Month: July 2024

Selected by our staff, as Spike’s chosen Charity of the Year for 2024, Hope for Food is a volunteer-driven charity dedicated to providing essential services to individuals and families facing homelessness, poverty, and food insecurity in our local area. Their mission, built on respect and dignity, aligns perfectly with our own company values.

Our last distribution drive with Hope for Food was incredibly rewarding and left a lasting impression on everyone involved. So, with great anticipation, we embarked on our latest initiative, eager to build on the positive experiences of the past. This time, we decided to infuse a bit of cultural flavour into the community meals by introducing a beloved South Indian dish: vegetable biryani.

Bringing Cultures Together Through Food

In a bid to diversify the meals we provided at the community event, Sriya and Shimna, part of our Quality Assurance team, kindly took time out of their day to cook 45 portions of vegetable biryani.

Hailing from South India, this dish holds a special place in their hearts, and they were proud to share it with the community. By sharing this dish, they hoped to offer the community not just a meal, but a taste of their culture and a piece of their home. Biryani is also a favourite when brought in for our office socials and gatherings! 

The Power of a Shared Meal

The sight of the cooked biryani drew smiles and sparked curiosity among the guests, as many of them had never heard of biriyani before, let alone tried it. Our distribution team, alongside Hope for Food volunteers, eagerly served the hot meals, ensuring everyone had a helping of this delicious dish. 

In addition to our contribution, we were delighted to work alongside Leah from White Elephant (By Sala Thai), a local, family-run Thai restaurant that regularly volunteers their time and culinary expertise. They prepared delicious Thai curry dishes for the community meal distribution. The combination of Indian biryani and Thai curry offered a unique and delightful dining experience for the guests, showcasing the rich diversity of flavours from different cultures.

Beyond just serving food, the team engaged with the guests, helping to clean up, hand out toiletries and fresh produce, and most importantly, offer a listening ear. Many of the guests face loneliness and hardship, and the simple act of sharing a meal and a conversation can make a significant difference in their lives. 

A Taste of Home, a Touch of Care

The guests appreciated the effort of bringing something new and flavourful to the table. One guest remarked, “I’ve never had this before and didn’t know if I would like it, but I’m glad I tried it, it was delicious.” This sentiment was echoed by many others, who expressed gratitude for the warmth and friendliness of all those who volunteered their time to take part in the community meals.

For Sriya and Shimna, this experience was particularly meaningful. They were able to share a piece of their heritage and see the joy it brought to others. It was a reminder of how food can bridge cultural divides and bring people together in unexpected ways.

Reflections and Looking Forward

Our second experience with Hope for Food reinforced the importance of community and the power of kindness. It was heartening to see how a simple dish like biryani could bring so much joy and comfort. This event also highlighted the value of cultural exchange and the ways in which our diverse backgrounds can enrich the lives of others. 

As we look forward to future collaborations with Hope for Food, we are inspired to continue exploring new ways to support and uplift the community. Whether through meals, conversations, or shared experiences, we are committed to making a positive impact. 

You can help support their fantastic work here. 

While much attention is often given to environmental sustainability (or the E of ESG), the pillar of social responsibility (the S) deserves equal emphasis in terms of its importance to an operator’s ESG strategy. This aspect of ESG emphasises the impact that businesses and organisations have on the people and communities around them.

In this joint blog between ASK4 and Spike, we explore how prioritising social responsibility can transform multi-tenant buildings into vibrant communities that benefit both residents and the wider community in which developments are located.

Creating Health and Vibrant Spaces

At the heart of social responsibility lies a commitment to the well-being of residents. Building owners and operators can enhance the quality of life within their buildings by prioritising health and safety standards, ensuring comfortable indoor environments, and providing amenities that promote physical and mental wellness. By fostering spaces where people feel safe, supported, and connected, multi-tenant buildings can become hubs of vitality and positivity.

Technology can help facilitate this within buildings. ASK4’s pervasive connectivity makes it much easier for residents to take advantage of communal spaces, with private WiFi networks extending across an entire development. This enables residents to take their devices wherever they want around the building with no loss of connection and no need to sign up to public networks. This allows for secure connectivity when working, for example, or continued connection to devices within their apartment, giving them control of their home environment, even when using amenity spaces.

