The impact of universities being in financial difficulty, diversity and inclusion in the shared living sectors and how students engage with marketing

In this second episode of Housed: The Shared Living Podcast Sarah, Deenie and Dan tackle the pressing challenges and insights of the shared living world.

We explore the ripple effects of financial difficulties in universities, the critical state of diversity within the sector, and groundbreaking discoveries on student marketing engagement.

Housed: The Shared Living Podcast aims to bring the latest news, views and insights to the shared living sector.

Each week, Sarah Canning, Deenie Lee of The Property Marketing Strategists and Daniel Smith of Student Housing Consultancy will be delving into a wide variety of subjects and asking the questions that aren't often asked. This podcast is for anyone who works in Student Accommodation, BTR, Co-living, Operational Real Estate or Shared Living - this podcast is for you!

Resources:
The Property Marketing Strategists Youth Forum

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of the individual hosts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the second episode of How's the Shared Living podcast. I'm Jeannie Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists. I'm Dan Smith. from Student Housing Consultancy. I'm Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategists. So we're on to the second one of our podcasts and I guess it'll be good to have a quick catch up in what we've all been up to, what's been going on in our world, what's happening. Dan, Sarah, who wants to start? What have you been up to? Sarah, take it away. We've been full pelt from the first week really and we're doing a lot of work on some new brands coming into the shared living space and what's different I think about these branding projects compared potentially to others that we've seen kind of in sort of years ago, really, is that there's a real thought around meaning and a full brand. We're not just talking about people designing logos and fonts and colours. It's far more, far deeper than that. So we think that hopefully that's something we'll see across the sector, but that's certainly something that we're seeing in our work. And we're really, really delighted that there's been real interest in our data about what Gen Z want from their accommodation and we've been lucky enough to be presenting that in workshops in different ways not necessarily just people looking at pbsa or university accommodation but that kind of insight that the younger generation are shaping or should be shaping what the likes of BTR and co-living develop further down the line. Well, I guess we've also carrying on with some of our consultancy, a bit of kind of team building and development, which is something that always really excites me and really kind of, I guess, developing the next generation of marketeers, really, which is kind of why we set out to do what we do. And I know we struggle a little bit to still do that just because Sometimes when you set up a business, it takes you different curves to where you set out. It's really great to be back into that. And as you say, we're getting a sense that I guess maybe some of our messages are getting out there, Sarah, that actually that brand is important, that that marketing is important, that that customer voice is important. So I think there is the winds of change around that. And I guess that means that we have been busy, that actually let's understand what our marketing is doing. Let's understand how marketing is performing. Let's understand how our marketing team is working and what value they can bring. So, yeah, it has been a really busy start to the year and from all different parts of our consultancy, really. So it's been really good. Dan, what have you been up to?

SPEAKER_01: 2:36

I love what you do. You know that. It's super important that we are representing the resident, you know, whether that's... whether that's a student or a young professional or whatever. And I think quite often, again, we're in silos or you've got your typical kind of boardroom makeup, should we say, that doesn't necessarily understand exactly what their residents want. And so it's super important that we have the data, the reports, the understanding of, you know, exactly what they want from their buildings, from the services, how to market to them, where to reach them, you know, what's going to really engage with them. And I think that people are starting, and by people I mean operators and investors, are starting to understand that brand is so important in that. You know, I'm lucky having run Nido for a time. I saw Thank you. I think people are starting to understand that that brand piece is not just a marginal gain anymore. It's not just, oh, look, nice colours, nice logo. It's very much, you know, entrenched in whether a student is going to want to live with you or not, or a resident is going to want to live with you or not. So, yeah, keep representing those residents and championing that Gen Z voice as well. I think that's super important. In terms of what I've been up to, some of it I can say, some of it I can't. I hate NDAs, but I Obviously, you have to sign them as a consultant. So I've had trips to Sheffield, which was really interesting. I've only been to Sheffield once before. And I've used the term oversupplied to describe Sheffield a few times. And certainly, I put it in a similar vein as Coventry, but probably more able to come through the sort of occupancy challenges that Coventry is currently facing, because there's two quality universities in Sheffield. But I couldn't believe the difference in quality between some of the old stock and some of the new stock in Sheffield. You know, there are some stunning buildings. I won't actually name names, but it was very, very eye-opening. And I think that Sheffield as a market, it'll be interesting to see how things go this year because of the fact that each of the general managers that I spoke to at the student housing blocks and a couple of co-living blocks as well was very, pretty buoyant about their current occupancy rate, but not sure on how things were going to look at the end of this year. So I'm intrigued as to how that goes. So yeah, that my first sort of trip to Sheffield, the rest of my work, obviously with, you know, I have student housing consultancy and then I have good management group and good management group is our ESG and sustainability arm. Thank you very much. for an operator that's a third party operator and that's what we're dealing with sort of well two of our key clients are third party that's tricky because they don't own the buildings like there's only so much that you can do from an ESG front but we're making sure that they're you know they've got their ducks in a row and that they have the best possible ESG strategy to attract more yeah more beds ultimately because it's pretty cutthroat out there at the moment with the third party sector as well that's another that's another section completely

