To Serve a Community, You Need to Be Part of It
A repair and maintenance operation should be all about serving the needs of a community. When the partner delivering the service is fully immersed in that community, it stands to reason that the benefits experienced by residents will be greater and longer lasting.
Maybe it’s because Osborne is a family-run business rather than a corporation, but community engagement is second nature right across our business. Our repair and maintenance partnerships are a great opportunity to make that engagement long-term, deeper and more beneficial to everyone involved, which is very much in line with our core values.
Our Community Investment Team actively engages with schools, colleges and young people to build and maintain relationships. In the period between April and October 2019, Osborne delivered or supported 153 community initiatives. Through these initiatives we contributed 298 staff hours and £11,870 of materials. 10,682 local people were engaged, and 17 facilities were improved.
What We Do
What type of schemes do we become engaged in? Here are a few recent examples:
- Working with the London Irish Foundation to help young people in Slough who are not in education or employment to gain qualifications and employability skills.
- Supporting Dacorum tenants to learn decorating, basic DIY and upcycling skills through our Hemel Hempstead training centre.
- Supporting ‘Build Yourself’ programmes in East Sussex that teach decorating skills to unemployed 18-24-year olds while also improving community facilities.
Throughout the year, our engagement with schools and colleges includes supporting careers fairs and employability skills workshops. Within our repair and maintenance partnerships, we always make it a priority to recruit locally and to promote local supply chain partners wherever possible so that we build a positive legacy.
Delivering social value through our contracts is part of our purpose. The programmes we engage in are valued by our teams as a way to give something back. Our commitment to the communities we serve is just one example of why we are a repair and maintenance partner with a different approach. You can discover more about our work in local communities in our latest edition of Community Matters.
