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The way repairs are done has changed due to the crisis (picture: Alamy)
The way repairs are done has changed due to the crisis (picture: Alamy)

How repairs teams are changing the way they work as lockdown eases

Sponsored by Advanced

As maintenance teams adjust to coronavirus restrictions, many social landlords have started to rely more on digital services. Inside Housing carried out a survey, sponsored by Advanced, to find out more

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60% of the sector says that it will be change the way repairs and maintenance staff are deployed in the next 12 months, a new @insidehousing and @advanced survey finds (sponsored) #ukhousing @IHPartnerships

Nearly 20% say they are not confident of how efficiently they are managing repairs staff (sponsored) #ukhousing @advanced @IHPartnerships

Arranging speedy and responsive repairs may become more complicated as social distancing continues. Many landlords say this is central to their approach for the coming months (sponsored) #ukhousing @Advanced @IHPartnerships

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Efficient management of repairs and maintenance operatives and tradespeople is a challenge for social housing organisations at the best of times. As society learns to live with physical distancing in response to the coronavirus crisis, the way routine repairs are carried out within homes will change.

The likely result? New obstacles in making sure staff are managed effectively and safely, while continuing to achieve financial efficiency and tenant satisfaction.

To get a sense of these challenges, Inside Housing has run a survey. Sponsored by software solutions company Advanced, the survey was launched on 1 April, when lockdown had just commenced. When lockdown was extended, the questions were adapted to be relevant and to find out how the deployment of staff has traditionally been managed and how landlords might adapt services over the coming year.


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The sector’s view

A total of 163 people shared their views and together form a cross-section of the sector – three-quarters work at housing associations and the rest at ALMOs and councils. Those from repairs and maintenance are well represented – 35% say this best describes their job function – but so too is housing management, accounting for 28% of those who responded.

The pandemic has meant an increased pressure for housing teams that are supporting tenants while keeping staff safe, too. This has called for changes to work processes, and repairs and maintenance has been one of the top priorities. The Housing Ombudsman has instructed that work continues as much as possible and that the backlog is tackled as routine repairs are booked again. Of those surveyed, 60% say that it will change the way staff are deployed in the next year.

For more than half of respondents, such strategies will include changes to the way tenants are able to communicate maintenance problems. While 63% say it is already possible for their organisation’s tenants to report repairs online, only 30% say it is possible for residents to book visits online and just a quarter are able to reschedule appointments online.

The survey results reveal some concern about how efficient the process of managing staff has been over the past six months – only 16% say they are “very confident” the process has been as smooth as it can be, while nearly 20% were not confident of efficient management.

What is clear is that the majority of organisations now use digital means to manage these processes. Almost half of respondents say the deployment of repairs and maintenance staff to tenants’ homes is managed entirely digitally, and another 47% say the process is mostly digital. Only a handful say paper is still prominent.



Despite this, almost a quarter say there is further to go with digitisation, which is one of the most common challenges still being faced in efficiently managing maintenance staff. Also frequently cited as problematic is a siloed approach to deploying staff. Some 36% of respondents say this is an issue, with inefficiencies arising if more than one person from more than one team is required to solve a problem in a tenant’s home.

“I think the principle of a customer [services] portal is a concept we’ve been talking about in the sector for quite some time, and some organisations have embraced it and got on very well with it,” comments Nathan Ollier, general manager for field service at Advanced.

“I would say that we still have a number of organisations wedded to the contact centre model. Some of that is simply because they haven’t reached the evaluation of customer portals in their transformation journey yet. Some of it is because they’ve not quite matured their thinking... around the technologies required to effectively triage and report repairs.”

One repairs and maintenance director at a housing association says: “There can sometimes be a lack of effective communication between our customer services team, technical team and contractors, which leads to jobs taking too long or too many visits.”

A finance director at another organisation adds: “Inefficient scheduling of repairs across the geographical area of operation is leading to increased travel time and lower productivity.”

In numbers

16%

Respondents who say management process has been smooth

47%

Percentage who say the way staff are deployed is mostly digital

60%

Proportion who say process of deploying staff will change

63%

Respondents who say tenants are able to book repairs online

This theme does not come as a surprise to Mr Ollier. Advanced supplies software to help organisations manage staff working in the field and has a setup which allows multiple activities to be connected to one case.

“I think a key component of efficiency [in field management] is looking at the skills and capabilities of your resources and challenging yourself as to whether that really does need two or three different people to go over a period of time or whether we can condense those activities into one point of delivery,” he argues.

Merging systems

Even when a digital system is in place, it is not always present across an entire organisation. A minority of survey respondents say that mergers pose a problem as part of the challenge of bringing together organisations is melding their different systems for managing repairs.

“We’re certainly engaged with a number of customers who are working through the merger of two if not more organisations,” says Mr Ollier. “That inevitably brings both challenge and opportunity as they navigate through analysing multiple operating models – probably with different systems landscapes but maybe with crossover – to develop a [field management] strategy that allows you to take the best of breed forwards.”



The survey results clearly show the potential risks of inefficient management of this sort of communication and of field staff generally. More than half say the challenges here are leading to poorer resident satisfaction; about the same speak of reduced satisfaction among staff. Just under half share concerns about the financial impact of such inefficiencies.

“We know from experience that the quality and speed of a repair impacts on customer satisfaction,” comments one repairs and maintenance director. “The quicker and better quality, then satisfaction naturally increases.”

Arranging speedy and responsive repairs may become more complicated as social distancing continues. Many respondents say this is at the centre of their minds when thinking about how their approach will evolve.

One notes a decision to use software that enables a resident to track the engineer who is due in their home. This, along with more repairs being undertaken in-house, might help to reassure residents of how vital their safety is. Another says a text message service has been adopted to help staff to work from home.

“I think all organisations have been challenged to look long and hard at where we have an opportunity to be more resilient in the future,” concludes Mr Ollier. “The social housing sector does a great job, but while we’ve got organisations that are still using paper [to deploy staff] and residents who aren’t booking repairs online, then there’s a way to go.”