Day in the life of a Repairs Admin Team Leader

Donna discusses the challenges around voids, learning on the job and completing the couch to 5k challenge...

I joined Squared four months ago as the Maintenance and Repairs Admin Team Leader. I previously spent eight years working at an Estate Agent doing a variety of different tasks including admin, memorandums of sales, compliance and even working on the mortgage side of things. I basically helped with a bit of everything!

That variety of experience was interesting, but I ultimately decided to make a change and four months ago joined Squared as the Maintenance and Repairs Admin Team Leader. I oversee the Maintenance Admin team, helping to schedule our operatives diaries, take calls from our customers and liaise with the relevant contractors when needed.

One of the big challenges we have is arranging all necessary work on voids (empty properties). When a customer moves out of a property, we work with the Homes and Homes with Support team to get that property ready to then be rented out to another customer. Every day this property remains empty is another day we could be housing another customer, so time is of the essence.

When lots of voids come at once, manging these works alongside day to day maintenance works can be a challenge. We don’t want to over rely on external contractors, as this increases our costs and that money could be used on other works. The Homes and Homes with Support teams want voids turned around as quickly as possible, understandably, while customers want their repairs booked in and resolved as soon as possible.

Prior to my varied role at an estate agent I worked in block management, which has some overlap with my current role. Part of this role was saying no to requests we couldn’t deliver on, so I’m not afraid to say no to team members or customers alike. What we deem a priority in Property Services may be different to that of our customers and our Homes and Homes with Support teams. So it comes down to prioritising and communicating clearly with team members and customers to manage expectations.

I love a challenge. My first week in this role I was thrown in the deep end, with my manager ill and working with a housing management system I hadn’t used before. As someone who learns from doing, this ended up being perfect for me as I could just get to work and start exploring the system. I’m always learning new things and experimenting, I don’t worry too much if it goes wrong as that is when I call our digital services team!

I get to work with a great team every day. When I first arrived at Squared, I couldn’t believe how nice everyone was. Are they too nice?! Are they trying to hide something?! It turns out that I work with a really good team, which has made it very easy to build strong relationships across departments in a short period of time (even the marketing and comms team, who talked me into doing this!). Having people who catastrophise would be a nightmare in the Property Services team. What matters is finding solutions, not dwelling on the problems.

Throughout a typical day my team will have huddles because an issue has come up that needs talking through. Nobody panics, the team remains calm and we talk through the options and then communicate the actions with all relevant parties. No micro-managing, everyone has a voice and is listened too consistently. Amazing how that can transform your experience in the workplace.

Given the demand for our services and the limited resources we have, most days involve at least some problem solving. As someone who loves a puzzle, this is great for me! I enjoy sharing and solving riddles with my son, it’s become one of our things that we do together.

As a mother of three I do find myself becoming a taxi service when I’m not at work!

You can often find me down the local pub, going out to resteraunts or going for a pampering session. As someone who struggles to do nothing and is always thinking about the next thing that needs doing, I try to switch off by reading and even completed the couch to 5k during COVID. I’m quite proud of my 1hr 8min,10k time of three years ago for the Luton Run Fest, proof that it can be done!