How to create a tenant engagement strategy for retrofit projects
We recently launched a Tenant Engagement Toolkit to support local authorities and housing providers to make their projects a success through great resident engagement.
The first part of the toolkit takes you through using an OASIS framework to create a straightforward tenant engagement strategy.
Setting objectives
What are your corporate objectives?
The goal of tenant engagement could be to create a more inclusive and participatory housing environment, where tenants feel heard, valued, and supported. Your aims could also include to contribute their needs, questions, and experiences on energy use and indoor comfort with the goal to improve retrofit delivery and outcomes.
What are your communication objectives?
Here you can set out how your communication with tenants will support your corporate objectives. Make sure these objectives are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound).
Audience insight
The primary audience for your retrofit projects will be residents who are living in energy-inefficient properties with an EPC of D or lower. It’s important at this point to identify the diverse characteristics of your audience – such as vulnerable residents, non-native English speakers, and young families.
You can also think about the property types and their energy needs at this point.
Strategy
The Marketing Template can be used to create a communications strategy. Clearly lay out the tasks, deadlines, ownership, and intended audience for each tactic. The templates in the toolkit will help you with communicating messages at different stages of your project including pre-install, during the works, and post-install of the energy efficiency measures.
Implementation
Once you have your strategy set out, it’s time to implement it! Make sure you have a realistic timeline for your retrofit project, which maps out the tasks centred around the tenants. Coordinate between the project team, assign responsibilities, and set out a sign-off process for each task.
Scoring and evaluation
After the retrofit project has been completed, it is a good time to reflect on how successful your engagement has been. Were there tactics that worked particularly well? And are there things you can improve in subsequent energy efficiency schemes?
An End of Install questionnaire can be used to capture information about the residents’ experience of the project to inform your future engagement efforts.
Resident cooperation is key in carrying out any building works. For this reason, it is paramount that residents are informed about what to expect, or at least, about how every stage of the retrofit process will affect their lives. This improves the feeling of control they have over a situation that largely appears to be out of their hands (especially in the case of social housing tenants) and a sense of empowerment.
The Tenant Engagement Toolkit sets out all of the steps you need to make sure that your project is a success. Download it now!
