Resident and Community Engagement
With the onsite team in place, the Property Manager introduced scheduled morning, afternoon and evening weekly drop-in sessions’ open-surgeries’ to allow residents flexibility to discuss any observations or concerns. The Property Manager and Estate Manager made themselves available throughout the week to meet with residents and to handle the day to day operations of the development.
Focus was also placed on building a community ethos which is an integral part of our property management model. Doing this during lockdown was a challenge, however we arranged a socially distanced welcome event, a virtual welcome event with online games and a health & safety friendly easter egg hunt. In focusing on this we were able to build relationships with residents and leaseholders that helped us resolve queries quickly due to a better understanding of all stakeholder positions.
To streamline communication, we introduced a simple ‘we’re currently working on’ monthly newsletter placed on noticeboards. In the meanwhile, we transitioned the pre-existing communication platform, which was mainly used for parcels and key holding only, into a fully functioning communication tool, ‘pbm-lounge’, which we launched in June 2021. pbm lounge, delivered via the Engage MRI platform, provides residents with real-time information, handy ‘how to guides’, interactive services for parcel, keys and leisure facilities and allows two-way communication via a ticketing system (delivered by FixFlo) and push out notifications from the site team.
A survey was conducted in January 2021 and then again in August 2021, which enabled us to listen to resident feedback and implement the necessary actions to make this community a desirable place to live. As a result, the NPS score improved by 38 points in just a few months.