Tenant engagement and tenant first

At Circle Voluntary Housing Association, we firmly believe that how we interact with our tenants, communities, colleagues, and key stakeholders is of fundamental importance, writes Liz Clarke, Director of Services.

Tenant engagement is, and will continue to be, at the heart of everything we do. We strongly believe that our tenants should have a real opportunity to influence and shape the services they receive from Circle. This ethos underpins our approach to tenant engagement, and is set out in our new corporate strategy, in the structure of engagement activities on offer, and in our full commitment to improving and creating new opportunities for tenant involvement.

Supporting Communities has been working with us to help develop the structures for a Tenant Advisory Group (TAG) and ensure that everyone involved has the tools and resources to enable a meaningful partnership between tenants, staff, and our board. Since December 2020, tenants and staff have been taking part in training and focus group work to develop a common understanding of tenant engagement and how they want to proceed. We are delighted to report that our board has approved a brand-new Tenant Engagement Strategy, written by the tenants themselves. This is a major milestone for us with many hours of work behind it. The Strategy is accompanied by a three-year action plan, written and designed by tenants and staff.

The result? A tenant-led, inclusive, and sustainable tenant engagement structure which enables our tenants to hold us to account. Tenants do so by advising, monitoring and scrutinising our performance and behaviour, identifying areas for improvement and helping to improve the services they receive.

Our vision, objectives and approach

Our vision is to make a real difference by providing quality homes and services

We believe it is a necessity that tenants have a real opportunity to scrutinise our performance, influence our service delivery and affect service improvements. To do this, we are making sure tenants have the skills and capacity to ensure effective engagement and scrutiny and providing tenants with a real chance to shape the tailoring of services to reflect their priorities.

Our Strategy sets out how we will communicate and develop meaningful engagement with our tenants. It has been designed to be inclusive and empowering, recognising tenants as the key stakeholders of our business. We have now openly committed to providing a comprehensive range of channels for our tenants to drive Circle to do better.

Dedicating the necessary finance and other resources to fully implement, monitor, and evaluate this strategy was imperative and something our Board recognised and supported. We’ve made a commitment to our tenants that all our staff will understand this Strategy and have the necessary guidance and tools to implement it. Together we are developing ways in which we can measure the impact of implementation and delivery of this Strategy. To enable engagement, our staff and initial Tenant Steering Group spent hours, days and months in training, meetings and consulting with other supporting organisations to ensure that we empower our tenants and break down barriers to their involvement in Circle.

Tenant communication and engagement is about how our tenants can voice what we as an organisation do, but we understand that in asking tenants to do that we’re asking a lot of them. There’s been an awakening within Circle and in our staff and teams. We now have a clear and better understanding that our tenants have busy lives and that their time is equally important. As a result of this, we’ve really delved into how we encourage greater levels of participation that suit our tenants’ lifestyles. In taking their advice we’ve developed a choice in how tenants can take part; various types and levels of engagement are available through our Tenant Engagement Structure.

Our tenant engagement journey

The draft statutory and voluntary regulations provide some direction as to what is required of approved housing bodies (AHBs), but we’ve learned that tenant participation has been most effective where social landlords have gone beyond the requirements of the regulator. The results and recommendations from our 2019 Tenant Experience Survey provided significant grounding for the Strategy and that direct feedback from tenants was the driving force needed.

In March 2020, we engaged the services of Supporting Communities to support the development and implementation or a revised 2021 Tenant Engagement Structure and Strategy. Unfortunately, the impact of Covid-19 resulted in delays to delivering the first phase of the project plan. It was always Circle’s and Supporting Communities intention and preference to deliver training and support to tenants and staff face to face. However, the ongoing restrictions led to Circle and Supporting Communities having to revise the scheduled action plan to incorporate delivery via Zoom. Despite the challenges presented by Covid-19, phase one of the action plan was delivered in full and included:

• Tenant participation workshops and action planning sessions for staff;

• Tenant participation workshops and action planning sessions for tenants, and the establishment of a Tenant Steering Group;

• Workshops and action planning sessions to support development of the Steering Group for staff and/or Board members; and

• Development of the Terms of Reference for the Tenant Steering Group approved by tenants.

The original Steering Group designed the new tenant approved logo which is now used on all tenant related documents, policies, handbooks, and communications. It revitalised the tenant newsletter and edited and proofed the new tenant handbook.

A call was made for tenants to become involved in the Tenant Advisory Group (TAG). Supporting Communities and members of the Steering Group, along with staff, management, leadership team and Board members, attended information sessions to drive support and membership. All departments, whether front facing or not, took part.

Our TAG was established in April 2021, with Steering Group members continuing to be involved. The group received training on Circles structure and governance, as well as how Circle is financed and regulated. Good governance, components of effective meetings and the role of the chairperson were covered, supporting the TAG to realise its purpose and function. A two-way process for communicating between our board and the TAG has been in place since then, and this has been championed by the TAG, our Chair and CEO.

The impact

In the words of our Customer Services and Repairs Manager, Colm Barnes: “By the end of the first TAG group meeting, I understood the idea of tenant engagement better. With each session, the idea grew on me. The introduction of April and Gerry (Circle tenants) was again a strange concept. We never said it, but there was that invisible boundary between ‘us and them’.

“As the meetings went on, I was able to talk more openly with Gerry and April. Listening to their input gave me a sense of relief and belief in the TAG. They both acknowledged what individual staff members working within Circle did in our daily roles. To hear the sentence, ‘how can we help?’ was an eye-opener for me. If this was the tenant engagement concept, that won me hands down!

“You ask the question about how tenant engagement will benefit me as the Customer Service and Repairs Manager. I don’t fully know yet, but I hope the journey I have experienced so far will continue and that it will be a similar one for all our tenants and all of Circle’s staff. Based on my TAG experience, I know we can learn a lot from each other, pull on our strengths together when needed, and be open with each other when support and understanding are required. That can only be a good thing.”

T: 01 407 2110
E: lclarke@circlevha.ie
W: www.circlevha.ie