By Richard Bampton, Head of Income at A2Dominion

So, Boris has now announced the dates when we can begin (hopefully) to get back to some sort of normality. It’s beginning to start internal conversations on what our post-June 2021 workplace looks like.

I’m sure they’re happening in every organisation, but whatever happens
that is a fair few months away. Things could change, and realistically many of us will not be returning to five days a week of office working.

I’ve been collecting money for 25 years now and during that time I’ve worked with (and learnt from) some brilliant collectors. The one thing they have in common is that they’re all excellent on the telephone. Of course, I knew about their ability on the telephone because I was in the
same office as them and could hear at least one side of the conversation. This way of learning from just listening to colleagues is something that has not been as easy recently.

It’s now fast approaching one year since my team were all in the office together. I’m assessing the needs of my team in the year ahead, and this is definitely an area I want to focus on. As I imagine with many of you, I’ve got some of the team working better than ever now they are
working from home for the whole week. It works for them and their circumstances, but this is not the case for everyone.

I don’t know about others, but I have this ‘ideal view’ of my team all in the office, and the place is buzzing with everyone on the phone. There are positive conversations going on everywhere, and you can hear staff taking payments on every call – like a busy City of London
trading floor.

In reality, my ideal of a buzzing office doesn’t happen every day. For starters, my team are split across two main offices, but there are other reasons for this. Income collection within the social rented sector has so many other issues our staff must deal with every day. This is more
so than ever as we remain in such difficult circumstances. The pandemic has highlighted the need for more empathy and support within income collection.

So, there are a couple of key things my team have been trying in an effort to keep things as normal as possible. These also keep that crucial ‘learning from others’ option available.

Firstly, there is the ‘buzzing team’ approach – we have continued with our competition days, usually held at the end of the month to coincide with pay days. These can vary, using existing teams, splitting staff into new groups for a few days, or just individual. We often use some
data to focus on, eg, true debts under £500. I’d expect the teams to queue up text messages throughout the day(s) of the competition to generate incoming calls as well. We give vouchers or time off to the winners.

I’ve encouraged my staff to have open Zoom calls during the week, and we’ve used these for normal day to day work as well as the competitions. These have been a great way to try and re-create the office atmosphere. They are not mandatory, but I know many of the team have found them really helpful in just feeling that they are in an office environment. I have to say, just hearing a keyboard in the background and someone on a call very quickly gets you back into that office feeling, (but all without the time spent stuck in traffic or squashed on a train!)

These sessions are also an opportunity for staff to listen to their colleagues and how they approach calls. Another way we have helped this is using ‘buddy’ calls. These are simply calls from another member of the team to a resident instead of the usual officer. We use this when the officer is struggling for positive interaction with a resident. It continues to be such a simple yet easy and positive way to get that crucial engagement.

The buddy calls are also a good way for team members to hear how their colleagues go about their difficult conversations with residents. Although the team all had the same negotiation training, everyone has their individual style and there are always some good phrases that can be ‘borrowed’ from their colleagues. This is particularly the case as the pandemic and lockdown remain with us.

With all the changes to the legal process we are all having to be more persistent with our attempts at engaging with residents. I have had some new staff join the team in the last year and all these methods have helped them to complete the usual induction and develop as we
would expect.

One other aspect of not being in the office is not being able to utilise white boards (or similar) to record performance against targets, competition results, etc. I have used this within my teams to give easy and regular visibility to performance. I’m sure most of you have competitive income teams and staff who can be target driven, I certainly have.

As an alternative to the office white board, we now use a ‘Virtual Money Board.’ This is updated throughout the day/week to show the positive number of payments being made. It can be easily adapted to use for competitions, individual targets as well as team targets.