Day in The Life

Progression within housing 

Name: Carol Reid
Age: 45
Employer: Grampian Housing Association
Role: Housing Manager

Morning: I enjoy beginning my day with a swim, but it does mean an early start! I try to arrive at the pool for 6.30am, then after swimming I make my way home to organise my 5-year-old son for school. Once Ihave dropped him off I get to my desk at 9am to start work.

I usually spend the morning checking my emails, reviewing my diary and catching up with staff about any pressing issues in respect of rent management and lettings.  I have regular one to one sessions with senior housing officers who in turn meet with housing officers.  This helps to promote teamwork and good communication which in turn ensures the effective delivery of services to our tenants. . I occasionally travel to our Elgin office to meet with the team there too.

I have been working in housing for 25 years now, with 16 of those spent at Grampian Housing Association. Throughout that time, I’ve progressed from housing assistant, to housing officer and senior housing officer, before being promoted to my current role earlier this year.  This means I have a good understanding of the responsibilities and roles of my colleagues and they know they can approach me for advice on anything. 

I also use my time in the morning to catch up with external contacts, for example HomeHunt - the choice based lettings system we use to advertise our properties for social rent. They advertise fortnightly so we need to plan our adverts in advance and arrange the letting of properties.  I regularly meet with the HomeHunt partners to discuss its future strategic direction.

Lunchtime: At lunch I take the opportunity to go home and walk our fox red Labrador Indy, having a dog certainly keeps me fit! We have a quick run around the block and I usually grab something to eat before heading back to the office.

Afternoon: My role within Grampian Housing Association is more strategic now and I’m responsible for writing policies on topics such as rent management, anti-social behaviour and lettings. We have legislation to adhere to and we also consult our customers on how policies should be shaped, so quite often I’ll spend my afternoon meeting with our operational service development manager and property services manager, discussing the content for certain policies and how they interlink across departments.  

Another big part of my role is report writing and I try to commit some time each afternoon to collate and analyse our Key Performance Indicators.  Our performance results are submitted annually to the Scottish Housing Regulator as well as being used in quarterly benchmarking exercises.  It’s important that I keep on top of our performance trends to ensure that Grampian continues to be a leading housing provider in the North East.  

I’ll then catch up with our business development team for updates about plans for new developments. At the moment we are working towards unveiling new homes in Dubford and Mugiemoss in Aberdeen and Peterhead It’s a very exciting time but there’s a lot of preparation involved.

Evening: I finish work at 5pm and after I collect my son we head home. My evenings usually involve making dinner and helping my little boy with his homework. To relax I enjoy making costume jewellery. It’s a hobby of mine which I have been doing for years. I sometimes get requests from friends and colleagues looking for an accessory to match a particular outfit. It helps me switch off in the evening.