Homes England Supply Chain Partner Forum
As a supply chain partner with Homes England, we believe it is important to align your social value activities with our own and create a more efficient way to meet the common goals and objectives of our shared client, whilst creating the most positive impact in the local communities we are working in. Please find a host of videos and content including our SV Strategy, EDI training, Health & Wellbeing etc. we hope this shared information is useful and look forward to sharing more best practice in this supply chain forum.
For more information and to speak to our Head of Social Value please contact Brooke Parsons at bparsons@pellfrischmann.com
Wellbeing – Ways of Working Wellbeing Tips
We appreciate that everybody has busy days, and therefore we have compiled some helpful tips to ensure that our wellbeing remains a top priority during challenging times.
Here are some suggested ways of working to create better outcomes and a healthier work environment.
Teams:
- Take into account status settings on Teams – if status is out of office/in a call/busy it may be better to send an email or message to check availability. You can check someone’s status by hovering the mouse over their name or profile picture in your individual chat with them.
- Encourage everyone to turn cameras on. This can help to build and maintain good working relationships and lead to increased engagement and discussion in meetings.
- When booking meetings use Scheduling Assistant in Outlook to identify the availability of attendees. It is also helpful to explain the purpose of the meeting in the invite and include an agenda where possible. Consider whether it is appropriate for some attendees to join for part of the meeting only, based on the agenda.
- It may be a good idea to agree within teams whether to use emails or Teams as a preferred messaging platform, as using both can make requests/tasks more difficult to manage.
Outlook:
- Settings in Microsoft Outlook make it easier and automatic to carve out essential breaks between back-to-back meetings. The setting is easily customisable. For example, you can choose if the break is at the beginning or end of meetings. You can also choose the length of the break.
- Consider blocking out some time to consolidate the morning’s meetings/work as well as allowing the opportunity for lunch.
- You can delay the delivery of an individual email or use rules to delay the delivery of all emails by having them held in the Outbox for a specified time after you click Send. This can save a lot of time – for example, you can set up all your emails to go out at the end of the day, look for responses in the morning and reply to everything at once, rather than interrupting your thought process multiple times throughout the day.
- Book focus time. MyAnalytics in Outlook can help suggest and book focus time on your behalf, particularly if it looks like your calendar is filling up. Go to MyAnalytics to open your personal dashboard.
- When you’re on holiday, set your Out of Office and consider ‘stop syncing’ Outlook on your phone to remove temptation to sneak a peek at your emails.
- Keep your calendar up to date. Under Calendar Properties > Sharing Permissions, you can set permission for the organisation and for specific individuals to “can view when I’m busy”, “can view titles and locations” or “can view all details”. You can mark individual calendar appointments as private where appropriate by clicking the padlock icon in the toolbar.
- Scheduling breaks between meetings
- Delay the Delivery of Emails
Other:
- To maintain our inclusive working environment, it’s helpful to use accessibility tools, such as those available here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility. There are a number of suggestions for ways in which you can utilise technology to have a positive impact on colleagues who may have difficulties with their vision or hearing, who are neurodivergent, or have a mental health condition such as bipolar disorder of which you may not be aware.
- Turn off email/Teams notifications on your phone outside of working hours – this will allow you to focus on other things and completely switch off from work.
- If technology allows, try “walking meetings” (i.e. walk and talk).
- As we are an employer that supports flexible working, we may have employees working different hours. It is important to be mindful of setting expectations around availability, particularly if you are a Line Manager. If you do work late, trying saving emails to draft or delaying email delivery until business hours. MyAnalytics in Outlook can show you the after-hours impact you impose on co-workers and coaches you towards building better work habits.
- Feedback on project successes. Good work can be too often forgotten as we move to next part of project/element of work.
It’s the small things that make a big difference.
Social Value
Please watch our video for more details on how we expect our suppliers to support our Social Value mission.
Social Value Report
At Pell Frischmann, we are committed to delivering a positive social value impact on society, the economy and environment within which we work, whilst continuing to provide world-class professional technical services in the built environment.
Pell Frischmann’s Social Value Strategy aims to improve community wellbeing, inclusion, cohesion and empowerment, whilst providing a baseline to measure our ability to contribute sustainably through our regional activities.
EDI
Case Studies
T-Level Programme Case Study:
Birmingham Children’s Trust:
Volunteering: