Digital journeys take time

At Yorkshire Housing we’ve set an aim to transform our housing service offer. To do that we know we need three elements:

• Real time and accurate data
• Connected technology
• Real time customer insight

There is no magical switch we can pull to make these things happen. They take time. We’re still working towards them and have carried out a root and branch review of our data quality.

A genuine revolution

At the moment we are living through a workplace revolution. Like most revolutions you don’t realise you are in one until you come out of the other side.

The pandemic has fundamentally changed how we all work. This is the single biggest opportunity we have to reform service.

We can finally get away from the Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 mentality and focus on delivering services when and where customers want them.

It will change our recruitment and allow us to get and retain the best staff.

Leaders will have to think differently about how they communicate – digital will enable that. Traditional leadership structures will break down and the power balance will change.

Leadership will be based on how authentic you are and what you deliver, not your job title or status.

Ultimately, digital will help us achieve more for our staff and customers, but only if we embrace the risks.

What happened?

Peaks and Plains was downgraded by the Regulator of Social Housing in 2020 for compliance issues. Actions arising from fire risk assessments had not been carried out, and some of our homes had not had electrical safety checks completed.

There was also a smaller breach concerning a loan covenant.

Whilst having some downtime to protect my own wellbeing, my family and I were walking alongside a beautiful beach in Bournemouth. The sea was still, the sand was fluffy and the scene beautifully serene. Unfortunately, it was pretty cold, so there was no sandcastle building and sunbathing on this occasion, but it was so relaxing to enjoy this wonderful environment. The beach goes on for miles, from one pier to another interspersed with doughnut sellers and beach huts. As we enjoyed the scene, we came across a sign which talked about beach nourishment.

This was a term I was not familiar with, but it is effectively an environment management programme to ensure that the coastal areas are continuously protected against erosion. This particular project was budgeted at £7.5M and due to take a few months. What struck me was that the project was not about aesthetics, it was not even about tourism. It was a maintenance project and an expensive one at that. This renourishment was the beach’s wellbeing being prioritised. In my day job, I’m the CTO of an insuretech company and it got me thinking about the parallels with my world of tech.

Within the tech industry we have a concept called technical debt. It describes the accumulation of maintenance or remediation costs that we accrue as we make decisions. Every short cut we take in a system build accrues a bit more debt. Every test we risk not building, every customer requirement we choose to delay, every tactical ‘fix’ accumulates a cost that will be required to be paid in the future. A technical debt. Ultimately this means that at some point that system will require its own renourishment project. Often just like the beach, that project doesn’t provide features, capabilities and revenue generating changes, but is required simply to remain functional.

In the grand scheme of things, the £7.5M is probably a drop in the ocean of the overall cost of creating and maintaining the beach I visited, and this is the same in the case of technical debt. If the level of cost of paying back that debt gets out of control you have probably hit Tech Bankruptcy, and a migration project for your now legacy system is on the horizon.

This won’t be possible in every case. However, just like investment in our own wellbeing, it is time we thought more about renourishment projects for our tech that are periodical, rather than sporadic.
You can read more articles by Hasani on his LinkedIn page:

I was brought into Sovereign last year to embed data into the heart of the business. It may sound daunting, but data is an opportunity and not a burden – for all landlords.

It is the lifeblood of any business.

The human body will not grow and flourish if there isn’t healthy blood flowing through it. It’s a similar scenario with organisations and data.

That is the intersection of leadership and data. Leadership is needed to get the right data flowing to the right bits of the business.

When there is clarity of what we are trying to achieve, we can manipulate data to highlight problems, create detailed insight into what is happening and then offer up solutions.

Then investments in data assets, technology and people start to make sense. Even for those who don’t consider themselves tech-savvy.
Left to their own devices data analysts can build you amazing solutions using AI and machine learning.

But do you really need them?

You can spend a fortune buying into the latest tech trend to solve problems you never really had.

That is why it is so important that data experts have a good understanding of an organisation’s purpose.

Understanding wider business aims and objectives, along with specific KPIs that teams are trying to hit, means teams can use data and technology to address the challenges that will have the biggest impact.

Teams can use the data at their disposal to empower colleagues – ensuring they have all the information they need to carry out their roles at their fingertips – and setting in motion a journey that will see services and customer experience continuously improve.

How we present that data is key to achieving this. Data works best when it tells a compelling story.

The business needs to be able to access information in a way that is engaging and not via complex spreadsheets or bits of code.

