A day for collaboration and learning: What does a CIH colleague conference look like?

17.09.2025

Every year CIH takes the opportunity to join together as a team to learn, collaborate and listen. In June colleagues got together for another jam packed conference to hear about ongoing projects, collaborate on new ideas for our future, and to play an educational game - more on that later!

As CIH colleagues are spread across the UK and Ireland, for many the trip to the conference started the day before, with flights, car shares, buses and trains all being utilised to get everyone together at the event venue in Coventry. Accommodation was secured for all travelling colleagues with a group dinner planned for everyone staying overnight for a chance to catch up prior to the day.

In the morning those staying overnight joined for breakfast, before going to the venue to meet up with local colleagues for a morning coffee and catch up with wider teams before the conference began.

The chance to catch up over coffee, lunch and breaks during the day is one of the most beneficial parts to the day, you get the chance to speak to people you may not work with on a day-to-day basis but who you've built relationships with throughout your time at CIH. Getting the update on how the kids are, what silly thing their dog did, or just finding out how people are is part of what makes the CIH team so well bonded.

There's no time to stand around though, and soon enough everyone was seated at shared tables and the day began with Gavin (our chief executive) and John (our board chair) giving a short business update. Following that Gavin was joined on stage by the rest of our executive team, Sue, Sarah and Rachael, to tell us more about how our transformation project and new membership strategy work was moving along. 

At our conferences we embrace technology to make sure everyone has the chance to be heard. Using an app we had the chance to ask anonymous questions at each session and a roving mic was provided for those happy asking their question to the room of over 100 colleagues.

There were plenty of questions asked, and although the exec team did their best to answer them all time ran out so they committed to ensuring all questions were answered by email when we all got back to the office (and they kept that promise).

After lunch it was playtime - literally. Socialudo faciliated an educational role play game to help colleagues learn more about the social housing sector. In teams we got to see what it's really like in the sector for people just looking for the basic need of a home. Some colleagues represented asylum seekers, some single mothers looking for work, others retirees with a dog. Each and every story we heard came with a journey they had to endure to 'hopefully' come out the end with the chance of a secure and safe home. It was an eye opening session for a lot of colleagues.

The final session of the day was a final chance for full collaboration, discussing and brainstorming the CIH's values and ideas for where we want to be in the future. Technology, flip charts and pens were all utilised to combine ideas, voices and feedback into plenty of notes to take back to the office and move the project forward.

As 4pm rolled around it was time to pack up and head home with a head full of ideas to take back to our desks the next day.