Community Housing is a UK Social Housing Provider, and is one of Worcestershire’s largest providers of social housing and offers a range of services to support local communities, including housing management, maintenance and repairs, and shared ownership options.
With a forward-thinking governance team and a deep commitment to contemporary standards, Community Housing sought a more insightful, streamlined and actionable alternative to their existing manual, excel-heavy board review process.
Subsequently, Community Housing recently underwent a proof of concept for Boardroom Plus – Convene x GovernWith’s new automated Board Governance Review and Director Skills Matrix, tailored to the regulatory and contemporary needs of the UK Housing sector.
The Challenge
Community Housing’s traditional board governance review approach is exhaustive but also exhausting.
“The way we traditionally do our appraisals is very paper-based. It’s thorough, but it’s onerous and formulaic…I’m not sure we’re getting the full value from it.”
– Ann Bennett, Chair, Community Housing
Community Housing’s existing governance review method involves manual data collection, collation and reporting, a process that spans weeks, if not months. As a result, valuable time is invested into managing the mechanics of the annual governance review, rather than deriving insights or making strategic improvements and actionable plans.
“In our traditional review process, there’s a lot of movement of the information…more work on mechanics than analysis.”
– Justin Bryant, Company Secretary, Community Housing Group
Their previous manual governance review approach also created challenges around the accuracy of subjective self-assessments, missed opportunities for deeper insight into board dynamics and limited time to act meaningfully on outcomes.
The Solution
Enter Boardroom Plus, GovernWith x Convene’s integrated governance platform, purpose-built for boards in the housing sector.
Boardroom Plus features a Board Governance Review and Director Skills Matrix tailored to meet corporate and contemporary governance housing standards, as well as the regulatory requirements of the National Housing Federation.
Designed to simplify, streamline and automate a more comprehensive and contemporary governance review, key benefits of Boardroom Plus include:
- An intuitive, automated online review process for Company Secretaries and Directors
- Objective algorithm-based scoring to balance self-assessment biases
- Previously unexplored insights into board composition, Director learning and behavioural styles
- Automatic, immediate report generation for individuals and group managers
- A strategic line-of-sight of Board Effectiveness
- Real-time visibility for tracking completion
- Simplified collation and analysis, cutting administrative time significantly
- Evidence for compliance for all stakeholders
Outcomes
It’s early days still, but immediate outcomes for Community Housing following the use of Boardroom Plus are compelling.
Time Efficiency
Moving from “weeks” of admin to a one-time input per director, freeing time for real analysis and action.
“I’d estimate the time invested in Boardroom Plus was about 20% of what our usual manual governance review process requires. Now we can use that freed up time to focus on actioning our governance review rather than just undertaking the review process.”
– Justin Bryant, Company Secretary, Community Housing
Deeper Insight
In addition to objectively highlighting director skills and board capability gaps, the Skills Matrix also revealed individual learning styles, capacity and behavioural preferences, giving the board valuable insight not just into what each member knows, but their behavioural attributes and styles for how they think, learn and contribute.
“This process gave us a truer picture… and helped move subjective scoring to a more objective approach.”
– Justin Bryant, Company Secretary, Community Housing
Strategic Intelligence
Data pinpointed gaps in ESG, cyber and AI capabilities, validating previous anecdotal concerns or ‘hunches’, and instead enabling targeted development and timely action.
“It reiterated the feeling that we had gaps, particularly around environment and cyber. That’s been really helpful.”
– Ann Bennett, Chair, Community Housing
Compliance Confidence
The Boardroom Plus Governance Review and Skills Matrix is not only tailored to the housing sector’s compliance requirements, but the digital format has brought structure and traceability, supporting Community Housing deliver on National Housing Federation regulatory requirements.
Note: To further support compliance with NHF legislative requirements, Convene x GovernWith also provide Externally Led Governance Review and Facilitation with expert governance and sector-specific convenors to support your triennial external review requirements.
Forward-Looking Recruitment and Induction
The resulting reports provided insight into how new candidates would fit board composition beyond the CV, whilst also providing recognition that board induction needed strengthening, highlighting practical ways to improve long-term board culture.
“At the moment, we deliver induction to board members and that’s it – it’s ticked off. We don’t ever talk about it again… These results have highlighted that if we put more effort into the induction and plugging director knowledge gaps, we’ll have a stronger, more cohesive board holistically, creating benefit further down the line. The Skills Matrix tool will also be instrumental for future succession planning and Director recruitment.”
– Justin Bryant, Company Secretary, Community Housing Group
Conclusion
For Community Housing, the pilot process confirmed that GovernWith x Convene’s Boardroom Plus Governance Review and Skills Matrix isn’t just a tech upgrade, it’s a governance game-changer. It offers meaningful governance insights supported by data, improved administration efficiency and enables a shift from compliance-driven box-ticking to modern, capability-led development.
“There’s a real personal benefit as well as an organisational benefit for directors. It’s not just admin, it informs board culture, development and even recruitment.”
– Justin Bryant, Company Secretary, Community Housing Group
By reducing time spent on manual processing, surfacing new layers of insight and laying the foundation for future-ready governance, Boardroom Plus has proven itself a powerful ally for contemporary housing boards.