People understand pictures and dashboards. We need to visualise the story we want the business to know about and make everyone want to see it in action.

That’s how we put data at the heart of the business.

Outside of my ‘day job’, I sit on the boards of a couple of housing associations and I regularly see compliance, performance and financial reports – what I’m most interested in is where the data has come from, so I know what it’s telling me is accurate.  You can only find that out by getting someone to independently assure the data end to end.  Key to this is focusing on the most critical data – there’s so much you could do, it’s important not to ‘boil the ocean’ – start small in the highest risk areas and scale.

Diagnostic tools such as low-cost data maturity assessments are also useful and can provide a useful starting point to assess key areas of focus.  Socitm Advisory’s own ten-point maturity model looks at data management holistically and is often used as a starting point to craft data strategy, to build organisational maturity and to identify key areas of focus to inform the roadmap for change.

Maturity varies greatly across the sector, with some providers reliant solely on traditional line of business systems and mashing up spreadsheets to pull together data from them, others using data visualisation tools to present insight in a more digestible format – and those a bit further along making good use of cloud platform components to ingest data from multiple sources and present it to answer key organisational questions.

This approach has been used to develop each of the four further use cases that comprise the UK Housing Data Standards: reactive and planned maintenance, income collection, care and support, and development handovers. Participants benefit from working collaboratively on each of the use cases, sharing ideas and concerns about processes, as well as ensuring the data standards work for every participating organisation and the industry as a whole.

As the UK Housing Data Standards have evolved, so we’ve engaged with more housing associations and software suppliers. To date over 70 organisations have participated in the development process.

In December 2020, we launched the third iteration of the UK Housing Data Standards, which included the development handover use case. This was exceptionally timely and resulted in our being involved in discussions with Dame Judith Hackitt, as well as the Government, about the future role of the UK Housing Data Standards in the Building Safety Act.

Following HACT’s appearance at an Industry Safety Steering Group meeting, Dame Judith Hackitt wrote to us stating: “We see real value and importance in the UK Housing Data Standards (UKHDS) you are developing. They will enable organisations to keep information about the way homes are constructed and how they meet the compliance regime in an accessible way that can be shared with residents and contractors alike.”

Last year, we started work on our latest use case – resident feedback and customer complaints. This was timely, bearing in mind the Government’s White Paper emphasis on resident voice. To ensure we captured as many perspectives as possible, we actively encouraged small and medium sized housing associations to take part and over 30 organisations are involved as a result.

Looking to the future, we will develop further use cases this year, including regulatory reporting and another on environment and ESG reporting. Our model will remain the same on regulatory returns: working with 20-30 organisations to ensure it reflects the reality of day-to-day working practices within the social housing sector. With regards to the environment and ESG reporting standard, we will adapt our process to take account of the more immature knowledge in this area around the sector and will seek to engage a broader spectrum of collaborators whilst maintaining a majority from social housing.

The purpose of the standards was to enable the sector to make better use of data and create governance frameworks which are culturally embedded within organisations. We’ve taken the major step in the process, one that has been recognised by software suppliers, national data specialists and government advisors.

It is important that the data standards continue to be a living, breathing thing which adapt over time to the changing world we are in. Later this year, as we move towards the completion of these standards, we will again look to work with the housing sector on a roadmap to securing the future of the UK Housing Data Standard.

The UK Housing Data Standards and the Golden Thread

The Golden Thread Initiative (GTI) was developed by the Government’s Building Regulations Advisory Committee (BRAC) in response to the Grenfell disaster.

We were asked to take part in the GTI, bringing our expertise in data standards and advising how the UK Housing Data Standards can underpin the golden thread. The golden thread is both the information that allows you to understand a building and the steps needed to keep both the building and people safe, now and in the future.

With the Government’s Building Safety Bill included in the Queen’s speech, social housing organisations should note that the information you hold in each building’s digital passport should include all the information necessary to understand and manage risks to prevent or reduce the severity of the consequences of fire spread or structural collapse in a building.

This golden thread information should be stored as structured digital information. It should be stored, managed, maintained and retained in line with the golden thread principles. The Government’s Building Safety Bill is expected to specify digital standards which will provide guidance on how these principles can be met.

Having customers co-design services with you breaks these barriers and gets to the heart of how they really behave and what works best for them. While service managers might think they know what customers want, often ideas are based on assumptions, preferred ways of working, or, in some cases vested interest resistance to change.

So if you’ve never done co-design before how do you go about it?

