Generating change so that ethnically diverse leaders can emerge and thrive
The BOOST Organisational Change Programme aims to challenge and address the under-representation of ethnically diverse colleagues at leadership level in the housing sector and remove barriers these employees face when advancing into senior roles.
Our long-term mission is to create ethnically diverse leadership teams across social housing providers in Greater Manchester that will enable us to better serve the communities in which we work.
This groundbreaking, collaborative project is being delivered through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between Greater Manchester Housing Providers (GMHP) and Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).
Through a combination of reciprocal mentoring, dedicated ‘Change Champions’, and a series of change projects across participating organisations, the project seeks to identify and address unfair barriers to leadership and create lasting culture change that encourages ethnically diverse leaders and progression, enabling improved routes to senior roles.
BOOST in a nutshell
Building a movement: BOOST is a community of allies who meet regularly to learn how to reshape housing associations so that ethnically diverse leaders can thrive.
Disruptive mentoring: BOOST uses disruptive mentoring to create leadership pathways for ethnically diverse colleagues, and helps mentors grow as allies. Insights are shared with BOOST Change Groups to drive
innovation.
Culture & systems change: BOOST’s Change Champions and Change Groups are changing cultures and systems within their housing associations.
Innovation for service development: BOOST seeks to pioneer new approaches to service development, ensuring solutions meet the diverse needs of communities.
Evaluation & learning: BOOST focuses on evaluating outcomes, sharing insights, and finding effective strategies for continuous improvement. We’re a learning community committed to accountability!
BOOST in numbers
3% & 1%
Black and Asian colleagues in exec positions (NHF, 2025)
19
GMHP members involved
12
mentees progressed into new roles so far
66
colleagues completed mentoring from cohorts 1 & 2
Our legacy: what will success look like?
Culture
The culture in our organisations will develop as our leaders and colleagues learn to be comfortable talking about race.
Empowerment
Our ethnically diverse colleagues will feel more confident to bring their true selves at work. They will feel more valued, safe and empowered to speak up with their thoughts and ideas and to raise concerns about racial bias or unfair treatment.
Progression
Our BOOST mentees will be progressing in their leadership identities, feel more ready for leadership, have robust career development plans that are supported by their housing associations and some will have progressed in their leadership careers. BOOST will enable ethnically diverse colleagues to gain experience of leadership and develop allyship as an important leadership behaviour. We will also help to raise the visibility, reputation, networks and skills of our ethnically diverse colleagues through our mentoring programme. Our housing associations will also be extending this support to other ethnically diverse colleagues so they create a strong, ethnically diverse leadership pipeline.
Change
The BOOST Movement for Change will be growing, thriving, courageous, ambitious and effective in creating disruptive change. It will enthusiastically and creatively test ideas and create knowledge about what works to develop more inclusive organisations. It will share this within and beyond the GMHP partnership.
Allies
Leaders will act as allies who are increasingly aware of the causes of racial inequity and self-aware of their own biases and behaviours.They will act courageously and invest both time and resources in supporting ethnically diverse colleagues to progress and in innovating organisational strategies, policies, practices and cultures. Our leaders will lead learning in their organisations and in the BOOST Movement for Change. They will sponsor the BOOST programme and the BOOST Movement for Change to enable collaborative innovation across GMHP and beyond.
Service
Our tenants and residents will start to notice that services are becoming more culturally sensitive and they will start to see more ethnically diverse leadership.
Milestones
As a Movement, we have:
- Designed a training session in partnership with Inclusive Employers for leaders and managers on having effective conversations about race, using the learning coming out of BOOST. This is now being rolled out internally across GMHP.
- Developed better practice guidance, using the learning from a workshop on our response as a sector to the racist riots in summer 2024. We’ve also built on this recently, resulting in a joint statement from GMHP on the increase in flags and displays of nationalism across the country.
- Challenged ourselves on the diversity of our networks and introduced the concept of a Personal Boardroom.
- Innovated and experimented on recruitment practices, including conducting policy reviews, using diverse interview panels, implementing guaranteed interview schemes, introducing anonymised applications etc.
- Developed a BOOST Theory of Change – looking at how we make our movement disruptive in order to achieve real change, and get to the outcomes we need: Increased & more inclusive representation of ethnically diverse colleagues in leadership.
Learning from BOOST
Find out more
If you want to know more about the Boost Leadership Programme please email boost@southwayhousing.co.uk