Housing New Zealand proposes changing how it delivers its services

Housing New Zealand is consulting with staff on a major modernisation of its frontline tenancy services to improve efficiency across the Corporation.

The planned changes, to be rolled out incrementally, would make Housing New Zealand’s services more nationally-consistent, efficient and responsive.

The proposal before staff would clearly focus the roles of our frontline staff our on core business.

Chief Executive Dr Lesley McTurk said the changes were essential to ensure efficient and responsive services to Housing New Zealand’s customers.

“We cannot continue to meet the challenges of the future with our current technology and service delivery approach, which is outdated and inefficient. We have the opportunity to use new technology and processes to do our work more quickly and effectively,” Dr McTurk said.

“As of next mid year, a proportion of Housing New Zealand’s frontline work-force will progressively spend less time in the office and more time out in the community. We also propose streamlining some of what our tenancy managers do now so our future workforce will be able to have a much greater focus on our tenants.

“We are proposing to grow the size of our phone-based Customer Services Centre so that our customers can get hold of us easily and routine inquiries can be managed quickly and over the phone. We also propose to set up new teams to handle specialist tasks and bulk processes nationally.

“We have begun to merge our Neighbourhood Units with Community Link Centres run by the Ministry of Social Development where this is possible, and we are proposing that we will continue to do this over time,” Dr McTurk said.

“Where we co-locate, the Community Link Centre will become our local front door. This will mean when our customers come to see us, they will also be able to access other government and community services they may need.

“This will enable our staff refer the tenants to the social services they need through MSD. Our staff are not trained social workers, mental health professionals or truancy officers, for example, their job is to manage tenancies. Our staff agree that this is not our core business, which is to deal with the accommodation needs of our customers.”

“We’re also decluttering current frontline staff roles so our staff can focus on managing tenancies, which is what they are good at. Over time this will mean they have more capacity to increase their portfolios. This is supported by specialist teams managing debt and maintenance, and our contact centre responding to all routine enquiries.”

“We are focusing all of our efforts on our core functions of managing the state housing stock, and housing those in greatest need, for the time of their need. The changes we are proposing to our frontline services reflect our sharper focus on our core business.”

“The health and safety of our staff is very important us. Our staff already work in the community visiting tenancies every day. Under our new systems and process we will be able to better indentify and manage risks to our staff. They are trained to deal with difficult situations, and have access to mobile duress alarms when they need them.”

The proposed new model would lead to a reduction in staff numbers across Housing New Zealand over time.

To prepare for the possible changes, the Corporation has been managing vacancies and making fixed-term appointments to reduce the potential impact on staff.

“Our goal is to have a better and more efficient service delivery model for our customers, therefore we are in the process of a meaningful consultation with staff, and will be taking all feedback onboard before any final decisions are made.

“At this stage it’s impossible to say how many job losses there will be - we won’t know that for several months once consultation is complete and feedback fully considered,” Dr McTurk said.

Housing New Zealand is working closely with staff to ensure staff are supported through the consultation and change process.

Dr McTurk said Housing New Zealand would be continuing to review functions across the organisation to look for further efficiencies that can be made over time.

She said the changes Housing New Zealand was making would deliver significant improvements in service efficiency and long-term cost savings.

“We will provide a greater return to the taxpayer on the $15bn New Zealand has invested in state housing.”

Media Contact: Marie Winfield, marie.winfield@hnzc.co.nz, or phone 09 261 5239 or 021 245 0709

Background

New Zealand’s social housing sector is undergoing significant reform to meet New Zealanders’ changing and increasing social housing needs. The Corporation commenced changing the way that it delivers its services nearly three years ago embarking on a transformation programme that included reshaping the way services are delivered and delivering new technology to support a more effective and efficient way of working.

