World is going more urbanised everyday. High density work and living spaces is the new norm and this trend is growing. Social and community groups are formed among people who are involved and who are sharing these spaces.
As administrator of these spaces we have challenge when we are dealing with different kind of facilities and related incidents. In these informal social and community groups there are always some stakeholders who want to take advantage of common facilities and/or do not act in accountable manner. It may be a major concern for most occupants and they feel there is no way for them to channel their resentment. Having committees and formal meeting is not the channel they are seeking.
Urbanisation means people have much more happening in their lives – all they want is stress free and safe work or living space. They do not want to hold on to resentment, they want to address the issue and move on! (who wouldn’t?).
A very basic research of communities and general population conducted by us has shown following insights:
So how do you address this. Research also shows many issues can also be avoided by providing occupants with some degree of control. Having an open and effective communication channel between occupants, facility attendants and facility managers is one solution. Large part of occupant and sub occupant concerns can be mitigated knowing that they have been heard and someone is going to take action or have taken action.
The other part of the research represent that when an easy and simple way to take action was provided, the results were significantly different.
Just by making available simple reporting mechanism, you can improve engagement from 13% to 93%. Staggering results by any means!
The other challenge of course is creating rules, communicating and then having these followed. Who has got the patience, right?
That’s where technology comes in. Here you cannot lead with your compliance hat. In order to have any adoption it all has to be about benefits for your community, it has to be on piecemeal basis. You dump a whole lot of rules on your community and you will see all kinds of resistance. You need to make compliance as part of availing the benefit. Where did we hear “privileges and responsibilities go hand in hand together!” How true and how technology can make it easy to offer it all in one go.
A very simple example – you have meeting room/community room available to be shared. How simple it is to enforce the booking time slots, enforce no show rules, equipment care rules and get the user to agree to these criteria before authorising the time slot. This visibility and readily available communication channel can give you numerous new eyes of other occupants, to ensure rules are followed and upkeep of facilities is maintained.
One aspect we need to be careful about is that occupants and sub occupants issues and concerns can be subjective and you do want to clutter your decision making and systems with items which need no action or better be considered as part of broader policy change. Adapting your systems to these changing conditions and priorities is must.
