With face-to-face contact limited over the past year, developers have had to find new and innovative ways of instilling a sense of community for its residents, providing much-needed social interaction, and ensuring key services continued to be accessible.
It’s proven that residents who are engaged with their local community are often happier than those who are not, so connecting neighbours to one another and allowing them to form meaningful relationships with their local community has now become a necessity rather than just a luxury.
Why Engage With the Community?
When a new resident moves into a new building, they may be unfamiliar with the surrounding area. Connecting them with others in the building, local shops and services, or details that can bring convenience to their lives is a great way of ensuring residents feel engaged from the offset. Many of our clients team up with local businesses to offer exclusive discounts to their residents on anything from cleaning services, dog walkers, to local restaurants.
Holding regular social events is also an important way in allowing friendships between neighbours to blossom – whether that’s online or in-person. Research by Apartment Life found that the more friends a resident has within their building, the more likely they are to renew their lease. Without any friends living in their community, residents only have a 29% chance of renewing. That number jumps to 38% if they have 1-3 friends, and if they have 7 or more friends, there’s a 47% likelihood that they’ll renew.
Not Just a Fad
With loneliness up 40% according to the Office for National Statistics, building operators and managers really came into their own during the pandemic, helping to tackle isolation.
Over the past twelve months, building operators have used our resident engagement portal, Spike Living, to keep residents informed about relevant issues, services, events, and health and safety protocols, while residents connected with their landlord, concierge, and neighbours.
Spike introduced specific COVID-19 forums for each of its clients where residents could offer or ask for help. An information centre was created providing updates, sourcing only reliable government links, while a recommended COVID-19 strategy was offered to help them continually adapt.
The forums showcased how neighbours were helping each other through the crisis. From online supper clubs to fitness and wellbeing events, the portal kept communities engaged and informed. We’ve seen conversations on sharing food, how to entertain kids, offering to deliver toilet roll and baked goods or pick up shopping – you name it!
Spike Living also helped local economies stay afloat, with residents wanting to do all they can to ensure their communities survive. Residents used our portal to connect local bakeries, local produce boxes getting delivered to flats, even a local brewery dropping off beer for a virtual tasting session.
Where Spike Global Can Help
Building a successful community may seem like a daunting task, but that’s where Spike can help. Our leading resident engagement and property management solutions can ensure you have the right technology in place to facilitate online and offline community engagement.
Spike’s Customer Success Team can also help with everything from creating awareness for a successful Spike Living launch, to providing monthly content and materials to share with your residents, guaranteeing your community gets the long-term ongoing support it deserves.
Spike’s solutions can be white-labelled and completely tailored to the needs of each development, enabling building operators to create and manage thriving communities, where residents can form meaningful connections.
2022 Community Engagement Guide
To help you hit the ground running in 2022 our Customer Success Team have put together a handy monthly guide which will hopefully provide you with some suggested content you could be sharing with your residents throughout the year.
Download a copy of our 2022 Community Engagement Guide below.
