Community Coach - Housing in Erith

We’re building thriving communities as one of the UK’s largest housing groups and a leading developer of affordable housing. We believe everyone is entitled to a good home they can afford, in a place they are proud to live. More than 100,000 people live in our homes. If you want to experience work that’s truly rewarding, join us. Because when we achieve together, customers and communities thrive.

The role

At Orbit Group our Community Coaches are partners in our local communities, using a coaching approach to work with customers to find their own solutions. In this role, you must be able to expertly assess customer need and provide high quality information, advice and guidance to support and connect customers with local services, groups, clubs, and organisations that can help provide support and help the local community thrive across the Surrey and Sussex areas. The successful candidate must have access to a car and be willing to travel to cover our South East London area, mainly Bexley. This role is part of our Customer directorate where you will help us to lead the way in keeping our promise to more than 100,000 customers.

What you’ll achieve

• Plan and deliver an ongoing programme of community engagement and activity events within agreed geographical areas.
• Provide Information Advice and Guidance (IAG) and support to Orbit customers to help them sustain their tenancies including triage assessment and making customer referrals into Better Days support services and external support services.
• Provide support around tenancy sustainment, leveraging in third party partner support where needed, direct delivery of complex support where required which will include domestic abuse support or delivery of this work through a partner organisation where appropriate.
• Develop and maintain partnerships with local services to support additional activity and referral routes.
• Build trust between customers and Orbit through local presence and enabling customers to interact more effectively with Orbit, including supporting customers to sign up to MyAccount.

What you’ll bring

• Able to adopt an empathic approach in discussions and negotiations, understand the needs and perceptions of customers and to handle situations sensitively and deal calmly and confidently with emotional and difficult situations.
• Ensure compliance to the organisation’s Code of Conduct in the delivery and provision of services to staff and the community and all work practices are customer focused and operated to clear standards.
• Must have a car for business use and be willing and able to travel to meet the requirements of the role which covers Orbit geography.
• Experience of delivering IAG in a community-based setting or within a community focused programme ideally with an IAG Level 3 or above qualification.
• To be able to respect information sharing protocols particularly regarding client rights to confidentiality and data protection legislation.

Desirable skills

• Experience of managing volunteers and developing volunteer routes.
• Experience of community service design.
• Previous experience of providing direct customer support, Information Advice and Guidance Provision.

Why Orbit?

Choosing us means being rewarded in every sense. Here’s what you can expect to enjoy with us:

• A rewarding experience that works for you. We strive to create an inclusive experience with benefits and wellbeing programmes designed to help you, and your loved ones, to thrive. For a better work life balance, we offer flexible working opportunities for many roles.
• A place to progress. From training programmes to professional qualifications, we provide opportunities to learn and develop at every stage of your career. Whether you’re a student, graduate or experienced professional we’ll support you to grow.
• A purpose to feel proud of. We’re proud to make a difference to people together. We’re values-driven with a commercial focus on performance - because the more profit we make, the more we can achieve for people.

How we hire

We aim to make our hiring process simple and fair: Online application, Interview(s), Decision and offer. We put the safeguarding of our customers, colleagues and contractors at the heart of everything we do and as such, certain roles will be subject to a DBS check.