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Resident focus: Five questions boards should be asking to ensure residents’ voices are being heard

“Staff and board come and go, but I will be here until they carry me out”.

Carole – a wise woman, and housing association tenant – once said this to me. She felt strongly that her voice, and those of her neighbours should matter in making long-term decisions, as well as influencing more immediate changes to services. I have not heard the stewardship role of boards (or governing bodies) and executive teams expressed so clearly: the need to hear from, and have accountability to, current and future residents.

Changes to the regulation of English housing providers, along with a more active Housing Ombudsman and the very public scrutiny of housing standards in traditional and social media, have created an environment where hearing the voices of residents in the boardroom is critical. Doubtless many readers will be thinking that it’s about time to take this to the next stage.

But in its own way, this creates challenges: how can boards move beyond tick-box compliance to a real understanding of residents’ views and needs – now and in the future? How can strategic assurance be provided without boards moving into the operational space?

Increasingly, we’re hearing these boardroom conversations regarding having a firm oversight of good-quality homes, the right services and accountability to residents. Here are five of the key questions boards are asking themselves.

Do we have the right culture of resident focus, openness and learning from mistakes?

The best ideas, structures and strategies face failure if they are not underpinned by a strong organisational culture. Are staff empowered to recognise and raise areas of concern? How are residents’ complaints and queries received? What is the organisational attitude to mistakes and learning from failure – and is the tone right at leadership level?

It can be difficult for boards to get a real grip on organisational culture, but some useful places to start include:

Having cultural signals that this matters to the board and leadership (e.g. communication, recognition, language and focus);
Staff engagement measures to check perceptions of culture;
Rich resident feedback on how they are treated, spoken with and listened to.

How do we know?

Boards need to gain assurance around safety, service standards and satisfaction. This goes beyond receiving reassurance from the executive team. It needs to draw on a range of sources and provide board members with confidence that what they are seeing in their meetings represents what is going on in neighbourhoods, homes and in the day-to-day work of staff.

Taking the time to decide on the right information will also result in better-quality discussions. It is more effective to ask questions of higher-level indicators than to drown in a sea of unfiltered data.

A good board is curious and will ask – how do we know this information is accurate? What checks have we made on the data? They do not need all the answers themselves, but they do need to know who has got the answer and how its veracity has been checked.

This might include some level of reality checks – what is the word on the street / at neighbourhood events / on social media about the organisation? Does it chime with what I’m hearing in the boardroom?

A Board Assurance Framework can help to unpick the right areas for board-level scrutiny. This approach is often used to map out sources of assurance against key risks and can helpfully be applied to consumer regulation expectations.

Compliance with these standards will be nothing new for boards, but triangulation of sources of assurance (e.g. tenant feedback, management information and external review) may help to reveal gaps and areas where assurance is lacking. Involving residents in this process could help with insight and accountability.

How are we hearing from people with different experiences?

Do you really understand who lives, and wants to live, in the homes the housing provider owns and manages? How is this information used to gain insight into the experiences of different people? How is equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) work leading the organisation to be anti-discriminatory?

Customer segmentation is nothing new, but many housing providers do not really dig into this data to understand its potential impact on strategic thinking and decision making. Those we see doing this well combine equalities, service outcomes and geographical data to establish operational ‘lead’ indicators (anticipating service issues) and informed decision making at a strategic level.

Is our structure a help or a hinderance?

Many housing providers are working in partnership with residents to find the best methods of two-way communication and engagement. A regular theme in governance reviews is how to expand board insight beyond the views of a single resident panel. We see the best in this area working on a structure of co-regulation that embeds accountability to residents into the governance structures of the organisation.

These range from resident-led associations to those which invest into community-led innovation alongside formal governance roles. Organisations doing this well recognise that structure on its own does not guarantee resident-focus. They review their approach in partnership with residents and question how the views and priorities of a wide range of people can influence service improvements and longer-term decision making.

So what?

The step back, take stock ‘so what?’ question is one of the best. It’s about meaning and impact. We all know that boards need the space and time to see the bigger picture, but it can be difficult in an environment that is (necessarily) heavy with compliance requirements.

Strategy away days can be helpful, of course, but there needs to be a golden thread back to the regular board and committee meetings: a chance for boards to pause in responding to papers and look for the impact. Back to Carole’s point – how are the views and needs of current and future residents influencing long-term decision making?

These questions are not exhaustive, but provide some framing for the discussions boards need to have in order to meet regulatory requirements, to demonstrate their social purpose and – most importantly – to ensure that the voices of the people they exist for are heard.

Image: Nick Fewings

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