By Anne Bentley, Neighbourhood Manager, Worthing Homes

At Worthing Homes, our company colours are more than just a pretty palette. They serve as a visual reminder of the things that matter most to us as an organisation. Pink represents our customers, blue our teams and green our homes, ensuring that everything we do is centred around the people and places that matter most.

Imagine visiting your landlord’s local office to pay your rent, only to be told that you can no longer pay in person and that you must pay online, you’re not digitally active and are left wondering how you will make your payment. You return home to see that changes have been made in the communal area of your block, only to realise that no consideration has been made for your disability, meaning that leaving and entering the block just got 10x harder. You reach your front door to find a ‘sorry we missed you’ card. It’s for an annual gas safety check that you were never told to expect.

Sadly, scenarios like these can and do happen, and they all have a shared theme. They could’ve been avoided if your landlord had stopped to consider your needs and engaged with you to understand the impact these changes could have on you. This sounds simple enough, but the reality is, too often, decisions are made without taking time to understand the impact this has on our customers.

This is why at Worthing Homes we ‘think pink’. Each of our meeting rooms has been equipped with a pink chair – a chair that serves as a visual prompt of what matters most, the customer. Colleagues are invited to sit in the chair during meetings to take on the role of the customer voice, ensuring that decisions are made with consideration for our customers front and centre.

But it hasn’t stopped there. What started as a simple piece of furniture in each meeting room has evolved into a fundamental part of our values. Regularly when walking through the office you’ll hear “stepping in to the pink chair for a moment” or “with the pink chair in mind”. By embedding the customer voice into our way of working, we strive to ensure that our services truly meet the needs of those that use them. The pink chair may be a simple concept, but its impact is powerful.