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January 26, 2010
Wulvern achieves prestigious Investors in Excellence Award

Local affordable housing provider, Wulvern has achieved the prestigious Investors in Excellence Award – demonstrating that it has clear and robust systems in place that ensures its customers receive excellent services.

Investors in Excellence is the UK’s recognised standard for organisations who are able to demonstrate high standards across areas including leadership, policy and strategy, people, partnerships and resources, processes, customer service and corporate social responsibility. 

After producing a comprehensive submission document, Wulvern were visited during November 2009, where assessors carried out a schedule of interviews with a cross section of employees. 

During the assessment they found two key themes that shone throughout – the engagement of the senior management team with “hands on” operations and customers, and the adoption of “lean thinking” as a way to drive operational improvement, focused on the customer.

One of the key strengths found was the implementation of “lean thinking” approaches, which focus on putting customer needs at the heart of everything it does.  The assessor said that it was clear that the implementation of “lean thinking” had resulted in many improvements in customer facing activities.

The “go and see” philosophy of the senior management team was also noted, in particular the examples given of the Chief Executive dedicating time to work with frontline staff to understand problems and customer requirements. 

“We are delighted to be the first housing association in Cheshire to have met the very high standards promoted by Investors in Excellence.  We will continue to work with customers and staff to improve the services Wulvern delivers.” said Chief Executive, Sue Lock.