Having it all: Strong Metrics and Stronger Resident Experience  

The social housing sector in the UK plays a critical role in delivering affordable homes to those most in need. As the sector rightly responds to new and increased regulation, housing providers must take care to understand that focusing on metrics such as the TSMs only take you so far. There is much more to resident experience than metrics, and listening to residents, colleagues and what customer data is saying is key to understanding the broader picture.  

The Importance of Resident Experience in Social Housing 

At its heart, social housing is about providing homes, but it’s also about the people in those homes and supporting safe, supportive, and sustainable communities. Resident experience in this sector goes far beyond a simple interaction with a landlord; it encompasses everything from how tenants feel about the responsiveness of repairs to how included they feel in decision-making processes about their living environments. 

When housing providers put a premium on resident experience, they not only improve tenant satisfaction but also create long-term value for both the residents and the communities they serve. Research has shown that happy tenants are more likely to take care of their homes, stay in the property longer, and engage in positive relationships with their neighbours, all of which can help to reduce the need to access wider public services.  

Chasing Metrics 

Increased regulation is beneficial for the sector, and new measures such as the Housing Ombudsman reforms, the renewed focus on Consumer Standards, Tenant Satisfactions Measures, and Programmed Inspections will help to improve standards across the sector. As recent changes bed in, residents will also be better equipped to hold landlords to account and support the safety of tenants. 

However, in the fixation on metrics and measuring compliance, housing providers should take care to not neglect efforts to genuinely understand and improve the resident experience. A focus on metrics such as response times for maintenance requests or adherence to standards is essential in some cases, but they risk becoming disconnected from the ’human’ side of how residents feel about their homes and communities.  

Over-reliance on numbers can result in a tick-box approach where the nuances of experience are lost. Many of us will know of a particular resident’s frustration with an unresponsive repairs team that is masked by an overall statistic showing ‘acceptable’ response times, yet that frustration could significantly impact their overall satisfaction. We know from our work that a strict focus on resolving complaints can easily lead to a transactional approach, where solving the immediate problem becomes more important than genuinely understanding the cause of dissatisfaction or building a relationship of trust with the tenant. 

This is not to mention the inherent challenges in making judgements about a whole service, based on what is often a set of narrow metrics – the very tracking of which almost always having a distorting effect on the behaviours of those delivering a service. Balanced scorecards go a long way to addressing this, but they don’t provide a framework for service design or improvement.  

Listening to Residents, Colleagues and the Data 

Meeting the letter of the law and regulatory expectations is crucial but so is maintaining the spirit of housing’s core aim – improving lives and building communities. The key is not to view compliance and resident experience as an either / or question, but as complementary elements that work best when aligned. Embracing a holistic view of performance that considers both compliance and resident experience means actively seeking feedback, offering accessible communication channels, and taking the time to understand the needs and concerns of residents.  

Providers should empower resident-facing colleagues to be more than just policy enforcers; they are the key to developing real relationships that can shape the future of housing and property services. There is also much insight to be gained from the information landlords hold about residents. Looking and listening to what the customer data that you already have is telling you is important, it can reveal patterns in engagement and correlations in risk, enabling a tailored approach to resident support and service delivery. 

By listening to tenants and colleagues, using data to inform decisions, personalising services, and staying attuned to the human side of housing, providers can navigate the complexities of increased regulation without losing sight of the very people they are meant to serve. 

Contact Altair’s Transformation and Change team to learn more about how your organisation can keep the resident experience at the heart of what they do.