Always Ahead Case Study
Golden Lane Housing x Actuate
Executive coaching drives eNPS score increase during huge organisational change
- A UK-based specialist supported housing association that provides homes for vulnerable people - operating nationally across England, Wales and Northern Ireland since 1998
- Delivered 12 months of personalised coaching to strengthen leadership confidence, visibility and consistency through organisational change
- Increased employee advocacy, with GLH’s eNPS rising by 188% to 37, exceeding sector and employer-size benchmarks
What was missing?
Golden Lane Housing (GLH) were navigating a period of significant organisational change, restructuring teams while implementing a large-scale cultural overhaul.
This transformation needed to be driven through the Leadership Team and cascaded across the organisation. With the pace and scale of change, leaders at Executive and Heads of Service levels were identified to benefit from targeted coaching support to build the confidence, capability and consistency required to lead visibly with influence and credibility.
The leaders driving this programme were required to adapt quickly, be highly visible across the organisation, communicate with transparency and honesty, and most importantly, embody the new GLH values and behaviours in a way that others could follow.
What was the Solution?
Actuate began with an in-depth discovery session to understand GLH’s priorities, leadership challenges and the behaviours required to bring the cultural shift to life. From this, Actuate designed a bespoke coaching and mentoring programme for the five key senior stakeholders responsible for leading the organisational change.
Each leader received one-to-one coaching, supported by a personalised development plan. This enabled them to tackle their own individual blockers, strengthen their leadership presence and build practical approaches to leading teams through change.
How did we make it happen?
Over a 12-month period, the programme focused on turning intent into consistent leadership practice – supporting leaders to turn organisational goals into day-to-day behaviours, conversations, decisions and delivery.
For one leader in particular, the personal and professional shift achieved through coaching translated into measurable impact across the organisation.
My decision to explore further coaching with Actuate was a conscious choice to lead by example. For coaching to be successful, there is a level of openness and self-reflection needed and that’s a really vulnerable space to put yourself in for the first time. As a member of the Executive Team, it was important that I continued my own development, whilst encouraging others to take the first steps into their own coaching experience.
As someone new to the organisation, coaching provided me with a helpful sounding board and an objective perspective. It supported me in navigating the early stages with greater clarity and helped me consider where best to focus my efforts. As with any new role there is a natural desire to make an early impact, and coaching encouraged me to take a more considered approach, focusing on how to contribute in a way that was thoughtful, balanced and sustainable over time.
The Result
As with any structural and cultural transformation, GLH recognised that staff happiness and engagement were critical. Maintaining (and improving) these measures would be essential to sustaining progress.
As leaders became more confident, visible and empathetic in how they led the change, GLH saw a significant uplift – the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) across employees rose by 188% to 37.
With industry average eNPS from Housing Associations being only 28 and for similar sized organisations the eNPS average is 21. This clearly shows that Golden Lane Housing are well above the average for the sector and size of employer, along with being above Acuity annual benchmark.
This improvement was underpinned by the self-reflection, constructive challenge, and increased leadership visibility embedded throughout Actuate’s coaching programme. Helping GLH leaders not only manage change, but lead it with clarity and credibility.
Alongside the positive organisational impact, the development across the five leaders was equally significant. Another senior leader at Golden Lane Housing praised the coaching for helping her break through personal barriers, become more curious in her leadership approach, and feel more confident challenging when it mattered – strengthening her ability to lead meaningful change with greater impact.
