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We must learn from those who are delivering our vital services on the ground
Housing associations are having to react quickly to their residents’ needs during the coronavirus crisis. It is the key workers on the ground that we can learn lessons from, says Anne McGurk
The pandemic took us all by surprise. Once the wide-reaching and shocking effects of the disease dawned on us, we woke up to an altered world. With little time to adapt, we had to change our way of life, our way of carrying out business.
The focus became one of survival. Not just making sure we survive but, perhaps more importantly, ensuring the most vulnerable people in our families, our businesses and communities also survive – financially, physically, emotionally and mentally.
A month into lockdown we are reminded daily of our physical frailties and how our economic security is undermined.
COVID-19 continues to play havoc with our plans, putting many on hold, and throwing our usual routines out. It isolates us from family, friends, workmates and neighbours; alters how we work and relate to colleagues and how we communicate with the world.
These are uncharted waters, there are no instruction manuals, no charts to guide us, we are all new to this world. Our minds are focused on doing the right thing, right here and right now – hoping it will be at least sufficient.
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Some things hold true in any crisis: the need for steady and reassuring leadership.
Yes, at government level, but vitally at a more local level. Chief executives, directors and board members all have important parts to play, but it is in a crisis that we also see ‘reassuring leadership’ at grassroots level.
Decisions made ‘at the top’ are often slow to take effect as they cascade through the business, the community, or for that matter the country. A crisis will not wait.
However, when the values driving the decisions and direction of ‘travel’ at the top of a business spring from the grassroots, then those common values of co-operation, consideration and caring are prioritised by all.
Prestige and power lose some of their cachet in the realisation that we need others – we need all the skills, talents, insights, local knowledge, and the practical abilities of our staff and community.
We are creatures of habit at home, work and play.
What this kind of shock to the norm, to our way of life, does is to change those habits. We learn to work and travel in a different way. Our routines change, including the simple things such as when we eat, sleep and how we communicate.
So do our priorities and the value we place on people, things and institutions.
Envisioning the world, let’s make that more local. Envisioning our business and our community post pandemic is key to ensuring we come through this better rather than worse for the experience.
Phoenix is a grassroots organisation. We were established from the bottom up. Our model has tenants as decision-makers throughout its structure.
As a resident and the chair, I think I am rightly proud of how we have operated since our birth in 2007. I have written on those achievements before and hopefully will do so again, but not today.
Today I am locked – well and truly – down. I am classed as vulnerable and haven’t left my flat since 18 March, other than to walk round a shared balcony circling the upper floor of our 39 flats.
“Prestige and power lose some of their cachet in the realisation that we need others – we need all the skills, talents, insights, local knowledge, and the practical abilities of our staff and community”
I am learning new skills to enable me to continue to chair meetings via video conferencing. I get my information mainly via phone conference or email.
The business is functioning well. But what of the meeting of human needs, the care of struggling staff or residents such as Mr G and Ms S and others, the tenants who came into our offices and our cafe daily for sympathetic and welcoming contact – what of them?
It is from talking with caretakers and neighbours and friends across our 6,000+ properties that I learn of the grassroots decision-makers. I learn of the residents who are called every couple of days as well as the planned calls to older people.
The batches of flour and yeast delivered to someone in need. The ‘through the window’ lesson on using a mobile phone given to an older resident so she can keep in touch with her family.
“Is it time we and all housing associations had our key workers, as well as residents, on our board as part of the insight, knowledge and decision-making which drives the business from bottom to top?”
The dog food found and delivered to the financially struggling tenant. A child’s laptop being replaced when it ‘disappeared’ from an open-plan front lawn. I could go on.
Am I proud? Yes. But when we move into a post-pandemic mode, I want to be proud of how much we listen to and learn from our key workers’ knowledge, insights and example.
They are living and delivering our values.
Phoenix has residents at its heart.
Is it time we and all housing associations had our key workers, as well as residents, on our board as part of the insight, knowledge and decision-making which drives the business from bottom to top?
Anne McGurk, chair, Phoenix Community Housing