SPEAKER_00: 6:33

I was going to say I think there's a few things you touched on there which I think we could do whole episodes about. One is about those older properties and that retrofit and what's going to happen with that. And the other one is about being management companies and what happens with those management companies and also sustainability and ESG. I think there's another whole topic there. So I think, you know, lots that we can come back on. The thing that has been in the news quite recently, which I know you've posted on recently, Dan, is around universities, potentially being in financial difficulty. And, you know, I've been in the sector for a number of years and it's been talked about that there's some universities and difficulties, but it never happened. Universities never fail. Is that going to change? What's your view on it?

SPEAKER_01: 7:11

Can it change? It certainly can't change right now. Not with the government electioneering and the Labour Party not wanting to talk about their manifesto at all. They're sort of adopting a wait and see policy. And I don't blame them for that, because ultimately what needs to happen is that we need to raise tuition fees. There's no doubt about that. In real terms, universities are losing£2,000 a year on a domestic student. So it's no wonder they're going after the international students. And that's just not sustainable at all. I've been looking at the financial reports of all universities, which is quite painful, but in particular, the tier two universities. And it's pretty concerning. You know, there's a lot of losses. You look at how much they're all trying to save. And, you know, some of them are being quite open about the fact that they need to save sort of, you know, Coventry came out and said they need to save upwards of£80 million over the next two years. And they'll do that by Voluntary redundancies in the first place, but potentially compulsory redundancies at some point, getting rid of certain courses, maybe selling off some of the estate. And it's not just Coventry. I think, you know, I'm definitely guilty of talking about Coventry as one of the more challenging markets more consistently than others. But, you know, there's Huddersfield, University of Brighton came out and said that as well. And then York University have come out quite recently and said, we're actually going to lower the grade boundaries for international students for each of our courses, because we need more international students than we do domestics. And the reason for that is to balance the books. Now for York University, to be saying that, that is pretty concerning. It means that this sort of, the cancer of underfunded universities is spreading to the Russell Group. And ultimately, it's going to mean that that continues. Now, it's not surprising, given that they're making such a loss. We haven't raised tuition fees for 10 years or so. So it's not really surprising that the universities are struggling in that sense. But the first thing that they need to do is get their house in order and make sure that they are as lean as they possibly can be because the government in particular this current government are going to go after them and say hey look you know you're you're too fat in terms of the amount of people that you have the amount of courses that you've got etc let's you know let's trim the university sector down I don't think that's the approach that Labour will take but we'll we'll see we'll see what they say but either way this is definitely the right opportunity for universities to trim down a bit now I do think that that's going to cause a bit of uproar later in the market when some of these redundancies have to go from voluntary to forced redundancies there will be uproar there will potentially be strikes again who knows hopefully that doesn't come in and around exam time but but we'll yeah we'll see and and these measures could be a bit more stringent than last time because you won't and these strikes could be worse than last time because you you won't have the guidance from this current government because they're not going to turn around to students right now and say, we're going to raise tuition fees because they would lose the entire student vote. And you're not going to get that from labor either because exactly the same thing would happen. Students would even shock horror, desert labor. So yeah, the universities right now have no guidance from government. They have very little money coming in in terms of tuition fees. And that is now starting to spread to the Russell group. So yeah, It's going to be a really challenging year. I would expect some estate sell-offs. So, you know, and I'm already speaking to a couple of universities who are starting to evaluate their student housing strategy. And again, I won't and can't mention those, but there will definitely be some universities that need to sell off certain parts of their estate. So it's not going to be a good year for higher education in the UK at all. I'd like to see more from Universities UK in terms of, you How we can speak to the government, who we should be speaking to. I've done my bit in lobbying and, you know, it falls on deaf ears completely. I've spoken to policymakers in Shadow Cabinet and in government as well, in the housing departments in particular. And at the moment, obviously, it seems to be that the focus is on immigration and therefore... The first thing that you're going to try and do in an election is stop the boats. The second thing that you might try and do is to stop international students. And so that's a bit of low hanging fruit for, you know, a right leaning government to to go after. And that's unfortunately the way that things are starting to play out at the moment. International students is a sort of target number two for for this government and Labour Party. And I don't blame them are just sitting quiet for the time being. So, yeah, tough times. to be a university I wouldn't want to be a vice-chancellor at this time because like I said no guidance no money and it remains to be seen as to how successful this academic year will be in terms of applications as well so lots more to play out.

