The social housing sector has seen a revolutionary change in the relationship between tenants and landlords in the last ten years. This has meant changes to the way we approach, manage, measure, evaluate and report on engagement with our tenants. The evolving development of our Tracker software and services over the last ten years has mapped the history of these changes, and will continue to do so into the future

Tracker users 4 The Tracker software originally developed in response to the needs of two social housing clients and is now used by more than 50 providers across the UK.

Arena Partnership’s original Tracker software was developed to create evidence for the Audit Commission’s Resident Involvement KLOEs. Simple analysis and reporting tools enabled landlords to identify profiles and the nature of participation. A typical participation curve is shown below: Gold (heavily involved participants) Silver (less involved participants) Bronze (not yet engaged)

Following the abolition of the Audit Commission, there was a period of limbo whilst landlords considered why they were recording participation at all......happily most realised that it makes good business sense to expand engagement with tenants, learning from their feedback, reducing costs, improving services and providing effective support.

Communication Participation Feedback OPTION: Support Profiling Initially even the most basic six-strand diversity information on tenants was difficult to access. Now this is rarely the case and many more data fields have been added, including tenants’ social and behavioural backgrounds, preferences and needs. Technology, and tenants’ access to it, has increased the number of communication methods between tenants and landlords. Tracker began by storing addresses; it now holds phone numbers, addresses and mobile phone numbers. Texting is currently a major communication channel, as well as social media. The Participation module allows landlords to record, quantify and analyse residents’ participation activities for greater insight into where resources should be focussed to achieve the most effective impact for both the housing provider and the tenant. Ten years ago, the STATUS survey was all about evidencing how well the landlord was performing in the eyes of the tenant, and ranking this performance against others in the sector. Today, TP Tracker™ has a wide range of functionality allowing management of all survey programmes using different methodologies, all linking to the Tracker database. This is the most recent area of development for TP Tracker™; we are seeing a move from simple ‘programme management’ towards the evaluation of the impact that programmes have on individual clients and the community. Today’s TP Tracker™ links all types of tenant engagement into a single set of integrated tools:

Future developments may include:  Preference-driven communications systems  A reappraisal by the sector of recognition and rewards as a means of both encouraging engagement and thanking tenants  A tenant interface to TP Tracker™  Support of a wider range of digital-engagement opportunities