Pervasive connectivity also enables smart building and ESG technologies which monitor and control environmental factors like air quality, temperature, and lighting in real-time, ensuring optimal indoor conditions.

Additionally, Spike’s resident engagement portal, Spike Living, can provide residents with access to health and wellness resources, from booking onsite amenities such as yoga rooms and gym sessions to accessing virtual fitness classes. As well as receiving mental health support through relevant content and quick access to staff, in addition to community wellness events, promoting a holistic approach to well-being.

Engaging with the Community

Beyond the four walls of the building, social responsibility extends to the surrounding community. Building owners can actively engage with local initiatives and organisations, supporting causes that address social issues such as homelessness, poverty, and education.

Spike Living, for instance, provides a much-needed lifeline to the local high street. Operators can offer residents a guide to all the places around them, and by partnering with local businesses, provide exclusive discounts via their residents’ app, encouraging residents to fall in love with their independent chains. By investing in the well-being of the broader community, multi-tenant buildings can become catalysts for positive change, driving impact far beyond their physical footprint.

Embracing Diversity and Inclusion

Inclusive communities are stronger communities. By promoting diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) within their buildings, owners and operators can create environments where all tenants feel valued and respected. This includes implementing policies and programmes that support underrepresented groups, providing equal opportunities for all, and fostering a culture of acceptance and belonging.

Spike Living allows residents to create their own clubs and forums, allowing residents to find like-minded people who share similar interests. As the app caters exclusively for building residents, it offers a safer alternative to groups on Facebook or other social media, which are easily infiltrated by spammers and strangers, helping residents to make truly local new friends. By embracing diversity, multi-tenant buildings can harness the collective strength of their diverse occupants.

Fostering Stakeholder Engagement

Lastly, social responsibility requires open and transparent communication with stakeholders. Building owners should actively seek input from residents, employees, investors, and community members, listening to their concerns and incorporating their feedback into decision-making processes.

Solutions like Spike Living can also serve as a virtual town square, allowing residents to voice their opinions and preferences regarding local initiatives. This can make communication between residents and operators much more transparent, helping to build trust and ensuring that residents are kept informed about ongoing projects.

By fostering a culture of collaboration and accountability, owners can build trust and credibility, driving collective action towards shared social responsibility goals.

Summary

Social responsibility is not just a moral imperative—it’s a strategic imperative for owners and operators of multi-tenant buildings. With 75% of residents expressing a desire to expand their social network and get to know their neighbours, it’s clear that many crave access to a connected community. Yet less than 40% feel they belong in their community. By prioritising social impact alongside environmental sustainability and governance practices, building owners and operators can create communities that thrive, contribute positively to society, and leave a lasting legacy, not only for future residents, but for the wider locality.

What’s more, a recent study by the National Multifamily Housing Council found that resident satisfaction is strongly correlated with retention rates. Communities with higher resident satisfaction scores tend to experience lower turnover rates, with 75% of residents reporting that addressing wellbeing is important to community management. In addition, according to the Social Market Foundation, maximising social value in real estate can also lead to a 5% uplift in the market value of an asset.

Investing in developing a community not only enhances the resident experience but it can also lead to better outcomes. This is evidenced in our Changing Behaviours report where we found that building owners could reduce carbon emissions in the region of 7% – 35%. There is also a growing priority for sustainability amongst Gen Z evidenced by 72% willing to spend more on services produced in a sustainable fashion. The need to have sustainability at the forefront of development is only growing across the new generation of residents.

The relationship between property managers and leaseholders has become increasingly strained in recent years, primarily due to heightened expectations, communication breakdowns, and the complexities of property management as a result of ever-increasing legislation. Leaseholders often feel neglected or inadequately informed, leading to dissatisfaction and mistrust. Meanwhile, property managers grapple with the challenges of maintaining transparency, ensuring timely responses, and efficiently handling a multitude of tasks.

