You’ll be aware that Your Own Place turned eight in October last year.  Both a huge milestone and a source of great pride.  What is often unseen beneath the veneer of glossy social media, is the knock backs, the failures, the disappointments and frustrations.  I’m thrilled to say that very few of those relate to the work we do to prevent homelessness – by comparison to starting a business from scratch with nothing and with no-one, that feels like the easy part.

We have grown modestly, safely and sustainably, partly out of choice and partly because what we do is hard, time-consuming and we’ve an unwavering commitment to doing it right and very well.  Continuing in this vein is plausible and almost comfortable right up until the point when I ponder the phenomenal difference we make beyond our great outcomes and numbers.   More people deserve this! 

Like many, Covid19 threw a curveball opportunity that has neither fundamentally changed us nor endangered us. The team is as strong as they have ever been, their ideas are getting away from me and our digital transformation (and I mean every letter of that word) was all their work.

And it was one such idea that has led to our newest and arguably most exciting new partnership with Independent East.

Jess Marsh, a fantastic and adaptable facilitator in our team, suggested a digital showcase way back in February. Homes for Cathy kindly hosted our three-way suite of webinars giving a flavour of our delivery style, values, energy and adaptability online.

Whilst the rest is not exactly history (these things take time to flesh out and refine), we can announce a new partnership with Independent East, Saffron Housing Trust Limited, Freebridge Housing, Broadland Housing Group and Orwell Housing. They make up Independent East and will be working with Your Own Place CIC to develop the tenancy and independent living skills, knowledge, confidence and resilience with 400 of their tenants.  We are, needless to say, delighted to be working in this way, ensuring huge additional benefit to their residents, to the landlords themselves and our communities. Our first tenants workshops start on the 25th January and we can’t wait.

Up to this point we have been running workshops with their teams, the Project Team (IEPT), building relationships, shadowing their teams, creating referral pathways and information sharing mechanisms and crucially, co-producing an engagement strategy to ensure we reach their tenants to have an impact. Every step of the way our intention is to model our values, culture and approaches ensuring a smooth handover from tenancy officers to Your Own Place – the building of relationships is at the core of this.  The project has its very own project group to oversee progress and ensure milestones and outcomes are met.

Naturally, it’s not only all this that excites us.  It is what comes next where I think we share each other’s excitement.  In May we brought the partnership together and it was suddenly and wonderfully apparent how much more this project was about than simply what we report in our impact reports and outcomes about financial capability.  It was about people’s lives, the whole community and not just people as residents of one housing association.

The partners recognise that their tenants are people in the local community as you and I are. And so by equipping them with the skills, knowledge and confidence to keep their home, it’s not just about whilst they are a tenant with Saffron or Freebridge, but when they move and wherever they move.  What we provide are not life skills, but skills for life – equipping people to go to college, get a job, leave their room and become unstuck.  This is far more than tenancy sustainment and we can’t wait to get started.

But for Covid19, we wouldn’t have made it blended for a start.  But let me go back a bit.  Over the years we’re run a few Open Days.  We’ve planned as a team to showcase what we do and invite a few partners. In the early days they were often previous colleagues of mine or people who just latched onto what we did. We didn’t have lots of customers.

We would run it around three days a year (how did we have the time?), down tools, throw open the doors and welcome people with the lure of the kettle being on.  Generally lovely people turned up for a couple of hours, a cuppa and some cake. It was ‘nice’, quite fun and oddly good for team building and time together.  Was it an impactful and effective use of our time?  Not so much.  

Covid19 of course meant no Open Days at all for a while.  It meant a focus on survival, wellbeing, reaching people in crisis and everyone’s favourite, ‘pivoting’. So here we are, with super keen and new members of the team, a cautious and safe return to face to face and a five-year growth plan.  Open Days, naturally on the back burner when you’re busy, but also a vital part of our marketing strategy.  What should a ‘post Covid19’ Open Day look like? ‘Blended’ of course.

The simple joys of the new ideas that new team members bring.  Once you’ve seen collaborative working, trusted people to be creative, provided the parameters for that work, you can’t unsee it.  Our first ever Blended Open Day in September was our best yet, and I mean in terms of quality rather than quantity.

Here’s what we learnt:

• It’s a team task as well as an opportunity.  Whilst on the face of it, it’s more work, it’s a chance to do some lateral thinking, across projects instead of vertically and to collaborate across different workstreams.  It’s also a chance to have a bit of a free reign and create your own offer.  We provided three webinars online that attendees could choose to attend as well as a treasure hunt that showcased us in the office.

