When is a nuisance report an incident and when does a trend start? The dynamics associated with quality of life can have a major impact on residents' quality of life and social cohesion in neighborhoods and neighborhoods. As a corporation, how do you keep a grip on quality of life and ensure that residents feel heard and seen? Housing corporation Lefier has recently taken big steps and CorporatieGids Magazine spoke about this with Residents' Affairs Employee Janny Andriessen: “Registering nuisance has been an underrated child for too long.”
For a long time, nuisance was not stored uniformly or centrally, Janny starts the conversation. “As Lefier, we worked with multiple registration systems and had information and work inventory in various places. This led, among other things, to the fact that information fragmented and, for example, it was difficult to find if several people had reported about the same resident. We also did not work uniformly and the search for information, which is necessary for a file investigation, for example, took a lot of time. As an organization, we have the ambition to tackle nuisance in a proactive way, where tenants feel that something is being done with their reports. In doing so, we also want to significantly reduce the duration of inconvenience, as we are well aware that the inconvenience for local residents is very annoying. Together, these reasons prompted us to take a close look at the nuisance processes.”
Housing fraud and polluted gardens
According to Janny, Lefier — responsible for around 30,000 homes in five municipalities — experiences various types of inconvenience. “Think, for example, of gardens that are full of waste, addicted or confused residents, polluted homes, housing fraud or drug labs. In addition, we see that each region or target group has its own “color”. For example, student houses also have different types of nuisance than regular housing.”
Underhanded child
Although tackling nuisance is very important for Lefier, registering this has long been an understatement. “In the systems that exist, the focus is often more on real estate and finances, and it's hard to tell a topic like quality of life. That was one of the reasons why information was so fragmented within the organization. That is why Miranda ten Cate, Manager at Lefier, has taken the initiative to form a steering group and in collaboration with Embrace to develop a registration system that incorporates all our wishes.”
Centralize information
When asked what it takes to centralize all processes in a system, Janny says: “It starts with naming what we want to work out. Examples include issues such as pollution, housing fraud, drug and social nuisance and Damocles, a law that can be used to close a home when a commercial quantity of drugs is found or substances and substances used to produce drugs. We have described these processes in flow charts and steps, from notification to evacuation. With that basis, we have developed subsequent processes with the steering committee. This included users and managers, but also people from ICT to see what worked and what didn't.”
“The technical part started with establishing links between different systems. These were already there between Embrace and our Dynamics Empire ERP system, but we have now also achieved them, for example, with our postal software so that we can carry out actions at the touch of a button. Because we are now experiencing the new processes in real life, we notice that certain process ideas are not going well yet. For example, there are many different types of housing fraud and it is difficult to capture them all in a workflow. Or we had developed “polluted homes” as a type of social nuisance, even though that requires a different approach than what we use in case of inconvenience, so it is important to work out this process separately. Fortunately, at Embrace — which is based on self-adjustable self-service scenarios — we have the space to make adjustments and make the processes meet our needs.”
Follow notifications
Bringing all nuisance processes together in one system is much easier for employees, says Janny: “You know where to look and because you work in one system, you don't easily miss anything. We also looked at how we can make it easier to report a nuisance or housing fraud, which we have caught in self-service scenarios. As a result, things enter the system automatically, without the intervention of an employee who has to overwrite it. This saves us time and makes the report authentic, because it does not come from a third party. This also gives the reporter the opportunity to see how we are going to work with it via a track and trace module.”
Get to work proactively
That feedback to residents was very important to Lefier. “We used to contact a reporter about the nuisance and let go if we had taken action,” Janny looks back. “But that sometimes turned out to be very confusing for tenants. Because what has actually been done, or has anything been done at all? Now they can follow the information about our steps and we'll call them two weeks after the report to ask if they're still experiencing inconvenience. For example, we want to tackle nuisance more proactively, something that is much appreciated by tenants.”
Making change manageable
The new, uniform way of working sometimes takes some getting used to for Lefier's employees. “Because there was no uniform workflow, everyone had their own processes. That works very well and is familiar and some colleagues have been doing it for a long time, myself, for example, for sixteen years. Then it is difficult to suddenly start doing your work in a different way, especially if someone else has thought of it. To make that change manageable, it's important to include colleagues in most of what you do. Let them participate in the decision and contribute to the processes. Even though you can't please everyone, it's important to listen and bring knowledge and experience with you.”
Positive experience
The first experiences with the new way of working are seen as very positive, explains Janny: “Employees are increasingly seeing the benefits of this way of working. For example, drafting a letter first took fifteen minutes per letter. Now — because they work with templates and information is filled in automatically — it only takes a few minutes and the file can be exported to a lawyer at the touch of a button.”
“In addition, it is nice to have all the information and relationships in a file so that you have an overview of everything that has been done and what still needs to be done in a short time. This is very useful in the event of a colleague's illness, for example. Tenants are also very happy to be kept better informed about their report and calling afterwards is especially appreciated. This gives them the feeling that they are being taken seriously.”
Space for customization
Corporations that also want to take steps in their nuisance processes, Janny recommends not to work everything out in as much detail as Lefier has done. “Developing intended processes down to the last detail takes a lot of time, but needs to be adjusted if you are going to look at what is technically possible. Therefore, if we were to do it again, we would determine point-by-point what we want to achieve. In addition, involving colleagues as early as possible was a real success factor. Also realize that quality of life and inconvenience will always require a certain amount of customization. It is difficult to always capture life in a process or system, so leave space to record additional information or to be able to modify letters if desired.”
Keep optimizing
Although the new processes and system are now up and running, Lefier has not finished optimizing its nuisance processes yet. “For example, we are adapting the templates for letters and are further developing the legal procedures,” concludes Janny. “In addition to business, we also recently linked tasks and contact moments to files, so that we centralize information even more. This is how we keep working to make information clear and clearly available and to proactively address inconvenience.”
Source: Corporation Guide Magazine
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