Co-designing the future of customer engagement

Last week, we shared the report and charter of commitments from the Co-design Action Group, and how we should approach resident engagement. We're now turning these recommendations into action, and we're starting with the creation of a resident led panel.

You can find out all the info you need to know about the panel here

You'll be able to apply to be a member of our resident led panel until Tuesday 7 November 2023 at 9am.

You can apply here

We told you last time that, over the summer, our group of residents met with residents from our communities and neighbourhoods to participate in group discussions and activities to help us identify what areas need improvement, develop new approaches and potentially test these ideas.

Your voice

Our group of residents got a lot from the listening sessions and were touched by how open you were with them. It was clear to them that you:

• Care about your local community.
• Want to understand what happens after you've engaged with Peabody – you don't want to attend a talking shop, and you don't want your feedback to disappear into a black hole.
• Need to be able to contact Peabody when you want to, using easy and accessible channels of your choice.
• Want to be able to escalate an ongoing issue or complaint easily and effectively to Peabody.
• Want to be heard and know Peabody will do what they say they will.

Co-design in action

This was the fun part! The group met with various Peabody colleagues over three Saturdays to discuss the full range of resident experiences to help them develop their recommendations.

An independent facilitator led these sessions to support and guide the discussions around the changing world of resident engagement and Peabody after the merger with Catalyst.

The group co-designed five recommendations that support a new approach to resident engagement at Peabody. These recommendations are:

• Make a cultural commitment to resident engagement. Create engagement service standards supported by a genuine commitment to hearing and acting upon residents' voices.

• Nurture resident talent. Create a dynamic and diverse group of engaged residents called Peabody Voice. Peabody will provide engagement training and development opportunities for all residents in the group.

The Customer Engagement team will support residents signed up to Peabody Voice with resident-led engagement activities that encourage different groups and communities to collaborate on projects together.

• Create a flexible and accessible engagement offer. This will include formal and informal engagement opportunities such as:

• Face-to-face or online strategic meetings.
• Regional and local level activities.
• Involvement in board meetings and regional panels.
• Drop-in sessions and fun days.

Engaged residents will support us to create a flexible and fun engagement offer, which means everyone can get involved how, when and if they'd like to.

• Always close the loop. This will show residents what Peabody has done with their feedback. We want residents to see the impact of their engagement through an annual impact report. We will support celebrating and promoting resident achievements at an annual resident event.

• Support a new strategic resident-led panel to oversee and connect resident engagement activity across Peabody. This strategic group will commission resident-led approaches to scrutiny, service improvement, policy and strategy development based on a collection of performance information, insight and resident feedback.

Help us turn these recommendations into action

The codesign action group’s main recommendation is for the resident engagement team to work with them to create an independent strategic entirely resident-led panel.

This strategic panel will oversee all the resident engagement activities across Peabody – from strategic policy decisions and service improvement scrutiny to the more regional and neighbourhood resident groups and activities.

This resident-led strategic panel will work with residents from Peabody Voice to create smaller working groups to scrutinise and help improve specific areas and services across Peabody.

We're currently in the process of creating a co-design action plan to take these recommendations forward and start recruiting for our strategic panel.

Keep an eye out here on The Garden, and on our residents news, Facebook and X pages for more on how you can apply to be part of our new strategic panel.

Read the action group’s report

Read the action group’s full report here

Our charter of commitments

The action group created a charter of commitments to help us keep the final action plan on track.

Read the full charter here

Join Peabody Voice

The resident engagement team send regular updates on what’s happening across Peabody in all our regions. Being part of Peabody Voice is a great way to keep updated on their work and be one of the first to find out about future engagement activities and opportunities.

Contact us at get.involved@peabody.org.uk or pop a comment in the thread below if you'd like to know more, or have any feedback you'd like to give us. No personal details on this page though, please!

In June, we held 5 listening sessions to get your feedback on what's important to you as our Co-design Action Group redesigns the way we do engagement at Peabody.

