Interview: Learning, development and belonging at Unite Students

We caught up with Jenni Brooks, Head of People Development and Experience, about how learning and development helps our teams to deliver a great student experience, embedding our research findings into this, and her diversity, inclusion and belonging remit. 

A huge part of your role at Unite Students so far has been setting up the Academy – tell us about that. 

The Academy is the home for our learning, development and career opportunities at Unite Students. It’s only 18 months old and currently it focuses on foundational learning – induction and helping to make our colleagues confident in the jobs they do. That includes training on keeping ourselves and our residents safe, being sustainable and giving students an incredible living experience.  

As an academy organisation, we’re committed to investing in our people. Learning and development opportunities help our teams feel happier and more confident in their job, and if our teams are well-trained and happy, it creates a better home for our students. My team works closely with the Resident Experience and Student Support teams in designing content around mental health and the student experience. We’ve delivered enhanced e-learning modules, elevated our Mental Health First Aid training and helped to work on bespoke mental health training workshops through the Academy. 

Since the Academy launched, we’ve seen a direct correlation between new learning and development opportunities and improved student satisfaction. Last year, the five cities with the highest levels of student satisfaction were the cities that had 100% completion of our CARE customer service principles training. 

What are some of your proudest achievements through the Academy so far? 

Our development programme for General Managers – they play such an important role in our business and running the properties in our cities, so we developed a programme for them to help develop them as leaders of people. We’ve also smashed targets in terms of the number of learning hours we’ve offered – 50,000 learning events so far for 2,000 employees, 75% of which are from teams working in our properties. It’s not about how high the numbers are, because quality is more important than quantity, but it’s a recognition of how many learning and development opportunities are now available to our teams. 

You also have responsibility for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) at Unite Students. What does that entail? 

Our employee feedback and external accreditations have all highlighted DEIB as a cultural strength at Unite Students, particularly around developing a sense of belonging. 

It fits naturally alongside learning and development. Everyone who works at Unite Students has responsibility for creating a place of belonging, and The Academy supports that through education and building confidence. We piloted and ran a programme called ‘Instinctive Inclusion’ from late 2022, influenced by our Living Black at University research, which gave teams the knowledge and skills to be inclusive in their roles and beyond. Using feedback from teams, we’ve enhanced that programme for 2024, making it easier for employees to engage at any point on their learning journey. 

 You’re also involved in looking at how we operationalise our research findings at Unite Students – what’s your role in that? 

Embedding our research benefits our employees as well as our residents.  We talk regularly about how our insight influences how we support our residents and upskill our teams, but from my perspective it’s also: how does that insight influence how we support employees? 

It’s looking for those crossover opportunities where we can use our insights to improve everyone’s skills and experience. Using Instinctive Inclusion as an example – that helps our teams to support a student that’s transitioning while they live with us, but it also helps them to support a colleague who might be going through that. Recently we were looking at how we’re enhancing our Support to Stay student support framework in line with our research findings, and I’m looking at what skills our teams need to bring that to life. 

What are you looking to achieve in the next 12 months? 

Technology has some restrictions and too much online learning can be a barrier, so we’re continuing to deliver in-person learning experiences as well as the e-learning we offer, among other things. We’ve recently created a board game to help our teams refresh their knowledge of our CARE customer service principles, which we’ve sent to all of our 23 cities. It’s fully interactive with different scenarios and helps them to think through how they’d put those principles into practice.