SPEAKER_00: 12:24

It's contradictory isn't it that the universities are crying out for international students but the government are being very hostile towards not just international students but anyone from overseas quite frankly and I don't know that they're aware of the the PR, the negative PR that they're creating for the UK. You know, we have, I guess, the privilege of travelling to various different events in our roles, you know, and people don't feel very welcomed here. But the university desperately needs international students to feel welcomed here to get the fees in. So it's, yeah, it's a bit of a mess and it's very contradictory. And I wonder, and I think we'll cover this in a later episode, but what could the tailwinds potentially be for accommodation for the PBSA sector, for BTR, for co-living. You talked about potentially estate sell-off. I've got some views on that that may well be positive. So yeah, let's save that conversation for a later episode. Deanie, I know that obviously we've been talking, we talked in the last episode about gender and inclusivity and events, and we've obviously been doing some work on that. Do you want to share where we are? Absolutely, yeah. We were obviously at the Property Week conference back in December, and I think you mentioned on the last episode, Dan, about the last panel on that session being... all male, and the uproar around that. And many people after that came to us and kind of said, well, actually, you guys really need to do a women's networking event. And we took that away. We kind of mulled over it over Christmas and spoke to... Quite a lot of people, real estate, property, women events, diversity, kind of real estate balance, all these kind of organisations around trying to deal with this issue of inclusivity and diversity and gender and property. And so we thought, well, what can we do as with our platform, with our voices to try and kind of change this in our PBS space? l world not just pbsa and so we we kind of didn't want to do anything just because we thought it's a good idea uh you know what we like we like to do a bit of data we like to do a bit of research so we have sent out with it's still live so we're still looking for people to to to go and fill that out and really just sent kind of a survey out about what if you're doing a networking event that was kind of focused around inclusivity and diversity What would that look like? What would you want it to be? What should it include? We constantly have a debate with ourselves because we're obviously a women-led business. And, you know, I dream of a world where we don't need to say it's women's-led. We don't need to focus on it. It just is as it is. I know we're not there yet. So I know we do have to have women-only events, but I want a world where we don't have to have women's-only events. We don't have to, you know, it's just that everyone is fair across society. you know, all diversity and we're all inclusive and, you know, and I guess we have to have these conversations to get there, but I do dream of that world and one day hopefully it'll happen. So part of that conversation is, did we want to stamp it as a women event? Because we do want our male counterparts to be there because if they're not there, then nothing's going to change, you know? And so I guess we've kind of come full circle and I think most important for us in this event is around that inclusivity, that diversity, people at all levels you know this hierarchical structures that we have that actually this event this is where the investors and developers go to this one is where the operations and marketing can go to and actually let's have an event where we can all learn from each other where we can all network we can network with people out of our sector in our sector in our departments out of our departments and Yeah, and really make it inclusive. As I say, we haven't got all that data back, so we're still waiting to hear from that. I think one thing that is becoming apparent from that, that whilst... I know sometimes we talk about a sector that, you know, we are rebalancing gender and that is a positive thing. I think diversity, we still have a massive issue in and I think that is coming through from the survey results that we've got already. And we're really trying to find that network really because that needs to change and that's wrong and we need to sort that out. So quite frankly, the results that we've had from the survey so far aren't going to help us because they're basically from white women, Asian And that's not going to give us the data that we need to be able to put on an inclusive event that takes the views of the sector. going to be kind of feeding the problem by putting on an event that's based on the views of a very specific part of the sector. So we'll keep you updated. Once we've got some meaningful data from it that we feel is representative of the sector, then we will, of course, share it. And whatever event that we decide to put on will be representative of those findings. We're not going to start putting events on as a regular thing, because there's loads and loads of organisations that do it brilliantly. But we did think, well, what if we could put put one event on that puts all the right people in the right room and then all of these brilliant organizations that lead the way in diversity and inclusion they can be there and you know our network can hopefully find those those groups what we did learn from talking to all of these brilliant and diversity and inclusive groups is they're very focused either on construction or real estate we did touch on this in the previous episode then they're not about not people from PBSA or university accommodation or BTR. They're not for asset managers and the development team. They are for everybody. But for some reason, they're massively underrepresented from the shared living sector, particularly kind of frontline operations people. And they were quite welcome to the conversation that we had to kind of draw that to their attention. But we would say is that anybody that's listening, that's looking to join an inclusive group, do approach these organisations because they are for you. And for whatever reason, our shared living sector hasn't felt like they are those people. So we hope to break those barriers down. with this mysterious event and these organisations. And the other thing that came out of that is that someone from one of these organisations did say that actually the residential shared living sector is behind where everyone is when it comes to those senior execs. We're still heavily white male across those senior executives. And And I think because we do see lots of women and we see lots of women probably across the business, we think we put ourselves in the back and we're doing a great job. But actually, when you sit back and look at these executive teams, yeah, we have a problem in many areas. So, yeah, as Sarah says, I think there's a lot that we're still trying to do and we need the network to help us do that as a sector. Yeah. Obviously, there's still a lot more we can and should be doing, really.

