Scottish Housing Day 2023 - Celebrating Housing as a Career

Housing Online are proud to support Scottish Housing Day, which is back for the eighth consecutive year and will take place on 13 September 2023, focusing on Celebrating Housing as a Career. The aim of the day is to raise awareness of the challenges and successes in the housing sector and to raise people’s awareness of their housing options.

"At Housing Online, we are fortunate to be able to work with the staff working for Scotland’s Housing Associations and Social Housing providers every single day. We are also very proud that the work we do helps enable these staff to provide a better service to their tenants."

The COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020-21 highlighted the importance of a safe, secure and warm home like never before. Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives. The very slogan on the podiums of those daily briefings emphasised the importance of the home as a public health tool.

The Scottish Government’s “Housing to 2040” paper (available in full here) further emphasises the need to deliver more good quality, affordable homes across Scotland, particularly homes for social rent.

All of this serves to demonstrate the ongoing importance of the staff working for Scotland’s Housing Associations and Social Housing providers.

At Housing Online, we are fortunate to be able to work with these people every single day. We are also very proud that the work we do helps enable these staff to provide a better service to their tenants.

My Home is a feature rich, affordable portal that enables landlords to provide their tenants, staff and contractors with easy access to the information and services that they need. During Lockdown, My Home provided Ochil View Housing Services Manager, Linda McLaren, with just the functionality to deal with the strange new world:

“Staff suddenly didn’t need to access the remote server to see tenant information on rent, repairs or anything. Suddenly, we were mobile working in real time, without the 2-3 day delay you get with paper based forms.” Better still, with tenants now able to pay rent directly, report repairs and view the details of their tenancy on the portal, it did not matter so much that the office remained closed. We’ve had so much positive feedback from tenants. My Home is easy to access, easy to navigate, practical and paperless. Rent payments through My Home have been brilliant. People are seeing what they owe and are able to make a payment on the spot without needing help from anyone. My Home is also of immense benefit to staff. It’s positive for tenants but a godsend to staff, especially during lockdown. It really is the best thing ever”.

Find out what My Home can offer to your staff, contractors and tenants by downloading our feature sheet.

These Homes is a Digital Lettings service built in close collaboration with seven partner Housing Associations. These Homes is designed to give customers and prospective tenants of our partner organisations improved access to affordable rented properties across Scotland. Here’s Louise Carlin, Head of Housing Services at Inverclyde Common Housing Register:

“These Homes offered everything that we were looking for and is more user friendly than other software on the market. We had been using another CBL software for a number of years but became increasingly frustrated with the poor customer service and over complicated systems. These Homes does what it says on the tin! We also knew how good the support team were, given that we were already using the tenant portal provided by Housing Online. I can honestly say that Housing Online are the best software company I have worked with over my 30 years in housing (and there have been many). All the staff are super helpful, skilled and knowledgeable. Nothing is ever a bother!”.

The pandemic highlighted that the provision of good quality Social Housing plays a critical role in the health and wellbeing of the nation. The next generation of housing builds will also play a huge part in helping hit the Government’s Net Zero targets for carbon emission. It follows then that the staff of Housing Associations and Social Housing providers are absolutely fundamental to our future and should be cherished.

Well, those of us lucky enough to work with them every day already knew that!