Finance & Corporate Services

Responsible for delivering change across The Guinness Partnership, our business change team provides programme management and support for impactful business change projects. As part of a vision that sits within our strategic plan, the team continually looks for ways to improve our services and ways of working.

The finance team at The Guinness Partnership plays a critical role in the success of the organisation. With an overall aim of ensuring Guinness has a strong financial base from which we can be a high performing organisation meeting our objectives, finance is divided into 4 teams:

Group Financial and Performance Reporting – provides accurate and timely management and budget information to all levels of the business.

Treasury – arranges and manages the loan portfolio needed to build new homes for people who need them.

Financial Planning and Analysis – ensures building development schemes make sense financially and that our finances are planned properly over the longer term.

Financial Services – run the systems that make sure rents and service charges are properly calculated and the thousands of financial transactions are processed accurately and efficiently.

Our governance and legal services teams are vital to ensuring that we have clear and robust governance arrangements in place. They collaborate with all areas of the organisation to make sure everything is well-run, resources are managed effectively and risks are managed.

Here at The Guinness Partnership, our people are right at the heart of everything that we do. We firmly believe that employees who are engaged, recognised, rewarded and given the opportunity to progress make an effective, high-performing organisation. Our dedicated HR professionals take a lead role in attracting, recruiting, developing and retaining the very best people – people whose talent and enthusiasm enables the delivery of excellent customer service and the achievement of our business strategy.

Our dedicated Learning & Development team support our colleagues’ continuing professional development by creating innovative and relevant learning opportunities.

Some of the learning activities staff can enjoy are:

• Training courses and workshops – such as soft skills, management and leadership development
• Talent programmes – such as the Aspiring Leaders Programme
• Professional qualifications, apprenticeships and professional memberships
• Mobile Learning – such as Unconscious Bias eLearning,
• Development and career planning as part of our regular Performance Review process
• Coaching and mentoring

Technology plays an essential role in enabling The Guinness Partnership to successfully deliver its services to our customers and to empower our staff to work smarter and more effectively. Our IT staff are vital to the smooth running and maintenance of those systems and have integrated, implemented and operate some of the latest technologies in telephony, unified communications, conferencing and virtualised desktop infrastructure to deliver consistent and efficient business services to our offices across England.

With collaboration and expertise, this team takes the lead on managing the procurement infrastructure at Guinness. They implement procurement best practice and deliver great value for money across the organisation. Working in a joined-up, innovative way the team plays a key role in the efficient and effective delivery of our group strategic objectives.

A dynamic, creative, forward-looking team, comprising:

Corporate Communications – provides external communications, media and reputation management; publications; internal communications; digital, website and social media; and brand management.

Strategy and Research – guides development of corporate strategy;  research and horizon scanning to assess trends in our operating environment and understand more about our customers; shares knowledge, information and ideas to contribute to wider sector innovation.

Policy and Training – develops customer policies and procedures; designs learning and development tools and materials to ensure staff have the skills, knowledge and behaviours to deliver great customer service.

From the word go, you’ll be supported and given the skills and knowledge you need to be confident and effective in your role. New employees complete a structured induction programme and mandatory training programmes including Great Service at Guinness, Equality and Diversity and e-learning; you’ll learn about everything from our systems and policies through to the practical skills needed to maintain and develop our properties and estates.

Great training makes for great success and we offer a wide variety of courses each year to make sure that our employees are equipped with the right skills and knowledge to do their jobs well. Some are mandatory for everyone and some are job specific. We run these courses in the ways that best suit people’s needs. So as well as face-to-face training, we offer hundreds of courses via e-learning and workbooks. We also welcome requests for training courses that aren’t included in our current offering.

We support our people to complete approved professional qualifications in order to enhance their skills and future career prospects. In addition to this, you can claim for one subscription to a professional body per year when this is required for your job role.

Aspire personal learning is a scheme that supports our employees to learn something new. What you choose to learn doesn’t have to be work-related but it should encourage learning in the wider context. It could be anything from bricklaying to dancing lessons, or from learning another language to learning to fly! You can claim up to £100 every financial year and you’re eligible if you have been an employee of The Guinness Partnership for more than six months and have passed your probation.

We take pride in thanking our people for their hard work and we have a number of initiatives in place to reward people, celebrating the achievements of individuals and teams who have gone above and beyond the normal requirements of the job.

We are committed to listening and acting upon employee feedback, ensuring that we all have the opportunity to create a Great Place to Work; each year we run employee surveys to ensure everyone has the chance to tell us what we do well and where we could improve. And our staff forum gives all our people a voice in the business decisions that may affect them.