Managing that shift in culture within her organisation, however, has been more of a struggle. In 2010, staff voted to walk out over changes to terms and conditions, including plans to abolish carers’ leave.
Was the strike a symptom of the awkward evolution of the social housing sector? “That tension is there,” Davies admits. “You could say crudely that the people who are selling homes are in a different quadrant from the people looking after the elderly people with dementia. There are different cultures around Notting Hill. I think that's inevitable.
“When you are doing a lot of commercial work people forget you are also still a charity and are still connected to that social purpose. We don’t always advertise enough, in the same breath, that we’re both commercial and trying to make the world a better place.”
These difficult periods taught Davies important lessons. “[Early in my career] I was a pretty crude manager, quite brutal, rude, crass, unsophisticated in my approach,” she admits. “I think in retrospect that [the strike] could have been avoided by me and my senior colleagues dealing with it differently. The basic lesson is: if you involve staff and consult with them and engage them with a problem they will very often come up with a solution themselves.”
Though her management style may have evolved, Davies is still critical of her contemporaries in housing associations who refuse to accept change and commercialisation at every turn. For her “the ends justify the means”.
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