How important is resident involvement to you?
Following recent feedback from residents on how important getting involved is to you, we’re excited to share some exciting plans that will help us work closer together with you to improve the services we provide and your experience with us.
In autumn 2022, we reached out to members of the L&Q and You! online community to explore how important resident involvement is to you, why that is and what impact you think it has or should have.
Over 500 of you shared your views with us on how important it is that we involve you in what we do at L&Q. Your feedback highlights how important it is to work in partnership with you to help improve the service and support we provide to all residents. Here are some headlines from the survey:
Around 94% said you think it’s important to involve residents in helping us get to know the area you live in and find out what issues or concerns the community has.
You said it’s important because residents have a lived experience and knowledge about their area and they know about local issues. Involving residents can build trust and belief that things can change and it can increase the feeling of safety and security within the neighbourhood.
Around 94% said you think it’s important that we share updates on what we’re doing to improve service delivery. Also, around 92% said you think it’s important that we share regular updates on how we’re performing and that we tell residents what we do with their feedback.
You said it’s important because it gives us the potential to make sure our business goals for performance match your expectations. You also said that if residents have more knowledge about L&Q, then you may feel more empowered and able to help resolve any issues you face. Being open also proves that we have done what we said we would.
Around 86% of you said you think it’s important that we offer opportunities for L&Q colleagues and residents to work together on how we improve our services.
You said it’s important as it will increase awareness among residents of what we're doing to improve the service we provide you. It will also give residents an element of responsibility to be involved in improving and creating better services, and it can help make sure our aims are aligned with your priorities.
Around 91% said it’s important to involve residents in scrutinising our performance, while 94% think it’s important to look back at what we’ve done to see if it has had a positive impact.
You said it’s important for us to reflect and show that we care about you and that we grow and learn from mistakes made in the past. Being open about what we’re doing well and where we’re not doing so well will also help to build trust with you.
What’s next?
We're incredibly excited about the prospect of working closer together with you to improve the services we provide to you and your experience with us.
Here’s what we’re going to do in response to what you’ve told us, and to strengthen resident involvement opportunities this year:
- Introduce a new induction process for residents who are looking to get involved. We want to make sure we tackle barriers to residents getting more involved with us and match residents to meaningful volunteer opportunities that meet their interests, skills and talents
- Offer training, support, buddying and peer learning. We want to support local partnership working between our people and you and accountability. This will include providing support to residents who are also L&Q colleagues and want to get involved both as a resident and staff member
- Design a new approach to the reward and recognition of involved residents. We will explore how volunteering with us can lead to personal development opportunities, like training and accreditation.
We’ll also continue to work with our Employment Support team and Housing Management team to promote opportunities to volunteer on one of our involved resident committees. We’ll make sure that they’re open to all.
If you'd like to get involved, we'd love to hear from you. Visit our resident involvement page where you can complete a webform at the bottom of the page and a member of the team will be in touch with you.