Camden Company Up For Community & Environment Award

by Mary-Anne Bowring

The Ringley Group, a multi-award winning property company in Camden Town, are finalists in the Chamber Of Commerce Camden and Islington Business Awards 2011 for Community Engagement/Regeneration & Environmental Responsibility. And what a year it's been for Ringley so far, having recently been awarded a National Training Award by The Skills Funding Agency. The awards ceremony takes place on Thursday 27th October 2011. Mary-Anne Bowring adds, I simply could not be more delighted for our teams. At Ringley 2011 is officially the year of leaseholder love. Everyone at Ringley knows we are on a journey to deliver a 5 star service, every-time. Our people have truly raised their game to adopt the attitudes and behaviours that 5 star service requires, and we shall continue to roll more leaseholder love initiatives, the true reward is the growing recognition and recommendations from our Clients. We like to drive change in the industry. We were the first property company to offer a virtual concierge service, and first to offer a money-back guarantee. We're the first to start a customer focus group and first to make all out staff a mystery shopper. We're proud that we've given money back as this means we are truly committed to continuous improvement. In terms of the environment, we've switched to energy-saving lightbulbs where possible, buy locally and favour contractors who use environmentally friendly products. In the office 95.9% of staff travel to work by public transport, of which 9.7% come by bicycle, so we also provide safe bicycle storage space. Where they have to drive, company cars are the electric ones. 53% of staff now live within 3 miles (32% in 2010). In 2011, we downsized by one further car and joined City Car to relieve pressure points. We've now saved 316 trees and gone from using 6 cars to 3 in 4 years. In total, we've recycled 3,230kg in 2011, with a C02 saving of 4,520kg (saving 49 trees), we recycle 1.2kg per employee every week, which based on 50 office staff, is low in terms of the weight per employee (which means we're being energy efficient). Ringley Group Managing Director Mary-Anne Bowring, who's been shortlisted for three Women In Property Awards this year, has been a driving force behind this and she has inspired and led the rest of the staff. 2011 is Ringley's year of Leaseholder Love. The company is doing a lot of innovative things to, spread the love. Examples include emailing flowers to owners, to say thanks for letting us know about a problem on site, renaming the Annual General Meeting as the Community Event Of The Year, using jargon free plain English, so owners can understand what we mean (most of our clients aren't native English speakers), sending out colourful newsletters to keep owners up to date with what's happening on site and making our communication simple and friendly. Mary-Anne has led training sessions showing how a spaceship wouldn't get to the moon if the cleaner didn't clean the spaceship (showing how teamwork can achieve anything) and used many innovative techniques. For example, writing workshops that examined the styles of The Sun and The Financial Times; a problem-solving session called Heroes and Spanners; and an exercise where learners described building defects with their eyes closed to demonstrate the need for clarity. If you can't change the culture within the company, you can't expect to become coveted by clients externally.