The first thing to understand is that it’s not rocket science! Buzz words and acronyms like ‘ideation’, ‘prototyping’ and ‘UX’ can create an air of mystery around what is really both a logical, and a creative, co-design process.

We support organisations of all shapes and sizes to start on their service design journey, so here are some pragmatic tips to help:

1. Start with the data

You’ll already have a good amount of data on how people are using your services, even if you don’t make use of it.  Web analytics, demand data, satisfaction data, costs and system metrics are all useful starting points to give you a holistic view of your starting point. This can point to areas of opportunity or ‘pain points’.

2. Involve the right people

It sounds obvious, but you need to involve a representative sample of your tenants so that you get enough feedback from a wide enough group of people to be valuable, but without creating ‘analysis paralysis’ or becoming inefficient. The make-up of those you involve should broadly cover the demographic make up of your customer base – and you should consider how you ensure your services meet the needs of people with disabilities and language needs in particular. Attracting customers to take part in research doesn’t have to be difficult. Companies that mainstream this make it a routine part of every contact, so they don’t need to ‘call out’ for involved tenants.  Think carefully about who you field from your organisation too – service design is not about rubber-stamping or seeking feedback on your own ideas, it’s about listening deeply and carefully to tenant need and working with them to shape services.  Collaboration is key!

3. Incentivise involvement

If people are good enough to give up their time to help co-design services with you, make sure there’s something in it for them – some organisations incentivise involvement with vouchers or payments, while others simply seek to make it so enjoyable people actively want to take part.  You may want to link this to the local skills agenda, or to incentivise with a points system – so the more involved tenants gain reward points to ‘spend’ on skills training or other things that are useful to them.

4. Think about the ‘how’

Don’t expect people to come to you.  Go to them. If there are local community spaces available for workshops, use them. Or if you’re at prototyping stage, you could install a ‘pop up’ research facility in a local shop, school or similar to gain feedback on a more ad hoc basis providing the footfall is your target demographic. Covid has given organisations an opportunity to reflect on how they involve people in design activities, with many more service design activities now taking place online – tools like Teams are useful, but make sure you consider digital inclusion – and how services will work for people without digital access.

5. Design end to end

One of the biggest mistakes we see organisations make when they start to design services is to only look at part of the customer journey – so the ‘contact centre bit’ or the ‘repairs delivery bit’. Only by designing services end-to-end do you understand the whole customer experience. For example, there’s no point having a highly responsive contact centre only for it to take three weeks to get a repair done, with no updates in between!  Looking at the entire journey is key – and can avoid expensive re-work later too!

6. Be upfront about the constraints

There will be some things that customers want you to do, or that you’d love to do, that simply aren’t possible – or aren’t possible right now. This might be because they’re too expensive to deliver, or because you’re tied into a system contract that doesn’t enable changes to be made in the way that you’d like.  Where constraints are known, it’s best to be upfront about these.  In many cases you can work around constraints and then keep the desired end state in your backlog to implement when new functionality allows.

7. Listen hard to needs (more than ideas)

There are a lot of agencies out there that sell a romanticised ideal of service design. While idea generation has a place, I run a mile from those that focus in too heavily on ‘ideation’, ‘ideas labs’ and ‘inspiration days’ at the expense of getting the basics right.
Done well, co-design is energising and can be fun, but the hard work and successful implementation of service design is actually in the unglamourous bits – the grunt work of understanding user needs, and persistence needed to deliver changes to processes, systems and (in some cases) people to make the biggest difference. Co-creation with customers has huge value, but should be focused on researching underlying user needs, motivations and behaviours that can then support the generation of concepts of solutions rather than starting with ideas about the solutions themselves. Listening hard to needs before generating feasible, implementable interventions to meet them will make the biggest difference overall.

And finally…

Don’t be afraid to ask for help getting started – we’re always here and happy to advise and to provide initial ideas without obligation.  Our team has vast experience of user engagement, research and design, looking at everything from how to set up best practice involvement to how to involve customers in co-creating housing management and repairs processes, or deploying newer technologies like IOT. You can find out more about our work at www.advisory.socitm.net/housing

As many of us are familiar with communicating in an informal way through mobile messaging and Facebook, Ava supports customers to embrace a channel of technology they feel comfortable using.

Ava is a prime example of how simple technologies can provide customers with quick, easy access to information they require at the tip of their fingers. Although its early days, GreenSquareAccord are already seeing results, with customer interactions tripling via their online platform.

