Don’t Let the Resident Become Your Repairs Manager
Never, ever try to solve a repairs backlog by keeping everyone busy.
Oddly, keeping everyone busy may be what creates it.
If you lead a housing association, you may be worried about Awaab’s Law.
More hazards. Tighter timescales.
You can almost hear the conversation.
“If we can just keep everyone busy and get the efficiency up there…”
Of course. But what if keeping everyone busy is why things take so long.
Imagine an operative starting a repair on Monday.
He’s halfway through when he discovers he needs something he doesn’t have. A part. Another trade. A decision.
Frustrating. He’s here. His tools are out. He wants to finish it.
But there’s another job.
So he packs up and leaves.
The operative moves on.
The repair stops.
While he’s doing B, C arrives. Then D.
Everyone stays busy.
And A waits.
We imagine moving between jobs like this:
A → B
But research into task switching shows a measurable switching cost. Sophie Leroy found something stranger still: part of our attention can remain attached to unfinished work.
She called it attention residue.
So it’s closer to:
A → STOP → SWITCH → REORIENT → B
There’s work hiding between the work.
I call it The Invisible Middle.
More than 600 social landlords use the M3NHF Schedule of Rates, where repairs can be described through trades, sections, subsections and individual items of work.
Nothing inherently wrong with that.
But what if thinking about a repair in its parts makes it easier to lose sight of the whole?
Because the resident doesn’t have a collection of codes.
They have a problem they want fixed.
Imagine her on Thursday.
She was relieved when the operative arrived on Monday.
Now she’s disappointed.
The problem is still there. Nobody has returned.
She checks her phone.
Nothing, disappointment becomes frustration.
So she calls. Explains what still needs doing.
She has acquired a new job - your unpaid case manager.
Meanwhile: Appointment booked. Inspection completed. Operative attended.
Everyone can succeed while the resident fails.
And there’s a wonderful absurdity here.
An operative with twenty minutes free? Do something we’re told.
But a repair untouched for four days?
Oddly, that doesn’t produce quite the same reaction.
We optimise the time we can see and ignore the time we can’t.
Perhaps Awaab’s Law doesn’t only require more capacity.
Perhaps some of the capacity you need is already there. Hidden in unfinished work.
Perhaps you can ignore some of the noise.
The utilisation targets. The pressure to fill every twenty minutes. The obsession with keeping everybody busy.
And focus on something simpler.
Keep the repair open.
Give them what they need. Keep the resident informed.
Own it until the problem has gone.
Because perhaps the thing that needs to stay busy isn’t the operative.
It’s the repair.
And when it’s finished, nobody reopens it.
It just ends.
Productivity isn’t how much work people touch.
It’s how much work they close.
