Housing providers continue to face difficult decisions, and the onus is on all of us to find new ways to involve tenants.
Here are four tips on how to engage effectively:
Go to people rather than expect them to come to you
Start by making yourself as accessible as possible. Like most providers, we have a number of tenant groups and run an annual residents’ conference but we have struggled to attract enough people into either the groups or to attend the conference.
This year we decided to make a change. Rather than holding a single national conference, we launched a touring event, hosting nine events throughout the UK and arranging free transport from our schemes for those who wanted to attend. More than 500 residents attended, which was five times more than last year.
We also made changes to our tenants’ group, to set up more focused, local groups. Even if the geographical spread of your residents is small, you must be prepared to think of ways to reach as many of them as possible.
Do more than just talk: listen, promise and deliver
Without a clear focus conferences, groups and other tools for engagement are merely talking shops.
Think of ways of working with your tenants which give them the chance to air their views and make a real contribution.
Our events have featured workshop sessions where tenants were asked to contribute their views on many things, including exisiting services to the future of housing for older people. A survey of the residents who took part showed 96% felt their views were listened to and mattered.
True tenant engagement is more about listening than it is talking, so focus your sessions on feedback and align your discussions with the priorities of your organisation to make all discussions relevant, rather than having fixed groups who meet to talk about the same issues.
Above all though, make sure your engagement leads to action and if the feedback of your tenants leads to a change, shout about it. Even if tenants feel they have been listened to, if their suggestions don’t in some way inform your work then they will think there is no point – and clearly there isn’t.
Seize the moment
Taking part in groups and attending events is a commitment not all tenants are willing to make, and it can sometimes be difficult to get the numbers you need to gather meaningful feedback. This is all about using the right opportunities to capture people’s imagination.
Use events such as conferences and customer newsletters to gather as much information and interest as possible.
Get people in your organisation to buy into the process of engaging with tenants. A key element of getting so many people to sign up to our new regional conferences was to give local managers a key role. That really helped us, as they were able to highlighting the benefits of getting tenants more involved.
Sweat the small stuff
Never dismiss resident feedback as trivial. A minor thing wrong can be a big worry but is often relatively easy to fix.
It is not feasible to cater to every tenant’s wishes, but it is possible to pick up on common themes and make relatively small changes to your approach, which can have a big impact on tenant satisfaction.
For example, a piece of consistent feedback we were getting was that the toilets in our homes were slightly too low and residents with hip and back problems were struggling. This was easy for us to put right, particularly in terms of our new builds, and something that could make a huge difference.
It is good to talk, but now more than ever, housing providers must listen and take action.
Zoe Wilkins is resident engagement manager at Housing & Care 21
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