View publication - Chartered Institute of Housing

PEOPLE POWER – ENGAGING RESIDENTS AND STAFF
turn our ‘five star governance’ aspiration into reality. Staff, residents and Board members
are trained together so we all move in the same direction. Bridges have been built and
we all learn from each other. Our approach culminated in re-shaping our staff structure
to place resident involvement ‘slap bang’ in the middle of operations. Under one ‘Coregulation
Directorate’ we now have a virtuous circle of formal governance, resident
governance and resident involvement. Four years ago, we were an organisation that
didn’t talk to their residents. Now it runs through everything we do and is part of our
culture and attitude. For resident involvement to work, it needs to form the nucleus of
operations rather than just a box-ticking add-on.
Organisations should think long and hard about the skills required to generate a truly
customer focused service – and not be afraid to make training or recruitment decisions
accordingly. When staff see residents as collaborators then an organisation is half way
down the road to improving performance through involvement. Only with a mature
relationship can an organisation begin to address performance improvements with
residents and staff.
People engagement makes great business sense
Our approach to resident involvement has worked for the business. Our customer
satisfaction is now at 95 per cent; we’ve been a top 20 Sunday Times Best Company
for two years running and we’re the only large landlord in the South East to achieve
‘Co-Regulatory Champion’ status. We’ve won a mass of awards and turned our
fortunes around with residents at the helm. Our residents have led our improved
performance and the culture and structures which allow them to do this are now
embedded. Engaged residents care about the future of the organisation and emotional
bonds are tighter.
Imagining the future
So what of the future? We want to be the best landlord in the country in three years
and our residents are absolutely critical to achieving this goal. A consumer approach is
helpful here. The world is changing and old certainties no longer light our way. It’s more
important than ever that we treat our residents as the consumers they are. And we
should learn from those who do this well. There has been much written about residents
never being able to fulfil their role as consumers as they’re unable to vote with their
feet. Whatever your view on this, we can’t deny that housing organisations are now
reaching out to people at every level of the ‘broken housing market’ and choice is a
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