Webinar Review: Transforming Tenant Engagement in Social Housing

Why do social housing tenants disengage? And how should teams transform processes to solve this? In our latest ebook, “Engage, Empower, Impact: Turning Tenant Engagement into Meaningful Outcomes”, in the words of Independent Behavioural Scientist of 20 years, Steven Johnson,“effective tenant engagement is the foundation of sustainable tenancies” - and to help close the gap between customer and provider, organisations must rethink their approach to messaging and communication using the power of behavioural science. 

In our recent webinar on Voicescape Engage, Steven Johnson shared his expertise on tenant engagement and highlighted the importance of behavioural science in being emotionally resonant, human, and credible. We also heard from Thirteen Group’s Housing Services Manager, Caroline Harraway, on how teams can better communicate with their tenants to improve customer satisfaction, protect vulnerable members of society and reduce pressure on staff as well as service-delivery costs. Keep reading below to learn all the insights we covered during the talk… 

The Importance of Proactive Tenant Engagement with Steven Johnson 

Good communication is important as it allows services to build more effective, human-centered services, pre-empt vulnerability, and ultimately reduce cost-to-serve. For housing associations, we recommend teams approach tenant engagement from a few different perspectives to keep conversations proactive. As Steven Johnson explained, there are a few behavioural science considerations we can use to help understand barriers to engagement that tenants face. These barriers consist of not just basic things around accessibility and channels, but the more psychological factors at play (e.g. tenant/landlord relationships and percieved fairness), and how we can address the messaging, service tweaks (e.g. personalising communication) and various nudges to remove those barriers – to not only increase engagement but also improve the quality of it.  

Ultimately, one of the biggest takeaways for housing providers is that tenant engagement is driven by a very powerful feedback loop. A feedback loop is essentially a positive tenant experience that can massively increase the likelihood of a future positive response and a tenant returning.  

At an organisational level, this balance of evidence and empathy will help leverage technology and employ best practice principles to understand tenants better and prompt more honest responses. And with Voicescape Engage, we combine behavioural science and intelligent automation to achieve just that with Thirteen Group – who presented their experience during our webinar (see how this worked lower down). 

It’s never been more important from a regulatory and political point of view to increase the level and quality of engagement to adapt to massive changes over the years, such as meeting consumer standards, Awaab’s Law and TSMs. The answer?By considering behavioural science and humans together, not just compliance; which was a central point in our webinar when discussing how Engage operates on those principles.  

• After reviewing the recent TSM Survey, he discovered the variation in satisfaction (National average: 71.8%) mismatched the number of complaints (National average: 53.5%), showing the gap between optimistic management systems and reality. This review showed a need for continuous tenant engagement, not just annual surveys – a task Behavioural Science can support to give real-time evidence and more human approaches. 

 According to Steven Johnson, “good engagement is a virtuous cycle,” and good engagement is vital for social landlords as it supports their community in being heard and responded to. Psychologically, this is incredibly effective. And for our customers at the webinar, they felt similar about their resident engagement when comparing TSM survey results and in our poll survey. 

From our recent Engage-focused webinar, we conducted a poll with attendees on tenant engagement: what areas they’d like to improve and what areas posed the biggest challenges to them. From these results, we can see that a large majority noted ‘low response rates’ (44.7%) as a challenge and ‘silent customers’ (33.3%) as an area for improvement – both signaling a desire to reach disengaged tenants and ensure they feel valued to respond. 

• Steven Johnson’s research and analysis on compliant data found that tenants who have been listened to are 13x more likely to be satisfied and report positive sentiment if the complaint is upheld – showing the phenomenal high impact of BS. 

Regarding Behavioural Science, there is a direct correlation between being seen and heard and future engagement. This is one of the biggest pain points for tenants, as tenants who do not feel listened to actively choose to disengage in the future, as they may feel undervalued. Therefore, we need to approach tenants with the benefits of meeting those human drivers (i.e. being heard, listened to, valued) in mind to support them with broader engagement, not just informing them – and our work with Thirteen Group is a tangible example of this action... 

Driving meaningful impact with Voicescape Engage at Thirteen Group 

During our webinar, our guest speaker, Caroline Harraway, discussed how Voicescape Engage removed friction, helped amplify behavioural science principles, and ultimately helped Thirteen get vulnerable cohorts of tenants to engage who felt less inclined to. Thinking back to Steven Johnson’s insights on removing barriers for tenants, this was extremely relevant for Thirteen in accomplishing its goal of supporting its local communities by putting behavioural theory into action… 

How officers can leverage technology 

 With Engage , housing teams can: 

• Streamline Communication & Prioritise Resources – by automating targeted messages to free staff time for complex cases.
• Maximise Tenant Engagement & Response Rates – send relevant, timely communications to boost participation and feedback
• Generate Real-time Feedback & Insight – capture actionable tenant insights to identify issues and vulnerable residents.
• Enhance Service Delivery & Tenant Satisfaction – use feedback to improve processes, allocate resources strategically, and resolve issues proactively. 

Using Voicescape Engage, officers can leverage technology and employ behavioural science best practice principles (the 7 psychological principles Voicescape technology is built upon) to increase the level and quality of engagement. Therefore, Engage is not just automation; it’s behaviourally engineered. Feeling heard is seen as a fundamental human drive for humans, showing how tenants are more likely to be satisfied when listened to and when they have been understood. By removing barriers and rethinking engagement strategies to be more human-oriented, that’s when we start seeing monumental results in tenant engagement. 

Discover how Voicescape Engage can help 

Using Voicescape Engage, you can quickly address services: 

+ Maintenance & Repairs
+ Antisocial Behaviour (ASB) 
+ Safety, Wellbeing & Guidance 
+ Insight & Feedback 
+ Lettings & Terminations

Watch the exclusive Voicescape Engage webinar recording here – during the talk, we show the benefits of considering behavioural science in your engagement strategy and how Thirteen implemented this in practice with Voicescape.