Westminster x Homes for Students

Growing the Business Without Losing the Culture.

The Context

Homes for Students is one of the UK and Ireland’s leading independent student accommodation providers, managing more than 55,000 student beds across 235 properties.

As the organisation grew from 500 to more than 1,300 employees, expanded into 61 cities and acquired new businesses, the challenge was clear: how could Homes for Students scale quickly while protecting its collaborative culture and keeping people connected?

The Opportunity

We worked with Homes for Students to strengthen communication, leadership and collaboration across a rapidly growing, geographically dispersed organisation.

The focus was on creating a shared language that could help people understand themselves and each other, build stronger relationships and support the organisation’s continued growth.


Our Approach

We worked with Homes for Students to embed Insights Discovery across the organisation, rather than treating it as a standalone development programme.

Homes for Students accredited internal practitioners to deliver Insights Discovery across the UK and Ireland, creating long-term internal capability.

The approach was embedded throughout the employee experience, including:

  • Manager and leadership development
  • Onboarding
  • Internal progression
  • Team development
  • Everyday communication and collaboration

The shared language of colour energies became part of everyday working life, from team conversations and manager introductions to internal communications.


The Impact

The results demonstrated significant improvements in the behaviours that underpin effective collaboration:

Why It Matters

Rapid growth can easily create distance between people, teams and locations.

For Homes for Students, building a common language around communication and behaviour helped ensure that as the organisation grew, understanding and connection grew with it.

The approach gave people a practical way to recognise differences, adapt their own behaviour and collaborate more effectively — protecting the culture while enabling scale.

The Outcome

Insights Discovery is now embedded into everyday life at Homes for Students, with new starters introduced to it during onboarding and teams across operations, central services and client-facing functions using the language to strengthen relationships.

Most importantly, the organisation has developed the internal capability to keep that culture of connection growing as the business does.