The use of a chatbot helps ease pressure off front-line staff through automating the more repetitive and straight forward enquiries; this allows more focus on detailed calls for those customers who may require it, improving overall customer service.

Of course, a chatbot is not the only solution to improving customer service; it is just one touch point within the wider customer journey. Investing in such technology supports customers from a diverse range of backgrounds by making services more accessible to all.

As technology continues to change, we must ensure we are meeting our customers’ needs and improving customer service through a more inclusive approach, providing different ways for our customers to engage and making information easily accessible.

A quiet revolution

But we’ve also been experiencing a much quieter revolution in our customer experience. And digital has been at the heart of that revolution.

Designing services with tenants starts with giving people a voice – and then acting on what they say.

We are already actively engaged with tenants across our communities through scrutiny panels, tenant forums and our Facebook community group.

These forums are a chance to listen to tenants, but also a place for us to try out ideas and scrutinise and redesign services as we look to introduce them.

Back in the summer of 2020 we ran a five-day design sprint across our digital services.

Over a week we identified the problems for our digital services, sketched out a raft of potential solutions, decided which were best, developed prototypes and then tested them to see if they work.

A eureka moment

It let us look into the future to see what people might feel about our services as they evolve.

Tenants were involved throughout. That included both existing and prospective tenants, and their next of kin (including younger generations who want to make sure their loved ones are looked after).

This was a eureka moment. An eye-opening experience.

It was clear how much digital mattered.

Tenants want the security of one-touch access to our services. They want them to be simple and to be navigated in a seamless way.

Their next of kin wanted to be able to log in to an interface (with permission) and make sure their friend or family member was safe, with the ability to check that repairs were being done in the right timescales and services were being delivered how they should be.

Smart tech stigma

We looked at how new technology could be introduced and integrated – so if an elderly relative had a fall or if a loved one with dementia left a geographic location a family member would be alerted.

We also highlighted the need to break the stigma around wearable tech. Smart watches are common. Yet the pendants some tenants wear for alarm systems feel very out of touch. Our colleagues in Astraline are leading the way in TEC (Tech Enabled Care) and are developing a variety of new technologies with various Local Authorities, HAs and national initiatives.

There is a perception that older people don’t want digital services.
We must be wary of statements like this. The reality is that a growing majority of older people have been on a digital journey and tell us they not only want but expect to receive services in this way.

Internal challenges

As our digital offer changes so must our team.

Digital is opening up a whole new world when it comes to customer experience. To deliver it we have to take staff on the journey too.

They are going to have to engage with tenants in new ways.
Change is happening quickly – not least because of Covid. That will be hard for staff. That is why we are placing a huge emphasis on training and development.

We’re looking at ways to help people upskill and reskill.

For example, housing officers could be trained not only to be service providers but also educators on digital services.

Whatever the future holds, our priority will be matching the needs of the tenants, with the possibilities of technology.

Increasing digital inclusion and reducing the digital divide: What was the plan?

One of the key aspects of Poplar HARCA’S digital transformation strategy is enabling and supporting residents with digital skills. It has been running a Digital Skills for Work – Power Up programme funded by the Good Things Foundation and JP Morgan. The programme has helped further embed digital inclusion in its employment and training provision as well as other resident-focussed services.

Power Up’s Digital Skills Officer at Poplar HARCA, Riaz Ullah has worked closely with Community Fibre’s Digital Ambassadors’ Programme to provide training and support to Poplar HARCA’s own Digital Champions. Together, they developed a peer-to-peer learning model, which has been a key way of achieving a sustainable digital transformation.

The activities and the support provided to reduce the digital divide

Poplar HARCA has been running a variety of online platforms and workshops since the pandemic began. These included ‘HARCA Centres Unlocked’ where the community centres transferred their health and wellness programmes to run virtually with local residents.

Digital inclusion is embedded in Poplar HARCA’s employment and training service which supports residents to gain accredited qualifications for work and get people into jobs.

Through the Power Up programme, it has trained nearly 400 local people, 96 of whom have gained a qualification in ICT Level 1 and Level 2. The Digital Ambassadors supported by Community Fibre have played a key role in motivating the learners to achieve their goals.

Best moments from the Digital Ambassador programme?

Community Fibre and Poplar HARCA teams have developed training opportunities that have helped the Digital Ambassadors to grow more confidently in their roles. These included role-play to run group workshops better whether it’s face-to-face or online.

