A day in the life of...a Performance Management and Policy Officer

Helena Hammock works within the Business Strategy Team as a Performance Management and Policy Officer.   Her role as an officer is to support the development and implementation of organisational policies and strategies.

Although her role doesn’t involve much direct contact with tenants, the work she and the Business Strategy Team carry out supports the delivery and improvement of all frontline services. This is a great example of services working together to achieve our strategic objectives.

Helena really enjoys being a member of the Business Strategy Team:

‘It’s a great team to work in. Everyone is supportive, good at what they do, and we all get on really well’.

‘I’ve been working at YHN for just over 2 years now and I’m really enjoying it. I studied Sociology at university as I have always been interested in the field of social policy.  During my studies I found housing policy especially interesting, so I thoroughly enjoy my current position as it enables me to put the skills and theory I learnt at university into practice. I also really enjoy working for YHN, I am passionate about what we do, and I think the organisation offers great benefits and has a really supportive and positive working environment.’

‘An average day for me would be something like this one…

8.30am

I arrived at work and checked my emails. I respond to and dealt with any queries or requests for information. I then prepared for the day ahead by looking at what meetings I had and ensured I was prepared for them.

10.30am-12pm

I presented a position statement to Management Team on YHN’s benefits and recognition provision. This involved taking them through the paper and asking them to make the required decisions and assign completion dates to all identified actions. 

12.30pm is lunchtime and I am always starving by this point! I had lunch in the refectory over a catch up with some of my team members.

1pm-2pm

My next job of the day was to carry out some benchmarking around safeguarding children. This involved looking at examples of best practice, and policy and strategy documents from other housing providers. This kind of activity tends to involve a lot of reading, however I think this is great as I get to learn about something really interesting as part of my day to day work.  

2.30pm-3.30pm

As a member of the Customer Involvement Strategy project group I went along to a project group meeting. The meeting involved discussing what we needed to do in order to develop a Customer Involvement Strategy. Using the YHN strategy template we delegated an area of the strategy to each member and set completion dates. I will update the group with my progress at the next meeting.

3.45pm-4pm

I am responsible for mentoring our professional trainee, Julia. I spent some time catching up with her to make sure she was happy with her workload and to answer any questions or queries she may have had.

4pm-5pm

Over the past few weeks I have been supporting the Head of Finance to complete the Value for Money Strategy, so I used my last hour of the day to proof read the final draft before it goes to Finance and Resources Committee for consultation.

I then finished off, packed my bags and headed to the pub!