Scores; quality of work
• Attendance
• Management of Consumables; to avoid service failure and waste with nothing going to landfill
• Completion of scheduled periodic cleans

The account manager is involved in all Clarion Housing Group ESGT meetings to ensure Samsic is working in cohesion with the client to help improve their environmental and social impact. Solutions presented to encourage ethical working have included: local recruitment, often through the Clarion Housing Group community portal; introduction of Nordic Chem and Toucan – which are Samsic Innovations, to reduce need for harmful chemicals and waste; and social innovations such as the WageStream – a platform that provides access to employees’ accrued wages at any time of the month – and site ‘Employee of the Month’ promotions.