With the Hackitt report identifying the need to rebuild public trust by creating a system where residents feel informed and included in discussions on safety, rather than a system where they are ‘done to’ by others, it’s clear that change is overdue.

What’s more, with only 50% of residents satisfied with their building management company, according to recent research by the Health and Safety Executive, having the right technology in place can therefore play an important role in improving the property manager-leaseholder relationship.

Here are 5 ways in which technology can help: 

Communicate with Ease

Clear and timely communication can reduce misunderstandings, improve transparency, and foster trust and collaboration among leaseholders, ultimately contributing to a healthier leaseholder-property manager relationship.

One of the primary benefits using systems like Spike PMS is streamlined communication. With a direct way to communicate with their property managers, leaseholders can raise concerns, seek clarification, or request additional information.

From a property management perspective, property managers can share important updates, news, and announcements through the Spike app. Whether it’s information about upcoming maintenance work, community events, or policy changes, leaseholders can stay informed.

What’s more, as all communication sent to a property, leaseholder or tenant is logged in Spike, property managers can see who’s opened and read the communication which forms an important part of the golden thread, and can be used as evidence of notification, in case of future disputes.

 Convenient Service Charge Payments 

With 70% of leaseholders experiencing significant stress due to issues like unclear service charges and lack of responsible communication according to research by the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHe), solutions like Spike PMS can provide transparent insights into financial transactions, enabling leaseholders to view detailed service charge statements and transaction histories, ensuring clarity and accountability in financial matters.

Additionally, Spike PMS offers secure payment where leaseholders can make service charge payments via an app, further enhancing transparency and convenience.

Simplify Issue Reporting  

Recent research by the Health and Safety Executive, revealed that 4 in 10 residents think it’s difficult to raise an issue, whilst maintenance issues take up to 80% of a property managers time. Without a central system in place, leaseholders will use email, WhatsApp messages or text messages to report issues. Sporadic messages and using different channels make it challenging for property managers to keep track of what has been reported and run the risk of duplicating reports, making it even harder to keep leaseholder updated on the progress. Not to mention making it almost impossible to track against Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and performance metrics for response times.

What’s more, the Building Safety Act (BSA) 2022 mandates that property management companies must have an effective system in place for residents to report issues and submit feedback, with building safety complaints needing to be prioritised based on the level of risk involved rather than that date they were received.

Systems such as Spike PMS can streamline maintenance management by allowing residents to submit maintenance requests directly via a mobile app, and even attach photos so that staff can diagnose the fault ahead of time. What’s more, the system can flag any high-priority issues based on the information that has been submitted.

This means that high-risk issues can be immediately flagged and directed to the relevant team members. Issues can also be automatically shared with external approved contractors to be investigated and resolved, with residents being informed and kept up to date on the progress.

Access to key Documentation  

Storing important documents and compliance-related information digitally and providing easy access to relevant information facilitates transparency and accountability in property management practices.

Spike PMS enables leaseholders to access crucial documents, including lease agreements, move-in checklists, and crucially the Resident Engagement Strategy (RES). These documents are readily available within the app, empowering leaseholders to view them whenever necessary. This transparency fosters clear communication and understanding.

What’s more, with Spike PMS, you can automate the sending of communication and documentation. For instance, when there is an update to the fire policy or RES, property managers can automatically send an update out to all residents via push notifications to resident phones and emails to review and acknowledge, ensuring that you remain compliant, and nothing gets missed.

Digital Record-Keeping 

Spike PMS has been designed to be the single view for property managers, with integrations with third-party systems including finance, CRM, and maintenance management. By pulling in data from different systems and sources, this allows property managers to see all logged activities against a property, leaseholder and tenant, enabling property managers to quickly and efficiently find and access the information they need, whenever they need it. This means that property managers can spend less time digging through files and emails, and claw back some of that precious time to focus on other activities. As well as being able to have a central activity log, in case of future disputes.

Summary 

By leveraging digital tools and platform like Spike PMS, property managers can enhance communication, streamline processes, and provide real-time updates, fostering a more harmonious and efficient relationship with leaseholders.