When I joined PiLON in 2021, I came in with the experience of working with a hotel brand whose values were known throughout the world, and I therefore understood the role of values not only in setting strategical objectives but also in day-to-day operations.

I knew that one of my objectives in being offered the role was to help shape PiLON’s values and therefore culture. What I quickly learned was that PiLON had very strong values already. This is a business that is very people focused, has integrity, believes in doing the right thing, and is very personal. Coming from the hospitality sector into a construction company, I was surprised just how much emphasis was placed on service, personal interactions and tailored experiences. It was everything we did in a five star hotel but instead of providing accommodation and food, we are providing construction services to the social housing sector.

All of this made the job of defining our values much easier.

Our purpose is to consistently achieve sustainable and profitable growth by delivering an innovative and customer focused service; whilst creating opportunities for our people, and legacies that we are proud of.

We created our values by identifying and defining the best attributes of our people and how these attributes support our shared purpose. We asked colleagues, clients and other business partners to help describe these attributes and from this feedback we defined the five values that we know are part of the PiLON DNA.

Knowing that our values are based on existing behaviours and ways of working, we can be certain that everyone will live up to them and that our clients can identify the values in their interactions with us.

We know that the values, and behaviours that sit behind them, are instrumental in the story of our on-going success.   

To effectively embed the values and see them demonstrated across every level of the business, we ensured that they are reflected in all our people processes from the way in which we recruit and onboard new colleagues to the way in which our people are recognised, promoted, rewarded and offboarded.   

By bringing our values to life there is a renewed sense of focus and excitement across our teams. Discussions have already started about the role of creativity and agility, in an era of greater digitalization. Working with integrity and collaboratively is key to challenges such as net zero targets, aging stock of houses, materials and skills shortages.

We can already see that our values will help us to deliver our purpose, and that will benefit our colleagues, clients, residents and the communities in which we operate.

Florentina Dita (she/ her)
Head of People & Culture