Housing Managers save 58% of time at Saxon Weald
Housing
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Results & ROI
- Improved definition of what constitutes anti-social behaviour (ASB) resulted in a 70% decrease in open ASB cases
- Redesign of tenancy management processes resulted in a 58% saving in the time and cost across Housing Managers
- Introduction of Information Centre and visual management led to a 50% reduction in time spent accessing information
The client
Saxon Weald is a housing association providing services to residents in 5700 properties across Sussex and Hampshire. They had recently restructured to create a focus on business improvement and had a history of using Lean techniques to run a number of projects. They engaged us to review the demands paced upon their Housing Management Team.
The challenge
A recent restructure had led to the creation of a new Customer Service Advisor role and Neighbourhood Management function, which had a direct impact on the range of activities expected of Housing Managers. Their workload was expected to decrease, but the tangible benefits of the restructure for tenants were not clear. By reviewing the demand placed on the Housing Managers, Saxon Weald wanted to improve value for money offered by the service, develop a better set of metrics to measure value and increase the scope for Housing Managers to manage a larger portfolio of properties.
The approach
We split the review into three distinct phases:
Diagnostic
A demand analysis was conducted and key processes across the team mapped to identify areas for improvement. Key issues identified included a lack of definition of the Housing Manger roles leading to them dealing with 45 different categories of housing issues, a high level of demand from colleagues and a high level of failure demand
Redesign
We defined the core purpose of the team, set up an Information Centre and redesigned a number of key processes to eliminate waste activity and enable the Housing Managers to better manage value activity
Implementation
An action plan was developed to implement each of the redesigned processes and incorporated into an overall activity planner for the Housing Managers to align various activities in which they were involved.
The benefits
The capital benefits were achieved through saving time across the processes enabling the team to manage a larger portfolio of properties, rather than having to hire more staff. Additional to this, redesign of the processes led to improved management and measurement of arrears and improved team working, including timely communication, improved sharing of good practise and a collective responsibility for performance.