Fostering an accountability culture & getting the basics right for residents
“Repairs and maintenance are one of the most visible and important services a landlord provides – and when it goes wrong, residents feel it most.”
These were the words of Dr Eve Blezard, policy lead at the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), on the launch of a new project to involve residents more closely in the way repairs and maintenance services are delivered.
By giving people more of a say in how their homes are looked after, the CIH aims to build a genuine culture of accountability, but the initiative will put housing providers under additional scrutiny from regulators as well as their tenants, so now could be a good time for housing providers to walk a mile in the shoes of their residents and think about what accountability really means to the people in their homes.
1. Make it easy to report repairs
The bread-and-butter of repairs and maintenance hasn’t changed much over the last 20 years. A resident reports a broken boiler, a contractor arrives in a van, fixes the problem and leaves. What has changed is the way the interactions between the resident and the housing provider take place during that journey. This has a significant impact on residents’ expectations and satisfaction.
The evolution of technology has made digital reporting possible but it’s important to consider whether it has genuinely made the process better for residents. People don’t want to interrupt their working day to spend time on hold to a call centre but neither do they want to navigate a complicated online booking system.
Housing providers can make a world of difference to the experience by mapping out the way residents access repair services to ensure that it is as frictionless as possible.
Holding data in a single platform enables a more personalised offer for residents to report repairs. For example, if a resident logs their boiler problem on a housing provider’s online diagnostics tool, the request would automatically upload into the contact centre to be actioned. This would also take into consideration the resident and their household’s personal circumstances.
Naturally, it’s also essential to enable people who are less digitally confident to report their repairs and to build these channels into the process.
2. Enable positive repair visits
If a resident’s bathroom tap is leaking, all they really want is for someone to turn up on time, knowing what the problem is and having the right parts to fix it. And all good repair workers want exactly the same thing. After all, who doesn’t want to feel that they have contributed to the wellbeing of others?
Ideally, residents also want the interaction to be pleasant and dignified. That’s where good training comes in. Training can create a culture of empathy and help housing providers’ repair teams to foster relationships with a wide range of people with a diverse range of needs.
The repair team is the face of the organisation so if every operative has the training they need, not only to carry out the work but also to engage positively with residents, it will have a lasting impact on residents’ views of their housing provider.
3. Understand residents’ needs
Residents with vulnerabilities need additional support, but they may prefer to not ask for help. If someone is suffering financial hardship, they might simply stop heating their home, putting their property at risk of damp and mould.
However, it’s likely that the housing provider has enough information on their system to know the resident is vulnerable. Perhaps someone has accessed debt-support services or their rent is in arrears. Systems such as NEC Housing bring together information about residents and their properties to provide richer insight into a resident’s needs and the likely impact of that on the condition of their home.
Repair and maintenance teams can add this to create a truly holistic view of the household. If repair teams have a simple function in their mobile app where they can add a quick note, they can flag a specific property as being unusually cold or lacking any food in the kitchen. This human insight could trigger the need for additional support.
4. Provide easy channels for feedback
The CIH project is exploring ways for tenants to provide feedback for regulators on how maintenance and repairs are delivered. One of the key factors in encouraging people to share their experience is to make it easy for them to do so.
Most residents would be reluctant to use their annual leave to attend a Tuesday afternoon meeting at their housing provider’s offices. Similarly, when a resident finally gets the chance to look at their phone after a long shift at work, the last thing they want to do is answer a 20-question satisfaction survey or write a lengthy review.
It’s much better to make the interactions short and snappy. Brief, targeted questions shared with a tenant immediately after the completion of their repair are a more effective solution and are likely to yield real-time, informative feedback.
5. Re-think your organisational KPIs
To meet regulatory requirements, housing providers need KPIs to benchmark their performance against their peers. But what do these really mean to an elderly resident who is nervous about going upstairs because they’re still waiting for their handrail to be fixed?
It can be a good idea for a housing provider to have two sets of KPIs: one for peer benchmarking and another to reflect what matters to their residents. It’s likely that the KPIs devised by a residents’ panel would be quite different to ‘standard’ KPIs, including perhaps how easy it was to log a repair or how helpful an operative was.
These KPIs would give housing providers the insight they need to anticipate and meet residents’ needs. And by seeing the world from their residents’ perspective, housing providers can create a true culture of accountability by supporting people in their homes.
Lisa Gascoyne is the lead product manager for repairs and workforce management at NEC Software Solutions.
For further details, please see: www.necsws.com/housing.
