Fair Work First

Fair Work First Statement

At Hjaltland Housing Association we believe that fair work first practices help balance the rights and responsibilities of the Association and its employees, and we aim to generate benefits for individuals, the organisation, and our wider society.

Fair Work is work that offers all individuals an effective voice, opportunity, security, fulfilment, and respect.

Effective voice

The Association is committed to enabling good communication and providing safe environments for workforce dialogue. We recognise trade unions, and all members of staff are made aware of their opportunity to become members. We work with Employers in Voluntary Housing (EVH) to utilise their collective bargaining which regulates salaries for our employees. All our team members have numerous task-level and organisation-level options to voice their views and ideas through our bi-monthly staff meetings, departmental meetings, and committee meeting updates. The Chief Executive and senior management team operate an open-door policy and all staff members are actively encouraged to air their views for consideration.

Opportunity

The Association currently holds the ‘Investors in People Platinum’ award as recognition of our ongoing commitment to staff development and continuous improvement. We believe everyone is entitled to be treated fairly with dignity and respect. Our Equality and Diversity Policy with its associated action plan is central to organisational governance and its objectives are applied to all organisational services. Our recruitment and selection policy enables equal access to work opportunities, and we adopt a life stage approach to enable workers to maximise their contribution in various ways including flexible working, menopause, and remote working policies.

Security

The Association is a member of EVH (Supporting Social Employers) and utilise their template for clear and unambiguous terms and conditions of employment. EVH and Unite union operate a collective bargaining machinery which regulates the terms of staff employed by the Association and we do not employ any of our team members on zero hours contracts. As a Registered Social Landlord, we feel we have a moral duty through our salary grades to reflect the real living wage not only for the benefit of our own team members but also because of our ability to influence the local community.

Fulfilment

As an organisation that has attained the Investors in People Platinum accreditation, we embrace the best possible human resource practice as a legitimate way to manage our staff. We place a high emphasis on workforce engagement to ensure our staff feel empowered and involved, where everyone’s opinion matters and people are encouraged to offer ideas for improvement. We invest in developing our workforce by completing annual appraisal meetings with all our team members to discuss their performance and developmental needs which is used to set realistic performance targets and create individual training plans.

Respect

The Association attaches the greatest importance to ensuring that high standards of behaviour are demonstrated by all its people in all our activities. Respect for everyone both within and out with the workplace is promoted by the organisation through various means including our code of conduct, grievance, and dignity at work policies. We are committed to promoting equality of opportunity and diversity in our role as a housing provider and landlord, as an employer and in all areas of our business. We offer a wide range of flexible, hybrid and family friendly policies which are available to all our staff from the first day they join our team.

Bryan Leask

Chief Executive

Hjaltland Housing Association