ELM Group’s Annual Conference 2024
After a busy year in 2023, which saw us double our portfolio of owned and managed properties, we have been working hard to streamline our processes and grow our team, whilst ensuring consistency of our high service levels. As we continue to adapt following this momentous growth, our Annual Staff Conference earlier this month provided the perfect opportunity for the whole team to come together and take stock.
This year held at the grand setting of the De Vere Wokefield Estate in Reading, our Conference enabled us to address important feedback from the team, ensuring all voices across the organisation were heard, so that we can continue to strive to be the best and maintain our ‘one team’ approach.
With almost 70% of our workforce lone workers, our regular conferences are vital to ensuring our remote team feel connected to the wider team, to allow us to efficiently support them, taking onboard their individual feedback.
This year’s conference included a series of presentations from different areas of the business and break-out sessions throughout the day which provided an arena to discuss complex property management issues and suggestions for areas of improvement within the business.
A key focus point from our discussions with employees included how we can continue to find new ways to ensure lone workers are supported and feel part of the ELM Group team. As we continue to grow as a business, this is more important than ever, and we have some ideas in the pipeline for how we can enhance our communications and employee engagement.
We recently carried out our annual employee feedback survey and we discussed some of the impressive findings for 2023/24 including that 91% of employees felt that ELM Group promotes employee wellness, 99% of our workforce understand how their role fits into the overall aim of the business, 92% felt they had positive relationships within their teams with over 87% stating that they enjoy coming into work every day.
“87% of the team stated they enjoyed coming into work every day”
Just before lunch, members from the Guildford Beekeepers Association delivered an extraordinary presentation highlighting how the threats to bee colonies are impacting our already fragile ecosystem. With our estates scattered across the UK, understanding these threats was informative to us all but was of particular interest to many of our estate managers who look after our estate’s communal grounds, many of which include meadows, orchards and allotments – all of which are a lifeline to bees when carefully maintained. This fantastic presentation made us focus on ensuring that we have lots of pollinating offerings for bees.
Our talented Financial Project Manager delivered a presentation, taking us through the plans for the implementation of FixFlo – a specialist property repairs & maintenance software. She explained how the business can harness this new system to streamline complex repairs processes and keep communications in one place. Once up and running, this new system is set to revolutionise the way we work allowing our teams to focus on the delivery of a service which reflects our ethical values.
The chairman of our board gave a company update on the Organisation’s strategic vision and we got to see a compilation of all the fantastic news stories and events that took place at our estates over the last 12 months that our managers had shared with us.
Bringing the day to a close, a total of 12 Long Service Awards and 20 Make a Difference awards were presented to employees in recognition of their hard work and dedication to the company in 2024, highlighting how they demonstrate our ELM Group values through their daily work.
It’s our people who make ELM Group the company it is, who help us to deliver a service with integrity, transparency and honesty – this is why it’s vital that our team members exemplify these values, and why we prioritise rewarding employee achievements and milestones.
In line with ‘The ELM Way’ – our progressive training programme - we are always striving to be the best which is why our annual Conference is so important in ensuring everyone has everything they need to continue delivering the best service to our customers, often going above and beyond expectations, and setting a bar in the industry.
We’re already looking forward to the next one! In the meantime, we’ll be reviewing all our employee feedback and looking at ways to implement positive changes that will benefit everyone at ELM Group.
