In social housing, there is an adage of ‘what gets measured gets done.’ Measuring and monitoring performance using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and other forms of metrics is as old as social housing itself. KPIs provide a vehicle for operational and continuous improvement, and if the same KPI is used consistently across multiple organisations, they can be used as a form of benchmarking, or understanding performance relative to others trying to achieve the same, or similar, objectives.
But at the same time, focusing on KPIs can sometimes obscure wider issues with a repairs and maintenance service. In the late 2000s and 2010s, the Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) responsible for repairs and maintenance in Grenfell Tower maintained a 95 per cent satisfaction record for repairs. This was despite widespread issues, such as lengthy delays to responsive repairs, the frequent stigmatisation of residents when repair requests were made, and growing disrepair. Evidence gathered by the Grenfell Tower inquiry suggested that the 95 per cent figure was at least a partial result of gaming: the active use and abuse of data collection processes and statistics to portray a level of service performance that was different to the reality experienced by residents.
This cautionary tale shows the need to construct KPIs that enable the accurate measurement and monitoring of reality. In undertaking this research, we have consulted with landlords, residents, and experts on data, benchmarking, and business management to understand what good KPIs look like and how they can be used to improve repairs and maintenance services. One key finding is that the answer to this question is contextual: it depends on your organisation, your operational needs, and most importantly the priorities of your residents.
Our research has developed four guiding principles that you can use to help you do this. The first two of these are taking a hybrid approach to KPIs, which recognises the value of benchmarkable data as well as the creation of bespoke KPIs that measure what matters most to your residents; and working with your residents to define what else they need to scrutinise your repairs and maintenance service.
The second two of these are to make your performance and how you are improving your repairs and maintenance service transparent and visible to residents and colleagues alike, and to allow your residents and colleagues the space to challenge and scrutinise how you are delivering change. This will allow you to close the feedback loop, and give your residents visibility and transparency over how you are implementing positive changes.
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- Take a hybrid approach to KPIs
- Work with your residents to define what else they need to scrutinise repairs
- Make your performance and how you are improving your repairs and maintenance service transparent and visible
- Allow residents and colleagues the space to challenge and scrutinise how you are delivering change
Take a hybrid approach to KPIs
Taking a hybrid approach to KPIs means harnessing the insight that can be generated by different KPIs and using them to drive improvements to your repairs and maintenance services. In our work, we have found that doing this requires a balance between two approaches: benchmarkable KPIs and resident-driven KPIs. There can be instances where a KPI is both benchmarkable and resident-driven, but they usually have different origins, characteristics, and uses that can offer unique insights.
Benchmarkable KPIs
Benchmarkable KPIs are KPIs that can be compared across organisations. They allow you to compare your performance to similar organisations. They are widely used in social housing to compare repairs and maintenance performance across peer groups. Peer groups can be defined in different ways, but are commonly formed of different social landlords of the same size (i.e. number of homes), similar geography (e.g. predominantly remote, rural, or urban), similar archetype (e.g. predominantly high-rise or pre-1945 homes), or with the same repairs and maintenance delivery model (e.g. in-house teams vs. external contractor).
Throughout our work we have learned of different instances of good practice in benchmarkable KPIs. To be considered benchmarkable, these KPIs are usually independently defined and verified, with clear guidance for how data should be collected. This minimises (but does not eliminate) the possibility for variance in measurement. Overall, this process ensures that comparisons across peer groups are trustworthy and accurate, and provides confidence that we are comparing apples with apples.
Benchmarkable KPIs also offer other benefits. We have heard evidence that because they are independently defined and verified, they can be more trusted by residents because they are viewed as less susceptible to manipulation. This is one of the main benefits of Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs), which have been introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH). Benchmarking also offers opportunities for good practice sharing between individual landlords. For example, we have spoken to landlords across the North East of England of similar sizes, who regularly print off their shared KPIs and meet to discuss them. This means that when one is performing better than another on a certain KPI, they can discuss exactly why, with the result often being the adoption of better practices and processes that can drive improvement. In this way, the main value of benchmarkable KPIs is the ability to identify strengths and weaknesses in relation to peers, and to learn from those peers to improve different aspects of a repairs and maintenance service.
Resident-driven KPIs
Resident-driven KPIs are the other side of the coin. Because benchmarkable KPIs need to be consistently collected by different social landlords in a peer group to be effective, they typically cannot be co-created with residents. This leaves a risk that KPIs might not be measuring and monitoring the issues that matter most to residents. Beyond this, resident-driven KPIs do not need to be actively co-constructed with residents. Our work has found that there are relatively few instances of the development of KPIs in this way. However, they can be created to measure and monitor how you are delivering on the priorities of residents and to give you a greater understanding of some of the issues that residents might be reporting.
Although by their nature resident-driven KPIs will be unique to each landlord, our work has found that a significant gap in current approaches is having adequate KPIs to measure and monitor cultures and behaviours in the delivery of repairs and maintenance services. These things are more difficult to quantify but are extremely significant in shaping good services and good experiences for residents. The TSMs include four measures relating to respectful engagement and complaints handling (TP06-TP09), but there are ways that social landlords can go further to understand if positive changes to cultures and behaviours are taking place across the organisation (and, where relevant, any external repairs and maintenance contractors).
