Why Proactive Communication Matters: A Winter Wellbeing Story

Every winter, social landlords face the same challenge: how to stay connected with tenants during one of the most financially and emotionally difficult periods of the year. Rising living costs, the pressures of the festive period and colder weather all contribute to increased vulnerability and increased risk of arrears.

One Voicescape customer recently launched their most supportive winter wellbeing campaign to date, reaching out to tenants to raise awareness of available help and offer guidance over the festive period. With a more targeted approach than previous years, over half of the people contacted heard the wellbeing message, a strong result that showed how relevant and timely the communication was.

Crucially, this wasn’t arrears activity. It was early engagement designed to keep tenants informed, supported and on track before any issues escalated.

One tenant contacted had a low balance and a recently returned direct debit, but nothing that would normally trigger concern. However, after receiving the wellbeing message, he chose to speak to an officer and disclosed that he’d been struggling with a gambling addiction. He had accumulated significant debts elsewhere, but his partner and joint tenant were unaware of the situation.

Although he had managed to keep rent payments up to date, the pressure was mounting. Thanks to the wellbeing outreach, the team were able to intervene early and the tenant was referred to their Financial Inclusion team for debt support and signposted to gambling addiction charities. While it’s still early days, the referral came at a crucial time.

This highlights the real value of early and empathetic communication. By shifting from a purely reactive “chasing rent” approach to a proactive, supportive one, landlords can:

• uncover hidden vulnerabilities
• build trust and open genuine conversations
• signpost tenants to specialist help sooner
• prevent arrears from developing later

As our customer reflected:

“This is one of those great examples of why we do it. Being proactive really helps us reach customers much earlier.”

A single wellbeing message helped uncover a serious issue that could easily have remained hidden until it became a crisis. These moments that are simple, early, human interventions are exactly why proactive engagement is so powerful.