Money isn't everything

Long and unsociable hours, increasing workloads, difficult conditions, scarce resources – grounds for another public pay dispute? No, just reality for thousands of residents who commit their time and energies to shaping and supporting local housing and community services.

Involving customers is now the vital common denominator for just about every aspect of government housing policy – from stock transfer to arm's-length management and best value.

The days of housing professionals liaising with a few tame tenants at infrequent meetings are long gone. Residents now work as essential and equal partners in a vast range of housing and regeneration initiatives. Equal in all respects except one – they do it as volunteers in their spare time, while everyone else at the table earns salaries, fees or allowances for what they do.

The Tenant Participation Advisory Service sees more and more being demanded of residents, and a growing need to attract and retain competent, high-calibre people to represent customer concerns.

The message from residents is clear – if that's what housing and community agencies want, then they'll have to find new ways of recognising and rewarding volunteers' input.

TPAS tours the country
Rather than endlessly agonising over and debating the moral and financial issues surrounding rewards for volunteers, TPAS has set up a national project to do something about it.

We're going to find out how activists are already rewarded in housing and other public services, and help social landlords design and experiment with new approaches – and see how they impact on the level and quality of resident involvement.

With innovation and good practice funding from the Housing Corporation, we'll survey all TPAS members and research practice in health, transport and other sectors to uncover innovative and successful approaches to reward.

Rewards in kind
This debate is distinct and different from the one on payment for housing association board members, but it may share a common solution. If residents make a sustained, unique and telling contribution to local services, why shouldn't they be paid for it?

Landlords could offer free or discounted home improvements to residents in return for their time, or give people access to the internet

That said, TPAS's early soundings with residents suggest that a majority of people favour non-financial or indirect rewards. This could be as simple as offering residents attending conferences a clothing and entertainment allowance, or involve more formal systems of "community credits". Residents could earn points for their time and input, which they could then redeem against local services (for example, sports centres, libraries, car parks, public transport and health care). If joined-up thinking and modernised local government mean anything, surely it's about public agencies being capable of making these links and trade-offs.

Closer to home, landlords could offer free or discounted home improvements to residents in return for their time, or give people access to the internet and other digital technology to allow them to communicate and use the services that organisations take for granted – an easy and value-adding way of saying thank you.

The key thing is to create choice and freedom to reward people in a way that's appropriate to local circumstances, rather than everyone being caught by the current default assumption that volunteers don't get rewarded.

The principal objection to offering real, tangible rewards is that it will damage the voluntary ethos, and that people will get involved for the "wrong" reasons – just doing it for the money or other benefit.

Possible, but I doubt it. Whatever the nature and scale of rewards that landlords might offer, they're likely to be tiny compared with the level of hard work and dedication needed to be a community activist. It's just too hard a job for people to be solely motivated by modest payments and incentives.

Anyway, since when have volunteers been driven just by pure altruism, and since when have the current "no pay" arrangements guaranteed high-quality customer involvement?

Recognition is probably more important than reward – and TPAS's project will put this to the test. We've already got several landlords' and residents' groups interested, but if you'd like to take part in the project (either by acting as a pilot study or through more general consultation and input), please get in touch now.