Engagement support for housing and care organisations
Engagement support for housing and care organisations
I have worked in the social housing sector for over 20 years as an engagement specialist and coach for senior leaders and executives. I build fresh and creative ways to increase tenant engagement and satisfaction. Read on to discover how I can help your organisation.
I have a range of services on offer (and I’m always open to new ideas), all of which are designed to provide engagement support for social and supported housing services. As this is all about helping people make homes in services, I thought it would be good to consider the different levels of service in terms of a block of flats. I offer everything from the foundations (culture and effective working), in to the entrance hall of regulatory requirements and up through different levels of innovation to the penthouse. Have an explore to see what might be the solution for you…
Meaningful engagement is all about a culture shift. Without the right culture, engagement will fail. A lot like health and safety, engagement should be everyone’s responsibility. Everyone, regardless of role, should be willing to listen, act and respond.
When talking about culture I like to talk about the difference between housing and sausage rolls. Yes, there are obvious differences but let me tell you more…
If you bought a sausage roll from a leading retailer tomorrow, and it was poor quality, you would have a wide range of options: you could go elsewhere for your sausage rolls, make your own, choose a different pastry product or even stop eating them. They’re not essential to your existence.
Tenants of social and supported housing who feel their homes are poor quality don’t have these choices. In the current housing crisis, their options are limited and they are stuck. Unlike sausage rolls, a home is essential for a person’s existence.
Both sausage rolls and housing are products we consume, but housing is unlike any other product, therefore the way we engage with consumers needs to be different. We need the right culture to support this.
I have a range of tools to help you scrutinise your culture, make changes and embed the right behaviours. I use creative and engaging ways to examine issues like social housing stigma, complaints culture and scrutiny. Wherever possible, I aim to work with tenants to create and deliver sessions.
For a more intensive look at culture, I also deliver Insights Discovery sessions. I believe this is a great tool for setting the right culture for effective engagement, as it gives participants more knowledge about their preferred style, their communication methods and helps them flex to other styles when needed. It also uses simple language and frameworks to identify the styles of others to enable effective communication.
There is a lot of pressure on social and supported housing to ensure regulatory and statutory requirements are met. This has become even more important since awful tragedies such as the Grenfell disaster and the death of Awaab Ishak. These were awful events that should never have happened, but new and tighter regulations mean we have an opportunity to make something positive as a legacy to those who died.
It’s an arguably strange opinion, but I absolutely love a regulation or a framework. I love the structure it offers and the chance to meet every objective and then build on it to get something even stronger and more creative. However, I recognise that taking the time and resource to understand the requirements, implement them and ensure there is a culture change that makes them part of business-as-usual is hard.
Tentacles Consultancy is here to do the legwork for you. I’ll spend time looking at the requirements you need to meet in relation to the relevant requirements. I’ll map them out for you, make recommendations and, if needed, I’ll work with people making a home in your services to implement the ideas and get the culture right. I’ll even check out what’s coming to make sure anything we do is future- proof. The idea is that you make a time limited investment to affect service delivery for the future.
As ever, each package will be tailored to the needs of the organisation, but here are some examples of the things I can help you with:
I will map out engagement for all chapters with a particular focus on ‘To have your voice heard by your landlord’.
A focus on how they are used and understood by both colleagues and customers in your organisation.
Support to prepare/review and implement your resident engagement strategy.
A look at how you can enhance your performance against the code by involving your homemakers.
Building active and meaningful associations who have a measurable influence on your organisation.
Focus on client involvement and empowerment, though I can help you find opportunities for engagement in all sections. Please note that I am aware that many local authorities no longer have a structured approach to assessing quality. I can support with implementation of a personalised framework.
Here at Tentacles, I always try to be innovative. I want people to enjoy themselves while working with me. With this in mind, I have worked in partnership with Golden Marzipan to develop an engagement game.
I facilitate the game to ensure maximum fun and maximum usefulness. Have a look at the link below for more information.
This is the place to be if you want to do more than just the basics. Tentacles Consultancy can help you look at the great practice across the sector and develop on it.
