SARH chief receives housing industry award for mentoring

The Chief Executive of Stafford and Rural Homes (SARH) has been presented with a prestigious industry award for her commitment to developing the skills of fellow housing professionals.

Karen Armitage has led the area’s leading provider of affordable homes since it was established in 2006. Now she’s added the Housing Heroes Mentor of the Year Award to a long list of accolades achieved by the SARH team over the past 12 years.

Organised by Inside Housing magazine, the Housing Heroes Awards recognise excellence across the sector and Karen was nominated by colleagues who have benefitted from her mentoring skills.

Jo Hough, Director of Organisational Development at SARH, commented: “It’s been great to spend some quality time with Karen during my mentoring sessions. She’s an inspirational woman in business and I feel I’ve learnt a lot about the importance of gravitas and how to make a positive impact when presenting and delivering to Boards and Executives.

“I feel I’ve grown as a person and look forward to continuing to work with Karen for my own personal development.”

As well as helping other members of the SARH management team, Karen has shared her experience with housing professionals from outside the organisation.

Her ‘hands on’ approach has also helped to drive the housing association’s core values: Communication, Approachable, Respectful, Empowering and Supportive (CARES) and has played an inspirational role in helping all employees to ‘Be the best they can be’.

This approach has seen SARH named as the top performing housing association in the Sunday Times BEST 100 Not for Profit Companies To Work For list.

On receiving the award, Karen said: “The wellbeing of employees is integral to the delivery of excellent services to customers, and career development, with the support of mentoring, is essential to achieving this.

“I’m delighted this has been recognised by the Housing Heroes judges and feel very honoured to receive an award that sits well with numerous other regional accolades presented to the SARH team from a wide range of organisations including RoSPA, HR Magazine and TPAS, the body representing housing association tenants.”