Home Group tone of voice
Tone of voice refresh
Home Group is one of the UKās largest providers of high-quality integrated housing, health and social care. The Group owns and manages almost 60,000 homes across England and Scotland. It is a top-20 UK employer, with around 3,800 colleagues and an annual turnover of more than Ā£500 million.
How Home comes across
Home Group asked us to take a critical look at how it comes across in all of its communication ā from corporate publications, to social media and day-to-day customer contact. The client wanted to be sure that the way it looks and sounds consistently matches up to its values of being accountable, caring, commercial and energised.
We began with a deep dive into a hefty sample of the organisationās written and other output across all channels. From this, we pinpointed that while much of the communication was reasonably clear and professional, it lacked personality. This meant that colleagues were often failing to do themselves or the Group full justice in the way they communicated. The crucial human element was frequently missing or too far down in the mix.
Equipped with this key finding, we ran online focus groups with both employees and customers in different parts of the country to find out what people felt was most important about the style and tone of communication.
These sessions highlighted five vital ingredients that together contribute to building trust in the Groupās message and service:
This formula showed how itās the combined effect of different aspects of communication that creates trust and brand reputation. Customers told us that to take proper account of peopleās needs and differences, the precise blend of each element needs to vary for every contact.
Putting the ME into Home
Responding to this feedback, we came up with the idea of Being a Home Group person to refresh the clientās tone of voice. The concept rests on encouraging and enabling colleagues to inject their qualities, skills and individual spark of personality into everything they say and do, to make things quicker and easier for everyone.
To make it easy to grasp and remember, we illustrated the new approach with this āScrabbleāĀ® motif.
The message here is that, just as there are billions of potential different ways to start and play a game of Scrabble, there is almost limitless diversity in how to communicate effectively. The skill lies in understanding each situation and adjusting the mix of ingredients to get the best result.
Using behavioural insight
Tone of voice works at a deep, emotional and psychological level; itās about identity and belonging, not just words. People are more likely to engage, cooperate and advocate if they feel a genuine sense of connection to whoever is communicating with them.
Being a Home Group person encourages colleagues to express, rather than constrain, who they are, by using warm, human and empathetic language. This fulfils people’s innate desire for self-determination, autonomy and doing what comes naturally to them.
The Scrabble image offers a memorable mental model to avoid decision fatigue and make the guidance easy to apply under pressure. Seeing worked examples of the approach in practice supports observational learning, while working alongside customers to embed the updated tone of voice provides social proof to reinforce new habits.
Ideas into action
Once approved by Home Groupās executive team and board, we helped to spread the word and embed this new practice through:
- Targeted copy-editing and redesign of frequently used, high-impact correspondence (for example, for gas and electricity safety checks and property surveys)
- In-person and online training for colleagues, involving customers who took part in the original fact-ļ¬nding, including a three-hour, ļ¬lmed core skills version
- Detailed and summary guides to Being a Home Group person to support teams and key writers, including appropriate use of AI tools
- Advice and support to apply the updated tone of voice to Homeās customer promise and contact standards.
