Our culture

About Melin

We are a housing association providing over 4,500 affordable properties to people in South-east Wales, across five local authorities.

We exist to create opportunities for people and for communities to thrive.

We’re a forward-thinking organisation, big enough for you to make a difference but small enough to care. Every one of us is passionate about making a difference to people’s lives. By joining our team of over 250 people, you will always be aware that your hard work makes a genuine and positive difference.

The Melin family tree

Melin Homes is the group parent and is a Co-operative and Community Benefit Society that operates to Charitable Rules. Melin provides and manages affordable housing across five local authority areas.

Melin Homes is the sole trustee of the Henry Burton Almshouse Society and is the managing agent for the Queen Victoria and Albert Almshouse Society.

Candleston Limited is a subsidiary of Melin Homes, created to deliver high quality sustainable homes of all tenure, including for outright sale. Profit is reinvested back into communities and to help Melin achieve its charitable objectives.

Y Prentis is an independent company, jointly owned by Melin Homes and Monmouthshire County Council. Y Prentis runs the south-east Wales shared apprenticeship scheme in partnership with Construction Skills and its industry members.

Our purpose

We exist to create opportunities for people and communities to thrive.

Our vision

Through outstanding individuals and teams, we will do all that we can to support residents to help them live successfully in safe, warm and affordable homes based in vibrant, inclusive and connected communities.

Our values

These are things that are important to us. We live by our values. Together we can create a shared culture of values, beliefs and behaviours that help guide our work. We take an inclusive, collaborative approach for the benefit of our customers, partners and each other.

Together we can…

…create a shared culture of values, beliefs and behaviours that help guide our work. We take an inclusive, collaborative approach for the benefit of our customers, partners, and each other.

• Do the right thing
  It’s about more than just turning up for work, we are all empowered to do our best for our residents, partner organisations, each other and the planet.

• Find a way
  We are innovative and creative, it’s just part of what we do. We actively encourage collaboration to find better solutions.

• Make a difference
  

  We want the impact of what we do day in day out to change things for the better for our colleagues, residents and organisations we work with. Customers help us to shape and improve our services.

• Make things happen
  We value people who are driven by passion, bright ideas who are determined to take action. We are bold, decisive and driven with integrity and trust.

• Enjoy the journey
  Everyone is welcome here, we celebrate and draw strength from our differences. People are at the heart of everything we do. We’re open, honest and fair, creating a culture of inclusion and wellbeing, in which everyone plays their part.

Areas of focus

New homes

• We will deliver new homes for different tenures over the lifetime of this corporate strategy.
• We work with our strategic partners to ensure that the new homes are driven by the desire for placemaking and the creation of communities.
• We embrace new technologies in order to build energy efficient homes that generate significant benefit for our residents.

Existing homes

• We will provide safe, warm and affordable homes.
• We will invest in our homes to protect our assets for the future.
• We will work to deliver a maintenance service that meets our residents needs.

Our residents

• We will support residents to help them live successfully in their homes.
• We will listen to residents and create opportunities for them to work with us to improve our services.
• We will work with residents to help make their communities vibrant, inclusive, connected and safe places to live.

Our people

• We will attract, develop, and retain people with the capabilities and values needed to deliver excellence.

• We will create an inclusive environment, enabling everyone to thrive and do their best work.
• We will build resilient teams that allow people to solve problems and innovate by working together and supporting each other

Community and culture

Volunteering

We allow staff time out of their working day to volunteer with our Communities Team, local partners and charities. Giving back to the local communities we serve is what we are all about.

Casual dress code

We want you to feel comfortable in what your wear, be that jeans and a t-shirt or shirt and tie – it’s up to you. We provide a Melin uniform for our Maintenance team and customer facing roles.

Events

We are a social bunch at Melin and have number of corporate events throughout the year for staff, where you are gifted the time off work to attend. You can look forward to: a summer barbecue, a staff Thank You event, various wellbeing events, our well renowned quiz night and party in December.

Individual teams and departments organise lots of social activities throughout the year too.

We also hold community events for residents with our annual Party in the Park and wellbeing festival, as well as loads of other activities which we actively encourage you to get involved in.

Zest

Zest is our health and wellbeing initiative. You can watch a video of one of our events on our YouTube channel.

We have an annual health and wellbeing event, our Zest Fest. We provide staff with free fruit, massages, Reiki, health talks, mini health checks and more.

Charity

Each year we nominate a charity of the year. Our charity for 2024 as voted by our staff is All Creatures Great and Small. Throughout the year we hold fundraising events, charity breakfasts, raffles, quizzes and competitions. If you would like to help us reach our fundraising amount please donate at our JustGiving page.

Diolch

At Melin we recognise when staff members go over and above. Our Diolch initiative is great way to show your appreciation of another member of staff.

Staff are given a certificate and a choice of reward; donation to our charity of the year, trees planted in their name, or a Welsh bar of chocolate.

Groups

Whatever your passion, we should have a group that will interest you; singing with Zing, health and wellbeing with Zest, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, gardening, walking and running.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

We are proud to be a diverse business where we put our people and residents first. Our fantastic benefits to ensure employees have a great work-life balance. We want you to have the freedom to define a working lifestyle that supports your life.

We have a dedicated and passionate Equality, Diversity & Inclusion group, including four board members, with everyone championing this within the organisation.

We were the first housing association in Wales to achieve the Quality in Equality & Diversity Award. Tai Pawb’s QED Award is a comprehensive, Wales specific accreditation and framework for reviewing and improving the equality and diversity impact of your organisation across governance, services, access, involvement and culture.

We have signed the Deeds Not Words Pledge – to end racial inequality in housing.

We have also signed the Zero Racism Wales pledge which calls on all organisations and individuals to promote racial harmony and equity.  Find out more at zeroracismwales.co.uk  and sign the pledge too.

Our gender pay gap is zero, pay transparency is an important driver of equality. Our commitment to pay transparency can also be demonstrated by the CEO Pay Transparency report on our website.

One of our corporate targets is to increase diversity across our work force. The society in which we live and work is not made up of one gender, one race or one age group, and the areas that we live and work in are made of many varied different and distinct. The more diverse voices represented in our workforce, the deeper the level of understanding we will have of a wider variety of our residents and the communities within which they live.

As part of our cultural commitment, we welcome applications from all backgrounds and sections of the community.