For example, one social landlord in our working group has instigated a process to measure if contractors, colleagues, and other stakeholders are acting in the way they expect and treating residents with empathy and respect. Using innovative new software, they developed a customer satisfaction process that aimed to give a greater understanding of resident satisfaction with different parts of the repairs journey, especially the process of agreeing and arranging follow-on appointments and how instances of no access were dealt with. They also disaggregated satisfaction data by individual contractors to give residents visibility over the behaviours and standards of all operatives working in and on their homes. This information was shown to residents and used internally to inform scrutiny processes and internal decision making, but not published externally.
Overall, taking a hybrid approach towards KPIs entails understanding the priorities of your residents and your organisation and developing ways to measure and monitor progress against these priorities, while simultaneously working alongside peers to share good practice and learn how to improve.
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Work with your residents to define what else they need to scrutinise repairs
As well as metrics and KPIs, there are other forms of information that residents will want to help them scrutinise your repairs and maintenance performance. Data and statistics never tell the whole story on their own; they always need qualification, explanation, and triangulation within a wider story to make sense. Sometimes, the more metrics we have, the less insight we can extract.
Working collaboratively with residents to explore and agree on what else they need to hold your repairs and maintenance performance to account is therefore the essential companion to metrics and KPIs. Our work with residents has highlighted some of the other information and activities that they might want to scrutinise your performance:
- Explanations of why metrics and KPIs have not been met
- Accurate and up-to-date stock condition information
- Feedback received from residents on social media
- Interviews with colleagues and contractors to dig deeper into specific issues
- Information about survey sample sizes, both for TSM data and any other surveys that you might undertake to understand resident views
- Listening into phone calls between contact centre operatives and residents reporting repairs
- Information about the content of and response to complaints, not just how many have been received or addressed
- ‘Deep dives’ into specific repairs and maintenance cases, especially those that have taken a long time to resolve or that have resulted in particularly poor experiences or outcomes for residents
- Giving residents the opportunity to go on ‘away days’ with contractors, such as spending a day ‘in the van’ with a repairs operative or visiting warehouses
- Supporting residents to design and deploy their own satisfaction surveys
- Information about the qualifications, training, and opportunities that landlords are offering to their staff
- All presented in a clear, concise, and accessible format. Residents told us that KPI dashboards including charts and simple data points is a useful way to do this.
These examples are indicative, and you should aim to work with your own residents to understand what else they might need to have an effective oversight of your repairs and maintenance service. Just as importantly, our research shows that providing residents with training opportunities to be effective participants in scrutiny processes is vital.
Make your performance and how you are improving your repairs and maintenance service transparent and visible
Regardless of how you carry out your engagement and where it leads you, ensuring that your residents and colleagues can understand the progress you are making towards improving your repairs and maintenance service is vital. In one sense, this is about opening the black box of your implementation of your performance and presenting what is inside to your residents, colleagues, and the wider sector in a transparent, accessible, and inclusive way. If you have a wider commitment to transparency and accountability, and have these commitments embedded in your processes, this should be automatic.
Social landlords have well-established processes on how performance data is made available to residents and colleagues. These should be harnessed to tell a story about what you are learning, and how you are using this learning to make tangible changes to your repairs and maintenance service. Residents also told us that this information needs to be provided in a timely manner, to give continuous assurance that change is being worked towards.
In addition, making sure these processes are inclusive and available to all your residents is important. Social media, regular newsletters, events in the community, and any other activities you hold are opportunities to regularly open the black box and allow your residents and colleagues to see what is inside. Special attention should be given to how you communicate any changes you make to those more likely to experience poorer service outcomes.
Allow residents and colleagues the space to challenge and scrutinise how you are delivering change
Finally, the BSHR concluded with a call for social landlords to work with residents and colleagues to undertake an annual review of progress made against each of its six core recommendations. It highlighted that for the recommendations to drive meaningful change in social housing, landlords should enable and empower residents and colleagues to examine how well they are doing in terms of implementing them, including pinpointing how any challenges or barriers can be overcome.
This is especially important for repairs and maintenance, partly because the implementation of recommendation three is not a quick fix. Social landlords face multiple pressures on their repairs and maintenance services, from market volatility and financial pressures to the shift to complying with the Regulator of Social Housing’s new regime. Tellingly, none of the social landlords we have engaged with in preparing this guide believe they have repairs and maintenance ‘solved’, and many openly acknowledged that they were at the beginning of a learning process that would take time to get right.
Successfully meeting the challenge of recommendation three will also take time. There will be much trial and error, and inevitable challenges along the road. Working transparently with your residents and colleagues to scrutinise your progress along this road is the only way of understanding whether you are delivering on the potential of the BSHR, and improving repairs and maintenance outcomes for your residents.
