EFFICIENCY – A FEW BASIC THOUGHTS

Afzal Ismail, Managing Director - Orbit Services

Question what we do – Whether you work in the public, private or other sectors, efficiency has become an important word. The economic climate and massive cuts by the Government in public sector expenditure means that every member of staff in every company, whether on the front line like housing officers or back office like HR, Finance, Customer Service Centre (CSC) staff, have a responsibility to look at what they do in their bits of the business to see if they can do things better and differently.

All parts of Orbit from Orbit East & South, Orbit Heart of England, Orbit Services and Orbit Homes, we do a lot of work in terms of making sure we are efficient and the work we do is value for money. There is always more we can do. We need to look at what we do each day. For example, I am aware that in some parts of Orbit we do things as we did 10, 15, 20 years ago. We really need to make sure that we take advantage of Orbit’s philosophy on innovation, Value For Money (VFM) and new technologies to review and make our practices as efficient and as effective as possible. We can then do more, do different things for the benefit of our customers. For example, where there is a sharing of information in the form of management reports which you have been providing for the last 5 years; when was the last time you challenged the recipient or yourself on the continues need/use of this information ? I am aware where this has been done in one particular team, a saving of about 30% of one member of staff was reinvested in other tasks which added much more value for our customers

Sharing Services? Many of you will be aware that Councils in particular have been exploring sharing services to save money. Many are already fairly successfully sharing many services such as finance, IT, maintenance and surprisingly senior management teams and/or chief executives – there’s a thought! Our sector has been thinking about this but nothing major has happened. Variety of reasons, it’s seen as something to be afraid of and people don’t see the opportunities because they think that they will lose control and their own identity. However as some of you will know, Orbit, along with some other Housing Associations (Has) have been leading the way in asking the VAT man to review some laws to make it more attractive for us to share services.

In the meantime Orbit isn’t standing still and we are actively talking to other HAs about sharing “back office” services and we continue to “sell” services to other HAs. Sharing services and selling services helps reduce the cost of services we deliver internally and therefore there is more resource available to invest in customer services.

We can all do more – I suppose the argument is straight forward, we can all do more. The more efficient our working practices are and the more services we can share with others or sell, we should have more resource to invest in services which directly impact on our customers. “Every penny counts” and it’s not necessarily about saving money but investing it where it will benefit our service delivery to our customers.

Simple thoughts – Nothing special or mind blowing in what I have written, but I hope it acts as a simple reminder for us all – take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

Embrace Change but don’t follow the crowd!

Paul Tennant - Orbit Group Chief Executive

We live in interesting times as the saying goes. We have a coalition government, a huge deficit to address, challenging economic circumstances as well as the threat of escalating unemployment and ongoing uncertainty as cuts become clearer. In the housing world we see increasing demand for our homes, services and support particularly from those who are not our usual customer group. Demand for homes remains critical whilst availability of houses, mortgages and deposits is diminishing rapidly. The future of capital and revenue support is in question and we await the June budget and comprehensive spending review in October with trepidation. Seems to me that the word “interesting” is an understatement for the times we live in. 

What do we do - jump to the latest policy initiative or leap to the next great idea?  

In my view we can and should engage strongly with what residents, future residents and communities want and need. We should take the real opportunity that exists for us to go beyond our current boundaries - both in terms of what we do and importantly how we do it - to extend the impact and contribution we can make. Change will be necessary and appropriate but I believe we should embrace this working with residents and communities to really understand what is required of us, develop new ideas and be prepared to challenge ourselves to ensure we can deliver what is required.      

My job currently is focused on 3 issues: with the Executive Team keeping our eye firmly on delivering our services well to residents, on understanding the policy agenda that Orbit will operate within as an organisation and interpreting it, and developing our response as a Group to transform Orbit to meet and grow with the challenges ahead. 

The world is going to get tougher but what we do and what we offer has never been more important. We have a desire and an ability to adapt as we firmly believe in our responsibility to the people and communities we work with now and in the future. 

There’s certainly never been a more interesting time to be in housing!