We visited all four of our regions, and spoke to people living in our homes and communities, as well as holding an online session for people who were interested but unable to meet with us in person.

Almost two hundred people expressed an interest in being involved in the sessions, and around a hundred attended one or more of them. We’re happy with the way the listening sessions went.

Some of you even managed to come to more than one of the sessions – thank you for giving us so much of your valuable time if that was you.

What we learned

There were 5 main themes that came through in the listening sessions. These were:

1. The importance of what happens locally

You want neighbourhood colleagues to be visible in your communities, engage with you proactively, and be there to help you navigate your interactions with our internal departments when things go wrong. A lack of this has been a big driver for getting involved in the past.

1. The importance of capturing and sharing impact from engagement

You want to know that, when you engage with us, things will change for the better. You want us to be smart about what we scrutinise, give an engagement offer that’s consistent across the organisation, and keep you updated.

1. The need to capture and respond to resident voice in a variety of ways

You don’t just want to join a panel or group and have meetings. You want ways to influence the way we deliver our services that are quick and easy, and fit in with your other commitments.

1. That you should be able to contact Peabody easily, and a clear route for escalation available

You want us to be clear in the way we communicate with you, give timely and relevant information, and be proactive in resolving service issues.

1. Using available technology to our advantage, including The Garden

You communicate within your communities in a variety of ways, but typically using established tools like WhatsApp and Facebook. If you’re going to use a Peabody app or portal, then you want everything you need to be in one place. You have a real desire to self-serve but the information you need isn’t readily available. Digital communication makes being involved easier for many of you.

Other things you told us about

You also told us that you’d like some clarity around the standard of service you can expect when being involved with Peabody. You also told us that dissatisfaction with our services is a big driver for getting involved in the first place, and that being involved with Peabody is a great way to promote community cohesion where you live.

Finally, you told us that you want us to recognise your unique circumstances in our involvement opportunities, rather than taking a “one size fits all” approach.

What we’ve done with everything you told us

We’ve written a summary report for each of the sessions, and these have been shared with the Action Group. They’ll use what you told us during the sessions to inform their decision making when they meet in July to decide how we’re going to do engagement at Peabody in the future.

What happens next

The Action Group will spend three days together in July, working with an experienced and independent facilitator, to decide how they think we should do engagement in the future. This will include discussions on any service standards we decide to set, what our approach to local engagement will be, and how we use strategic, Peabody-wide groups to effect meaningful change in the way we operate.

The output from those discussions will be a report, which will be endorsed first by our Customer Experience Committee, and then by our Group Board. That endorsement will give us a really strong mandate to ensure the voice of the customer is heard at every level of our business, something we’re committed to doing.

How you can continue to influence the Action Group

We do have one more, small favour to ask. We’d love you to give us your feedback on the 5 priorities above. Which is most important to you? This will really help the Action Group to demonstrate that what they’re designing will be effective for most people. You can give us your feedback here.

We’ll keep you in the loop

You’ve told us loud and clear during these sessions that effective and timely communication is really important to you, so we want to make sure you know what’s happening every step of the way. So we’ll make sure that we tell you about our new framework for engagement once the Action Group have finished their work. That will be in early August.

We want to keep the conversation going

The work we’re doing to redesign our engagement offer won’t stop at the end of July. What the Action Group design will lead to many new opportunities for you to influence Peabody, both in your local area, and across Peabody as a whole.

Again, if you expressed an interest in the work the Action Group are doing, then we’ll make sure you’re among the first to know about these and have every opportunity to influence the way we work, in the way that suits you best.

Thank you

We’d like to reiterate how grateful we are to you for taking the time to give us your feedback during this process.

Not all of it has been easy to hear, and we recognise there’s a lot of frustration with Peabody in our communities. But we’re committed to taking what we’ve learned and using it to improve the way we engage with you in the future.