There are a whole plethora of options and I have experience of both structuring and implementing all the ideas I have listed below (although I am also open to new ideas).
A key consideration in getting great practice ideas in place is what you’re doing for Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. In my last workplace, the engagement structure I implemented was identified as being ‘industry leading’ by National Equality Standards assessors. Getting this right means that you can engage with a wide variety of homemakers.
I want to be clear that this is very much about the qualitative work. Tentacles Consultancy doesn’t offer solutions to wide scale surveys or digital real time feedback (though I can recommend some companies who do). However, I will work with all the data and feedback you’ve got. The idea is that I’ll do some short-term interventions to set this stuff up with homemakers and colleagues, and then I’ll leave you to enjoy the long-term benefits.
To give you an idea of some of the great practice we can set up, here are a few sample ideas:
I believe this one is essential. It’s the simplest way to ensure your new colleagues are ‘customer’ focussed and understand the values of your organisation. I can help with setting up systems and monitoring, training any volunteers and assessing the cultural difference.
Enabling clear scrutiny of a range of issues is a great way to get people involved in the things that matter to them. I have facilitated scrutiny groups on everything from complaints to procurement and can support you to ensure that they are well established and have an accountability framework so that the findings are shared appropriately.
Working with a diverse range of people to ensure that your organisation’s communication is meaningful and strikes the right tone. I also have experience of writing easy read documents which can be really helpful for people who struggle with English literacy.
The people making homes in your services will often be more open to others with lived experience. I can help you to set up groups that will visit your services and neighbourhoods, speak with your homemakers and quality check what you’re doing. We can even develop an action plan based on findings. It’s a great way to give people the confidence that you’re transparent and committed to quality.
If you’ve ever watched Gordon Ramsey do his thing on ‘Kitchen Nightmares’, this is a similar offer (but with much less swearing). If you have a service, estate or neighbourhood where there are ongoing issues that are using up all your resource, I can be an independent person to help get relationships back where they need to be. I can speak to the people living there, your team and have a look at what needs to happen to improve the situation.
If you already have homemakers involved in different aspects of your organisation, you may be looking for ways to future proof what you’re doing and keep one step ahead of the inevitable changes that will come. I’m still here to help.
It’s great when we’re getting people involved and enabling them to make changes to systems, processes and experiences, but involvement can be seen as a ‘gift’ that we give to homemakers, and we can take away at will. We can pick and choose what they know and how they are involved.
To really revolutionise the sector we need to go beyond this. We need to properly engage with homemakers at ALL levels, in ALL situations. The Mckinsey Report tells us that change from the bottom-up is more likely to be accepted, implemented and useful, but 75% of organisations still take a top-down approach. In the housing and support sectors, we need to make sure that changes we make (other than regulatory and statutory requirements) are actually what the people making homes in our services want.
Tentacles Consultancy can review your organisation to find out where the partnership opportunities are, and how we can make them happen. For example:
With the right training and support, you can have the people in your services on your Board. Less than half of the organisations in the sector currently do this, but they are missing a trick! Many organisations have a Board sub-group or similar, but this is not an equal partnership.
I have experience of developing and delivering training and support for Board members, as well as providing support for a regular ‘customer’ slot on the Board at a large national housing association.
Homemakers as equal partners is a big change for some, and that means the culture of organisations needs to change too. Using Insights Discovery, coaching and my skills and experience, I can support culture change starting with language and working towards action.
When I started Tentacles Consultancy, my aim was to share my experiences to make sure people making homes in social and supported housing services were getting the best possible engagement. But I want more!
If I was to stop at sharing my experiences, this would mean I would stop learning and would eventually become outdated. I’m keen to innovate and to look at things differently. With this in mind, I’ll be keeping my tentacles out (see what I did there!), looking for new information, ideas and technology to see how I can make things even better. Where I can see potential or ideas, I’ll be approaching organisations to ask if I can work with them. I will also be open to approach and getting involved in new projects.
I’m particularly keen to look at building new, more cohesive, strengths-based communities.
If you’re interested in discussing a new way of working, get in touch. I’m happy to facilitate a creative and exploratory session to find opportunities.
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