Customer Stories

Hornsey Housing Trust

How OnBoard helped this housing trust simplify and streamline its governance

Industry: Housing

Headquarters: London, United Kingdom

Board Management Goals

Reduce manual processes
Simplify agenda preparation
Adopt a simple, easy-to-use solution

Results

Manual work and paper consumption significantly reduced
Agenda preparation and distribution are now centralised
Minimal training and support has been needed

Hornsey Housing Trust simplifies and streamlines its governance with OnBoard.

Hornsey Housing Trust provides the London Borough of Haringey with affordable housing and support services. It was established to support old age pensioners and its goal is to assist older people in living active, independent lives in communities they enjoy.

The Trust manages nearly 400 homes and helps more than 400 people – mostly elderly and some with other support needs. Its residences include converted street properties and sheltered residences. Residents include people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Tenants’ average age is 78; the minimum age at which someone can be allocated a Trust home is 45.

Liz Hanley, Executive Assistant to the CEO, joined the Trust in November 2020 and at the time, board papers were being prepared manually: “we were printing 200 pages and hand-delivering them to people’s homes,” she says.

“I came from an advertising background where paperwork like that was just not what we did. I thought there had to be an easier solution.”

Liz did her homework and compared several software platforms and packages. OnBoard was the clear winner for Liz and the Trust and she couldn’t be happier with the new system:

“It’s just been a dream. It’s been an absolute game-changer in that there’s no longer trees being cut down and 200 pages being printed and run around North London at 10 o’clock at night.”

“It’s been an absolute game-changer.”

- Liz Hanley, EA to the CEO, Hornsey Housing Trust

Document management

Beyond the logistical and efficiency improvements, Liz and the team have found many other benefits, such as simple document management and version control capabilitie

Agenda preparation

Agendas were another area ripe for improvement and transition to a more automated process.

“Before OnBoard, I had to type up an agenda in Word,” Liz says. It was time-consuming and, in case of revisions, open to errors. “But if you go into OnBoard, it’s there.

“We don’t have to duplicate it, there’s just one document and it can be accessed online.

“Or if someone wants a hard copy, they can print it out from OnBoard. It keeps everyone focused on business, not process.”

“With OnBoard, I don’t think you could ever get lost in the complexities because it’s all just seamless.”

- Liz Hanley, EA to the CEO, Hornsey Housing Trust

Simple to teach, powerful to use

The Trust’s CEO had experience with a different board solution but transitioned to OnBoard seamlessly. “He’s not a technical expert”, Liz says, “but I’ve never had him asking ‘where are the papers?’, ‘where do I find this or that?’ because it’s all just there.”

Better still, Liz taught herself how the use the system and has had little trouble bring the team up to speed. “I love OnBoard’s simplicity,” she says. “I didn’t have to do any training, it all just made sense.”

“I love OnBoard’s simplicity. I didn’t have to do any training, it all just made sense.”

- Liz Hanley, EA to the CEO, Hornsey Housing Trust

Support when it’s needed

Liz says she’s barely needed OnBoard’s support team – but on the few occasions when she has, they’ve been responsive and found fast, simple solutions.

“I think I’ve asked a couple of questions over the year, including for some of our users,” she says. “They’re just so responsive. With some companies you can wait a little while to get a reply but OnBoard’s not like that.

“Any problem the front-line team can’t solve gets escalated fast … it’s just been great.”

In part, this comes back to the platform’s intuitive interface and fully integrated capabilities. Together, they make what could be a complex solution easy to use, as Liz noted:

“With OnBoard, I don’t think you could ever get lost in the complexities because it’s all just seamless.”

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