• It’s quality and not quantity.  Of course people won’t turn up.  Anyone who has put something on for free, knows this.  Oversubscribing, especially with our highly interactive approach, puts the team on edge and it can be a lot of pressure to perform.  I still hold with oversubscribing by about 50%. 

• It’s all about timing.  We ran it in September.  This means that most of the marketing was over the summer.  This is not a great time, even during the year of staycation. The timing was about our work pressures and not that of our target attendees. We’d be really interested to try a different time of the year. 

• Showcase what you do.  Webinars and face to face content by necessity actually meant that everyone had a clearly defined role, we got to show all aspects of our expertise and most importantly, people felt catered for and could engage in a way that suited them.  Online attendees were not second class citizens and of course we got to record it and share it online too.

• Mop up is as important as marketing. The focus can easily be on the doing on the day and the promoting.  Just as important, and if not more so if this is about generating business, is your strategy for follow up. How will you get people to sign up on the day, provide feedback and gain their permission to follow up and start a conversation as a ‘warm lead’?

• People love choice and freebies.  Face to face and webinars gave people choice.  The trainees we work with aren’t the only people who learn and engage in unique ways.  We all do, so why wouldn’t we, as a business that describes itself as ‘innovative, engaging and fun’, create multiple ways to get involved?  Oh, and there were free resources for those that attended, cupcakes with our tenancy sustainment modules on them and prizes too! 

Why on earth didn’t we think of ‘blended’ without the Covid19 nudge? 

 

Engagement. It’s a word our sector uses a lot and we all do it a lot. There is undoubtedly some very good practise in the housing sector and some really poor practise too. And then there’s those that pretend they’ve got good practise nailed and those that wonder why it doesn’t work. 

Here’s the thing. When we make a new friend, get chatting to someone in the gym or go on a first date, we don’t consider our approach to engagement. We’re just the best version of ourselves when we’re with others (mostly). 

What does engagement even mean? It surely means building a positive relationship akin to our values. In our sector, essentially, this means we aim to get people to do things we want them to do. How different is that in a personal relationship in as far as we want that person to be in our ‘tribe’. Engagement means not being a d^*%, treating people decently, being honest (which may mean vulnerable), being reciprocal, apologising from time to time, making some kind of commitment and showing up – to quote the great Brené Brown. 

With the Housing White Paper comes a renewed focus on resident engagement. This has to be a massive opportunity for us all, including those kidding ourselves that they’ve got this nailed, to explore what engagement means in practise. 

So here’s what all those normal human approaches to a friendship might practically look like in the housing sector and repackaged as engagement. 

• treating people decently – this means telling the truth if you have to change plans or got something wrong. It means listening to their suggestions (and again – being honest about why you might ignore some)

• being honest and brave (which may mean vulnerable) – as above, there are very few reasons that people can’t be trusted with the truth if you just have to change the date. Or if you have not met the plans for year one – discuss and share why. This will give huge insight into your world and build empathy. 

• being reciprocal – we’re humans and generally pretty selfish. If someone does something for you, do something back. But don’t assume it’s a voucher they want (would you get that for your friend after they gave you a lift to the garage?). Ask (explaining the parameters you have) what people want and keep asking. People change. 

• apologising from time to time – wow it goes a long way. And with no ‘buts’. Just say sorry – I stuffed up and I’m human. 

• making some kind of commitment – good engagement takes time, values, energy and money. You wouldn’t start a relationship saying that you’ll probably have to end it in a year as you’ll run out of capacity. Be honest about the challenges, involve people in the solutions and own your commitment to finding a way forward. If it’s really just for a year – be honest about that, set realistic aims and consider how this will impact on your relationship. 

• showing up – be your best! This is the one that might differ from a friend. A good friend will let you have a bad day. Resident engagement is a job – people rely on and trust you. Don’t sit on your phone or look bored. For that time to be worthy of their time and commitment, follow all the steps above to being your absolute best. People deserve no less.

Tenancy sustainment work has long been important for landlords not only wishing to ensure the rent is collected, but to support their tenants to thrive in their homes. In this piece Rebecca White explores why it matters now more than ever and shares her organisation’s empowering approach to achieving it. 

We’re all emerging into a world that has changed forever.  If there is a new normal, for many it is one that means more competition for jobs that don’t pay, worsening mental health and fewer opportunities.  The financial headaches for us as individuals must surely be replicated corporately in the boardrooms of housing associations up and down the land. 

