Within a specific team, a housing association realised they were seeing increased staff absence and lower average tenure than across the organisation. The team’s role were tenancy case officers meaning they were dealing with challenging and stressful situations for example neighbourhood disputes and anti-social behaviour matters. Many staff appeared to suffer with poorer wellbeing and were feeling burnt out after 3 or 4 years in the role, subsequently leaving the profession. Rather than simply just recruiting new people and accepting the additional recruitment costs the housing association decided to look at the operating model.
They put in place a mandatory half-day off each week for the team where there was an expectation to utilise the time away from work to do something to help well-being such as a hobby or exercise. The team reported coming back into work more refreshed, with better resilience to manage difficult interactions. As a result, staff absence reduced, retention of staff of the past few years has vastly increased and customer satisfaction amongst the tenants involved improved. Additionally, the average time to resolve cases has reduced.