Riaz explained: “A recent highlight with one of our Digital Ambassadors, Abhijeet, was after going through intensive training with us, he is now leading his workshops with a group of adults with learning disabilities from our local council. We were delighted at how Abhijeet was eager to lead and was able to demonstrate his abilities and skills learnt from his training and use it for the first time with a new group of special clients without any hesitation.”

This highly successfully training programme between Community Fibre and Poplar HARCA is set to continue. At Community Fibre, we are always willing to onboard new Digital Ambassadors to the programme from within the local community and across all London Boroughs.
For more information on the project visit the Community Connect webpage.

Enterprise Architecture

The first step on any new organisation’s IT roadmap is to set out how you want the overall system to work.

How will processes work, how will systems knit together to enable this and what does it mean for structure?

Enterprise Architecture is a combination of all of these things.

Housing providers do this in different ways – some create ‘Design Committees’ and determine everything by consensus, bringing the best of each individual organisation’s processes together. This takes more time, but can increase buy in for change.

Others create a focused team that works to deliver the most efficient model against a set of principles agreed by the Executive.

There’s no ‘right’ way, but it’s important to find a way that works within the culture you want to create.

Commercial

The legal agreements in place with your existing suppliers will also require novating across to the resulting legal entity.

Areas of change and cost are likely to be in numbers of users, costs of contracts, notice periods and renewal fees/dates and cancellation fees. There are also going to be systems that will be decommissioned over a period of time that result in contractual negotiations, in particular the movement of 3rd party integrations.

Information

Information is key to running an effective organisation. Once you understand what your future architectural design looks like, you will be able to create an Information Management Strategy to support its success.

You will need to consider the information needs at all levels of the organisation as well as those you engage with outside. The Information Management Strategy will provide the framework that enables secure implementation of new ways of working.

Data

Aside from the obvious need to ensure information is kept secure and only accessed by those that need to see it, the key challenges in merger situations are most likely to be the quality and differences in the existing data across the merging organisations.

Getting data right is an investment that isn’t often talked about upfront and yet can be a significant area of cost as it needs to be cleansed, archived, transformed to new structures and migrated to new systems.

Legacy systems

With the rationalisation of your architecture, there will be primary and legacy systems as well the need to create archiving solutions. You will need to produce a roadmap that covers the movement of data and decommissioning of systems as well the movement of 3rd party integrations.

The end goal will be to have a rationalised infrastructure that requires the minimum amount of support and has the ability to grow to meet future demands.

The people factor

None of this change is possible without people – first to do it, and then to sustain it. IT is no longer the preserve of techies sat in a basement somewhere. Organisations needs to carefully consider the detail of their supporting IT structure and the skills and experience needed to ensure successful day-to-day delivery and strategic risk mitigation.

To find out more about Socitm Advisory’s support to the housing sector visit www.advisory.socitm.net/housing

Our approach to digital transformation

Our culture change programme involved a huge amount of input from colleagues and tenants.

We wanted a new digital strategy that was driven by what tenants wanted – not by creating a hybrid of the current systems we were using.

We took our time and spent around five months talking to staff in workshops to understand how they wanted to work in the future, the systems they liked to use and the ones they knew didn’t give the best service to tenants.

We brought in a range of suppliers for show and tell sessions

All this gave us the foundations for a specification to use in a tender process as we looked to build a unified digital capability. We made sure staff who would be using different technologies were involved in the tender process.

It has taken almost three years to get here, but now staff can see they have, or will have very soon, the systems and processes in place that they have asked for and designed. It has proved to be very empowering.

Covid

In February 2020, we launched our culture change programme. Then Covid hit.

We’ve still made big strides and in many ways the pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation we were already planning.

Within three weeks the IT team had done upgrades to systems, 250 laptops had been delivered and MS Teams was being used by more than 70% of the organisation.

We launched a SharePoint intranet system so colleagues could stay connected and access all the information they needed remotely.

It now means we’re much more flexible and much more agile.

There’s no right or wrong

The cornerstone of our digital transformation strategy, a new housing management solution, is due to go live in July this year. Some mergers will decide to use one legacy system instead of starting from scratch.

There is never a right or wrong way to approach this kind of alignment. We wanted staff to be able to influence and own the decisions and have a high level of transparency in the selection of the solution.

Our approach has been successful, but we knew the risk.

By breaking down our approach and rebuilding our digital offer from scratch our alignment of processes has taken longer.

We’ve had to work hard to deliver really good services in the interim.