Of all the partners we work with, we’ve huge empathy for our colleagues in social housing.  Not a conversation passes when we don’t learn of concern for a particular tenant, the extraordinary lengths many have gone to to keep people safe in their homes, maintenance teams now grappling to catch up with repairs and tenants disengaging due to anxiety and months of isolation. All the while the business model depends on the rent being collected every single week.  

So why is it then, when engagement for the purposes of tenancy sustainment is so important, that the actual people engagement is often so poor? As organisations that spend a lot of time and money trying to engage, why is practice so mired in assumptions, people feeling patronised and being mis-advised rather than listened to? Why are tenants blamed when systems don’t work and judged when we can’t know their lived experience or what choices look and feel like to them?

Against this backdrop of missed opportunities how does a system that has been managing crises for a year, return to a ‘prevention’ mindset and rebuild the relationships necessary for tenancy sustainment? 

Because it has to. To ignore the prevention agenda now would likely prove dangerous financially.  It would also be harmful to the very people landlords regard as valued customers and whose lives are wrapped up in the place that should be their safe and secure home. One housing association confided in me that even before Covid19, over 85% of their tenants had less than £10 in savings. Since Covid19 the number of people claiming unemployment benefits has risen 120% and Shelter reports that over 80% of social housing tenants have no savings at all. In terms of the safety net, there isn’t one. Whilst many of us are cautiously optimistic about the vaccination programme, the ending of the furlough scheme looms for more than five million people in October. It poses new risks to those in insecure and uncertain jobs. The economic tail of Covid19 will wag for years and probably decades with many housing associations already reporting increases in rent arrears. 

At Your Own Place we work to sustain tenancies and prevent homelessness. With a starting point of equality, we create workshops for people who are as diverse, worthy, talented, frustrated and experienced as any of us.  Who hasn’t sat in dull training because it doesn’t suit our learning style?  The need to adapt, keep it engaging, manage diverse styles and overcome barriers is just as present in our tenancy sustainment work. 

Nowhere is it more tested than in our group delivery. In groups of just eight (and six online) we deliver Tenancy & Independent Living Skills Plus (TILS+ or DigiTILS+). We extend our value of equality into taking an asset-based approach.  We leave assumptions at the door.  There is no cynicism and we are relentlessly upbeat (whilst acknowledging and empathising when life is unfair). We deliver group work that builds on what people do know and can do rather than when things have gone wrong or they have picked up a label not of their choosing. 

Notwithstanding the importance of managing risk, as an independent organisation our strength is starting with a level playing field. There’s no backstory, no history of rent arrears or the big dog.  These are the kinds of things that it’s all too easy to get hung up on, blame people for and use as an excuse to label tenants ‘hard to reach’.

Our approach is to work in small groups. Mostly our facilitation doesn’t even need tables, as there’s almost no writing. In a group of tenants ages 20-60 and when your starting position is equality, the chances are they’ve collectively got the answers. We ‘simply’ facilitate the emergence and recognition of their own skills, knowledge and solutions. So whilst we measure the outcomes related to knowledge around financial skills as crucial to achieving our outcomes, the ones that matter are the ones that relate to their own confidence and faith in their own ability to solve the next problem.  

In our groups the age range may equate to 100 years of shared tenancy experience. 100 years! It would be criminal for everyone else in the room not to benefit from this. What’s more it would be sheer arrogance for us to pretend we know more. Our framework of modules and thematic areas (money, housing and relationships) to work through guides the room to their own eureka moments. One person may benefit from another’s previous eviction experience or a tenant’s knowledge of a nearby debt agency that helped their mum out. This is peer learning at its absolute best. 

Over 87% of our trainees report increased tenancy skills and 82% improved understanding of their bills. Perhaps most importantly we have 94% retention on our workshops – building the relationships and human contact that has been lost over the last year. The case for group work is strong.  Stronger against a backdrop of a Housing White Paper advocating for an empowering approach to working with tenants. The case for values and independently-led tenancy sustainment group work is the strongest it’s ever been.  

To find out more contact rebecca@yourownplace.org.uk mob 07530 028446

How did you feel when you read about the cultural revelations at Brewdog?  And if you’re a founder or leader, how did you feel? With plans to scale these stories hit hard. In recent times though, and not because of Covid19 (or Brewdog), I’ve come to the view that small(ish) is beautiful (the horizon is already receding you’ll be pleased to know).  Probably because of a need to prove myself, I thought that success meant Your Own Place had to be huge.  Latterly I’ve been of the view that it doesn’t and shouldn’t be. It’s not about getting beer into the mouths of millions, it’s about making a phenomenal difference in the right way. 

