Case study

London & Quadrant Housing Trust

Age Positive Champion

We are a charity providing homes to a wide variety of economically disadvantaged people, housing 30,000 families. Attracting, retaining and developing staff in the charitable sector is not easy.

We work with our staff to develop our employment practices, benefits and rewards packages. We are in the Sunday Times List of 100 Best Companies to Work For, and won this award for recognising our people not only for their work, but also their potential for development regardless of age.

Sally Jacobson, Group Director

OUR AGE POSITIVE GOOD PRACTICE:

We have clear policies and procedures in place to ensure no employee is discriminated against on grounds which include age.

Our recruitment advertising is designed to encourage applications from all age groups.

Training programmes are monitored to ensure everyone has equal access to new skills and knowledge regardless of age. Equal Opportunities and Diversity is itself a subject of induction training for new staff.

We provide benefits for older staff that include paid grandparent leave, carers leave, IT awareness training, personal finance advice.

We listen to and learn from our workforce. We have developed a set of 'key people issues' in order to attract and retain talent and potential, and we have an annual training investment of £1,200 per employee. Training is not all about money, and while we are more than happy to re-train people, we know the benefits of experience and skills many of our older staff pass on to younger staff.

BENEFITS OF OUR GOOD PRACTICE:

By attracting and retaining talent to our organisation, and with a mixture of ages of staff, we have reduced staff turnover by 14 per cent during the last 2 years, and sickness absence is at an all time low.

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