In parallel to its transformation work, the Government through the Housing Shareholders Advisory Group and the subsequent Social Housing Reform Programme (SHRP) has completed a wider review of the New Zealand’s social housing sector. The Government has made decisions on how to grow and develop the sector and providers of social housing to meet the increasing needs. As part of this overall reform, the government has decided that the Corporation will have a significantly narrower and tighter role focused on two core areas:

i. State house asset management; the provision of a state house portfolio that is fit for purpose and delivers to as many high needs tenants as possible giving maximum return on the Crown’s investment in social housing

ii. State house tenancy services; the management of state house tenancies for those most in need for the duration of their need

These reforms enable Housing New Zealand to focus and concentrate on its areas of core expertise, and come at a good time, as the Corporation embarks on the final stages and implementation of its transformation programmes.

The role of the current Customer Delivery Group (to be renamed Tenancy Services) will narrow to focus on the management and delivery of state house tenancy services. Housing New Zealand will no longer have a role to assist individuals with their wider social needs, with much of this role shifting to the Ministry of Social Development.

The new approach to delivering Tenancy Services

The proposal is for a new Tenancy Services that delivers a simpler range of tenancy services to customers in line with the Corporation’s narrower focus on managing the state housing portfolio and state house tenancies.

The proposed service balances the range of likely needs of Housing New Zealand’s current and future customer base, with the need to deliver services in a consistent and cost-effective way.

The key components of the new service delivery model, that are proposed to be implemented incrementally, are:

• New technology - Housing New Zealand’s new technology enables it to automate functions that staff previously had to do manually
• Roles and responsibilities - Channelling more tasks through specialist teams and the Customer Services Centre
• Channel delivery - less reliance on walk-in offices and more centralisation through the Customer Services Centre (call centre)
• Mobility - front line staff spending more time in the field
• Geographic footprint - aligning the delivery of ‘front door’ options with other government agencies such as the Ministry of Social Development
• Service offering - Stopping delivering social services that should be delivered by other organisations. The Ministry of Social Development will act as the conduit for all other agencies that need to provide social support to the Corporation’s tenants.

Proposed staff impacts

The proposed changes include a reduction in total employee numbers, however final decisions on staff numbers and roles will depend on the outcome of the consultation and redeployment options. Staff will be encouraged and supported to apply for new internal roles.

Roles will become more focused over time either in the area of tenancy management and tenancy advice or as part of specialist teams.

To prepare for the possible changes, the Corporation has been managing vacancies and making fixed-term appointments to reduce the potential impact on staff. It anticipates that ongoing attrition will reduce the number of possible redundancies.

The consultation document proposes the following:

• 150 permanent staff positions reconfirmed
• 339 permanent staff enter a ring-fenced selection process for 187 roles
• 130 new positions created
• 60 positions, currently filled by permanent staff, disestablished
• 84 positions, currently filled by fixed term staff, disestablished

Housing New Zealand employs around 1100 staff.

What the proposed changes mean for Housing New Zealand and its customers

The changes will enable a customer-centric approach to service delivery that, promotes national consistency of service, encourages streamlined services with other agencies, and promotes flexibility and agility to changing demands and requirements. Tenancy managers will be able to spend more face to face time with their customers

Examples of issues that the proposed changes seek to address include:

• We get more than 1.5 million calls a year to our office reception or tenancy managers’ direct lines. We estimate half of them go unanswered, or the customer hangs up before we answer.
• When our tenancy managers do get to the phone, they spend about an hour and a half each day responding to customer calls, all of which could be dealt with by our contact centre.
• On average, the people holding the tenancy for our 69,000 houses fill out an income related rent (IRR) form three times a year, when their circumstances change. Each form has to be manually entered later by staff.
• Frontline staff spend 40 per cent of their day on administrative tasks which add no value to the customer. We can cut the amount of time a frontline person spends on administrative processes by automating, moving or eliminating some of these tasks.

With the proposed changes:

• Customers will generally be helped by the person who answers the phone. We will aim to answer every time and customers will only have to give us information once.
• Frontline staff will be able to spend less time on administration, paper-work and data-entry. This would eliminate double-handling and give staff more time to spend with clients face-to-face.
• Our tenancy managers will spend less time in the office and be able to manage more tenancies because some of the work they have done in the past would be automated, eliminated or moved to other teams