As we venture into a wider geographical area with a narrower focus on the business offer, scarcely a week goes by when a tale of business woe like that of Brewdog doesn’t make me draw breath.  Last month we heard of their cult of personality and what getting it really wrong looks like (and more importantly, feels like).  If that doesn’t make you look in the mirror, nothing will.

So it is with relief that we focus on being the right size for the impact we want to make.  Nothing about that decision makes any of my efforts to scale well any different.  If anything, staying modest in size means there’s nowhere to hide and retaining our quality matters more than ever.

I wanted to share my five-point scaling plan (mostly because I wish someone had shared theirs with me)

1. People – of course it starts (and ends) with us.   If the people we support matter then those supporting them have to matter too. We’re not cool (or rich) enough to have a Director of People, but what we do have is oodles of empathy, compassion, passion and strategic thoughtfulness in our team and in the face of our first ever Operational Manager (Jess Luce-Rackham).  She sets an amazing precedent for our our first rung of management. Thanks to her (and team as test-bed), all the little (and big) things I have endeavoured to do, are being questioned, embedded, improved and codified (you’ll read that word a lot).  From ensuring birthdays are remembered, to time for us (team-time and BBQs) to really developing people because they matter (not just for the business) to giving people the best induction I never add and values-proofing literally every document and decision we make. Our people, even when they p*** me off, will always be looked after.  The mantra for how to treat people and how I check myself when I’m starting to feel snarky comes from Michelle Obama – ‘when they go low, we go high’.  Our aim then?  To attract and nurture the best who want to stay only for as long as they are happy! 

2. Belief in and communication of the model – it’s taken a while, but I trust it – implicitly.  It’s natural (and healthy) for any of us to get nervous before our facilitation.  It’s complex to deliver, we’re often meeting strangers for the first time in a new environment and with unexpected elements due to the barriers our trainees face. What’s vital to remember is that it’s almost never about us.  It’s about the model.  It works.  It’s tested, keeps working and it’s always worked.  No matter what or with whom you’re facilitating, with the right preparation and our values, it gets trainees to where you want them t be.  As we work in new areas, it’s incredibly satisfying to turn up somewhere new, not knowing much and guess what?  It works! This means we have to codify and replicate every core aspect. 

3. The back office – yes, it really matters.  From our database, our annual leave portal, our email server, our systems for co-working, processes for managing impact, schedules for reviewing our progress, payroll and every last one of the 44 policies, they all have to work whether we have two people in the team or 200 people in the team.  Conscious that start-ups grow, iterate and evolve in their founder’s image, it is important now to stress-test the systems and make sure they are effective as we grow and remain cost-effective.  Most important is the voice of the team.  Through creating a culture of being heard, creativity being encouraged and ideas being acted upon, the team knows best what they need and are crucial in this workstream.

4. Delivery – delivery is the other part of the codification.  In order to make a difference, be the best quality and be able to quantify the difference we make, there is a lot more to facilitation than facilitation.  Whether it’s engaging new customers, designing new content, engaging trainees, developing resources, devising outcomes frameworks or iterating all the cloud-based systems that sit behind them – this all has to be codified to be replicated. Lose the precision and we lose the impact.  In addition, if we’re facilitating in a new area, this means we need to research and understand it too. We may not need to be experts (in our asset-based model that sit with our trainees!), but we need to listen and understand their context in order to be able to respond.  As we move into more areas we will codify the questions and approaches we need to take.

5. Finance – I thought I might get in trouble if I left this off!  Honestly, I’ve loved becoming a finance person, developing the confidence to have finance conversations, do my own VAT returns and report on profit and loss.  The reality of staying small is figuring out what size we have to be to be sustainable, make a profit to make a difference and repay our social investors.  This was never about getting rich.  Your Own Place was founded on no cash from me or anyone else. It was built up on the side of a full-time job at the council and then upon finding myself suddenly single and leaving the council, hard graft to literally pay my bills on my own.  For the endless cold callers that see ‘CEO’ and email me with their offers, unless it’ll make a difference to the team and our people, we probably won’t buy it. Of course that doesn’t mean we don’t have to invest in the back office to free up capacity for the team (including me) to be more effective. As Your Own Place ploughs all its profit back into the mission it’s not my plan to have any money, any time soon. I’ll continue to assume no-one minds me turning up to meetings on my bicycle and feel incredibly lucky to have been nurtured with those values. It means I respect the finances, but am neither obsessed nor impressed by them.  

They are a means to a purposeful end and that end is number one again – people. 

Have a great summer!