BrainDump #3: “The Future of Housing Management”
Here is what I’ve been reading and working on this week…
Reading:
Tanmay Vora: “What Creating Sketchnotes Taught Me About Learning” http://qaspire.com/2015/10/29/what-creating-sketchnotes-taught-me-about-learning/
Corporate Rebels “The Million Dollar question every organisation needs to answer” https://corporate-rebels.com/million-dollar-question/?utm_source=Corporate+Rebels+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0490aa3a0c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a62c96458b-0490aa3a0c-182397969
Adam Clarke “Who are you?” https://medium.com/p/61f8f04df700?source=twitterShare-9ae0a97c1620-1515965976
Do we really need to be more commercial? Mike Owen https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/comment/do-we-really-need-to-be-more-commercial-54051
Financial Times: “Why Carillion has gone into liquidation and rather than administration” https://amp.ft.com/content/a4dd80be-f9f1-11e7-a492-2c9be7f3120a#click=https://t.co/9qju6XFhNi
Working on:
This week I attended HQN’s “Future of Housing Management” conference — it was a thought-provoking day with a real diversity of speakers and topics.
Here are some of my takeaways:
Efficiencies:
It’s generally accepted that we all need to manage our businesses and services as efficiently as possible. Technology has been seen as a means of achieving this, however, we need to ensure our drives for efficiency are carefully managed and we do not leave people behind (customers or staff!)
There are two things that came to mind within this session;
- Amazon’s “Empty Chair” approach — a good way of reminding ourselves to consider the impact of our decisions from a customers’ perspective
- The importance of shaping services based on customer’s experiences and decent profiling information. A one-size-fits-all approach to housing services will really let down certain groups of our tenants as well as be ineffective and inefficient — so it’s in all of our interests to put customers first.
Ambitions:
In Wales we feel like quite a cohesive sector with similar missions, objectives and ambitions. Whilst I knew this was more disparate in England I was surprised by the scale of the gulf between the different organisations. It was clear that some organisations had completely scaled back in favour of a development programme and independence, whereas others had found creative ways of continuing to deliver the “added value” services that housing organisations can be well placed to deliver.
It really made me think about my own values and the type of organisation that I would want to work in in the future.
Neighbourhood Planning
We already have an approach to neighbourhood planning within MHA which we’re trialling this year, however, I really enjoyed the presentation from Ivan Wright at New Charter talking about their holistic approach to Neighbourhood Planning.
I was particularly interested in how they had engaged with different teams, as well as their communities to ensure there was good ownership over the plans and clear lines of accountability. (Although I think I might have to brush up on my excel skills to create such a comprehensive performance dashboard!!)
I felt this approach could also complement our other thinking around patchless working and how we balance tenant relationships within this.
Opportunities between housing and health
We all know that housing can play a key role in helping the health service in prevention work, as well as more time-sensitive issues such as; bed-blocking and specialist accommodation/supported housing.
As part of a wider presentation, Henry Terefenko from ForViva spoke about a piece on social prescribing work they had done within their area. This maximised the use of the contact they had with their customers and although initially funded by them, they have been able to present a cost benefit analysis to the NHS to gain sponsorship and funding to continue the service. This felt like a really joined-up approach between different sectors which will hopefully have longer-term health benefits (and health savings as a result)
Self-service
Hyde presented some really interesting work on their ASB Toolkit and Better Off initiatives. I liked how the online ASB toolkit managed expectations from the beginning, as well as their usefulness for new staff members. It provided really useful information and easy links to the relevant sites for tenants to access.
In a similar vein the BetterOff initiative is a means for tenants to gain advice on benefits and employment in a way that was convenient and easy for them to use. Whilst this might not be suitable for all tenants, it did seem like a way of expanding our capacity to help more tenants get access to advice.
We’re in the people business
Maybe this point is a bit obvious but it’s an important reminder from one of the speakers about housing management needing human interaction — we’re in the people business and it’s important that we don’t lose sight of this!
