In social housing, it is easy to become overly-focused on the technology we use to deliver services and forget the people who are behind everything. From the staff who work in your organisation to the tenants whose housing you provide, the fact is this business is about people.
The best way to improve how you operate is to improve how you connect with your stakeholders, facilitating better communication, collaboration, decision-making and customer outcomes. Having these goals in mind when choosing technology can help you to make the right decisions for your organisation.
Your single source of truth
The technology you choose starts with your housing management system. This should be built around the needs of your staff and the people using it. Consider what they need to stay happy and relaxed; technology should make their jobs easier, not harder.
To this end, look for solutions that offer flexibility around integrations and comprehensive data analytics for easy insights and decision-making. Technology providers will often have a range of other solutions that feed back into the housing management system that can make things easier for the stakeholders involved in your services.
Through real-time integration with other solutions in your organisation, your housing management system will be the single source of truth, ensuring all stakeholders are kept up-to-date and have a 360-degree view of operations.
Self-serve and community
Some solutions provide dedicated online portals or apps to allow tenants to self-serve at a time that suits them and from a range of devices, from mobile phones to computers. These help them connect and communicate with their community and manage their homes. Typical solutions will allow them to view and manage their tenancy, report repairs and maintenance issues or any other community problems, such as antisocial behaviour. Providing access to these services at any time will reduce how often tenants will need to contact you, preventing strain on your staff.
These platforms can also be a place to link to other communication channels, such as forums and apps as well as provide news, tips, and advice to foster a sense of community and encourage your tenants to stay connected and engaged with their communities.
When providing self-service options, think about convenience and the user experience. The platforms should be intuitive and work seamlessly across devices. Make sure user data and communications are secure. Promote these self-service options through email campaigns, social media, flyers and other channels.
The more you can empower your tenants to self-serve, the more time your staff will have to devote to excellent customer service. This can be accelerated by digitising as much of your customer journey as possible, so that tenants become familiar with interacting with you digitally from the moment their tenancy begins.
Collaborative decision-making
Tenants are happiest with their housing provider when they feel heard and involved in their community and the management of their homes. By implementing collaborative decision-making tools, you can ensure they can contribute ideas and participate in decisions. Tenant engagement is already a key part of building safety, as legislated by the Building Safety Act, but ensuring your tenants are involved in other decisions affecting their community can help to ensure their happiness and peace of mind.
When rolling out new collaboration tools, provide training and support to get buy-in. Set clear expectations for how tenant feedback will be used, and follow up afterwards with the results and next steps; ongoing participation depends on tenants feeling their voices are truly heard.
Empowering your staff
Mobile applications designed specifically for field personnel can make their jobs easier while feeding back to your central housing management system. These applications can enable real-time communication, task assignment and data capture while allowing staff to access relevant information, report progress and resolve problems on-site through easy-to-follow forms and workflows. This can greatly improve first-time fix rates and opens the potential for automation and even higher levels of tenant satisfaction.
Good field apps will have a well-designed user interface that’s easy to learn and navigate, reducing the time needed for training and minimising the chance of errors in data entry or task execution.
The user experience should be designed with the user’s role in mind, minimising the number of steps needed to complete a task and ensuring a smooth journey between functions. Offline functionality is another ‘must have’ feature for staff working in areas with limited or no internet access. This prevents the need for extra time to be spent back in the office as the data will sync back to the housing management system once a connection has been restored.
Enhancing contractor engagement
Like field personnel apps, contractor portals can lead directly back into your housing management system, enabling more efficient communication and collaboration with your contractors. Typically, contractors will be able to use the portal to receive tasks, provide updates and upload important information such as orders and invoices. They can access data and interact with your organisation through the portal, reducing the need to have costly telephone billing or staff on call ready to receive their communications.
Contractor portals add tremendous value, but the benefits depend on contractor adoption, so make enrolment straightforward with no complex registration or onboarding procedures, and offer support and training as needed. By making your portal indispensable for your contractors, you’ll ensure they stay closely connected to your systems and processes.
Aareon offers a range of products and services to help you connect your people and processes and deliver better outcomes for all stakeholders; find out more by visiting aareon.co.uk.
Greg Jackson is a pre-sales consultant at Aareon UK.
