Genuine change comes at a short-term cost
Why one association is bringing back the local housing officer, despite the increased expense
ForHousing (part of ForViva group) is another housing provider that used the Covid-19 pandemic as a chance to reimagine how it organises itself to better fit with the needs of its customers. The north-west of England landlord is about to commence the ‘proof of concept’ phase for a new operating model, born from its pandemic experience.
Chief executive Colette McKune explains that Covid-19 exposed the increased levels of vulnerability in the communities where ForHousing works. The solution? To reorganise the entire business, replacing a more hierarchical structure with one that centres on locally focused teams of multi-skilled colleagues, who can deal with a wider range of tenant issues. “Less back-office and more front-office,” is how McKune describes the proposed set-up, which she says is something of a throwback.
Back to the future
“It's almost to some extent going back to the 70s and 80s, where everybody knew their local housing officer or their local neighbourhood officer, and they went to that neighbourhood officer, and that neighbourhood officer would be able to sort out whatever their issue was instead of being passed from pillar to post.”
One of the reasons this model has fallen out of fashion is that it costs more. McKune is clear that is also the case with the proposals that are on the table at ForHousing, but she’s equally clear that it will prove worth the investment in the long run.
“It will be more expensive and this is going to be the challenge for us as leaders in the organisation and also a challenge for the board to recognise that actually this is going to cost more in the short term. But actually there'll be a medium-term and long-term gain because we'll be much more proactive around the homes that people live in, and much more supportive of the people who live in those homes.
“We’ll undoubtedly need more staff and we’ll need to train staff up, [but] we're not just looking at the financial cost: what are the benefits to tenants, the benefits to staff, but also the benefits to the organisation as a whole?”
Colette McKune Group CEO, ForViva
“We’ll undoubtedly need more staff and we’ll need to train staff up, [but] we're not just looking at the financial cost: what are the benefits to tenants, the benefits to staff, but also the benefits to the organisation as a whole?”
Empowering staff and tenants
McKune says the driver is empowerment, of both staff and tenants: “That is a fundamental shift. So we're doing it very much as a bottom-up approach. Will it change the structure of the organisation over time? Definitely. Will it cost more? I'd be amazed if it didn't in the short term, but in the medium term, I believe that it will actually save costs.”
She is also sanguine about the prospect of a drop in productivity as a result of better long-term performance, particularly when it comes to things like repairs. “You might get less productivity from operatives because they spend more time at a property fixing them first time, which is actually what should happen. KPIs will drop and costs will go up.”
Enabling decarbonisation
One of the ways in which both ForHousing and its tenants will benefit in the long run, according to McKune, is that a better understanding of individual residents and how they interact with their homes will leave the association with a better understanding of how to achieve one of its other key aims: the decarbonisation of its stock.
“[Through this approach] you also really get to understand that home and what interventions you need to make in that home with the tenants to enable decarbonisation,” she explains.
“Because I very strongly believe that if you just look at decarbonisation from the basis of the asset – the house – we're going to fail. We have to do this as much as we can on an individual basis, because no one property is lived in the same as another property. And each property will need its own set of interventions. So you don't do a plan for an archetype, you do a plan for that particular home.”