Ultimately, these processes need to be a reflection of the values you want to set as an organisation.

And remember, if you are going to ask staff what they want, you’ve got to be willing to listen to what they have to say.

Who holds the power?

‘Stigma’, defined by the Oxford dictionary, is ‘a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality or person’.

We may think stigmatising words always come with negative connotations.

Of course, words associated with social housing tenants, such as ‘scroungers’, ‘lazy’, and, ‘weak’, that are hugely stigmatising.

However, this isn’t always the case. There are three core phrases that are part of housing’s vocabulary that sound positive, but need to be addressed. They are:

• Giving tenants a voice
• Empowering tenants
• Vulnerable tenants

Within these phrases there is a clear pattern relating to power and a lack of power.

‘Giving tenants a voice’, implies that they don’t have one. And it is up to the landlord to grant them one.

In ‘empowering tenants’ we are saying that up until the moment that the landlord empowers them, they are powerless.

Vulnerable is more complicated, as the word is entrenched in a lot of legislation and regulatory frameworks. Nonetheless, the word vulnerable is very vague. It doesn’t say anything specific about anyone yet implies there is ‘something’ that puts someone at risk of various misdoings. It implies this risk comes from some flaw in the person who is vulnerable, whether this is because of age, disability, race, sexuality or other characteristic.

The role of systems and data in changing the narrative

Language like this is actively disempowering. It invites and strengthens further types of language that maintains stigma of social housing tenants.

Changing the narrative and recognising that language has a significant kind of power is everyone’s responsibility.

Below I have outlined three changes that I suggest can be made in the language used in your systems and wider vocabulary to start breaking down stigma attached to social housing tenants.

Time savings

It could also lead to a massive time saving, cutting out the back and forth between services ringing up for information.

Conversations on data sharing can become geared to focus solely on looking after older people.
This is important.

But there are a raft of areas – ranging from anti-social behaviour to mental health – where quicker and better data sharing between agencies would lead to better services for individuals and communities.

Housing’s role

Housing’s role in this partnership is critical. Health and social services often only become engaged with an individual when there is a pressing clinical or social problem.

Housing has the ability to get “up stream” and deal with issues at their inception. Better information from agencies can mean support is targeted at the right people in the right neighbourhoods.

That should lead to some direct saving to NHS and council services and foster a new sense of partnerships between health, local councils and housing providers.

The recent “About Me” health and social care standard is a good example of the information a person could share with many agencies.

In Lincolnshire County Council when data sharing was implemented with health partners and administrators could not keep up with demand from social workers wanting to access the system they’d developed.

At the moment housing is not consistently part of these data sharing groups. It needs to be.

Collaboration

In reality, organisations have had the technical ability to share information on individuals successfully for over 20 years.

When we collaborate, services get better. Together we can save so much time and effort and make a real difference to those who matter.

We are always delighted to talk to you about how housing and health and social care can work better together. If you want to take part in the discussions we are having pleases visit www.advisory.socitm.net/housing

In the UK, heat is responsible for 37% of carbon emissions, more than emissions from transport.

Low carbon heat networks are a fundamental part of the UK’s decarbonisation strategy, with the Committee on Climate Change expecting the proportion of UK heating delivered over heat networks to rise from 2% to at least 20% by 2050.

But decarbonisation isn’t the only buzzword in heat. Digitalisation is also going to be key if we’re to deliver this change in a way that is both fair for customers and cost effective

To achieve the kind of carbon reductions required to help meet net zero, heat networks should be closely monitored so that maintenance and efficiency improvements can be made.

Guru’s technology is multi-utility, because the digitalisation of heat will need to work alongside the digitalisation of electricity, water, cooling, vehicle charging and more if our energy systems are genuinely going to become more transparent, lower cost and lower carbon.

The Heat Network Industry Council (the industry group representing heat networks) is pushing for all city heat networks to be digital by 2030, including the digitalisation of existing networks.

We don’t use technology to monitor or check in on people and even throughout the lockdowns haven’t made people book-in or ask for permission to attend the office – which we’ve made fully covid-secure. We’ve simply highlighted the ever-changing government guidance and told colleagues we trust them to apply it to themselves.

Our reforms have been about using digital to work smarter, not necessarily about having super smart places to work.

They will be a place of social contact and engagement – digital can take care of a lot, but not that. Social interaction is what makes us human

When some of our teams saw each other for the first time after lockdown they literally jumped up and down with joy.

There isn’t a digital way of creating that energy and connection.