SPEAKER_01: 19:30

I think there's definitely an acceptance of that. And I think that the Property Week panel that Rebecca O'Hare commented on, where she was saying, look, we're all for inclusivity, but you're an entire panel of men. And it's the all-star panel. So it's the kind of panel that you want to be looking up to. And there were some very talented men up there. And they've been extremely successful for the most part. That's great. You've got a bit of an aspiration there, but you have to bring it in and make it more inclusive. There are so many women in good positions now that we should be championing and shouting about. And I know that Duncan from Empiric, who was effectively hosting and moderating that session, was saying, look, there is work to do, but this is what we're doing. And each of the panellists then said what they were doing as well. So there's definite progress being made, but we're still away from from where we need to be so yeah these any kind of events that are that going to be inclusive any kind of surveys where you're you know bringing in the data from from underrepresented areas i think that's that's absolutely key so again long may that continue

SPEAKER_00: 20:41

when we were in we were at the class conference in november and we were lucky enough to be asked to host networking events throughout the day and we hosted a women's breakfast and it was the most attended event of the day that we hosted and it was a real diverse mix of women in that that came together from you know all different parts of the sector at all different different levels and I think it was I think it was Soraya from from Nido who said you know the problem is leadership if you can't see it you can't be it and I think that's that's the difficulty is that you know talking about in inverted commas an all-star leadership panel there are senior women out there and somebody didn't look hard enough for them you know and that's that's the truth is that the the men in the senior positions are are louder and there's a tradition you know they're they're you know they're potentially you know repeat conference panelists so they're quite easy to pick off so you know they're there but I think the sector just needs to try a bit harder

SPEAKER_01: 21:41

without a doubt and I think that that's on every single person on a panel or whether they're hosting or moderating or helping to set things up, I think it's on us to champion that inclusivity as well. So making sure that there is good representation across as many areas as you possibly can, as many demographics, I think that's absolutely key. It can't just be that 60-year-old white guy in a boardroom. And I do think we're moving away from that, but we need to accelerate that for sure and bring about that change a lot

SPEAKER_00: 22:14

sooner. Well, it was to Rebecca's point, and that was her question at the Property Week conference, was how can you represent your tenant body if you're not a rep you know if your company doesn't represent them and that well as a lack of diversity in gender you know diversity in skin color and you know disability you know we we have asked in our in our survey about if anybody considered themselves to be neurodiverse or if anybody has a disability does anybody have any requirements regarding accessibility because that is the the the population you know and actually the shared living residential sector is not representing the population so how can they build how can they develop how can they understand the customer if they aren't representative of the customer and that's potentially where we see a lack of diversity in thought and evolution and innovation um it's got to come from the top completely agree still lots of work to do and so sarah this we've recently launched our latest youth forum research on marketing about how students engage with marketing and I think, you know, obviously we're marketers, it's our specialist subject and we found it fascinating. I think we found it surprising what we found. Yeah, I mean, with our youth forum, it's quite short, sharp surveys and then focus groups. And we just try and hit on kind of really current issues that can really help the sector develop and evolve. And we've been doing this for a couple of years, but we hadn't. done marketing yet. So we wanted to find out how students engage with content, what channels they use, how they search for accommodation. And we'll be releasing the full report and we have got soundbites available from those focus groups. But it's not as out there as you'd expect. Instagram still is the key channel that students engage with over TikTok. And even this morning, I've seen people talking about how popular TikTok is, but students still are enjoying using Instagram. I think the caveat to that is Gen Alpha, I think, will flip that. And TikTok will probably reign supreme over Instagram, but certainly for the moment it is. And another highlight is that need and want for user-generated content. They don't actually want to see beautifully dressed, posed pictures of rooms. They want to see how people are using them. And I guess the process that we're seeing is people Google search for student accommodation in X city. They'll then go to a website and it may well be a PBSA operators website. They'll then go to Instagram to look at what those rooms really look like and what the experience is like. And then they'll go to a forum to see what people are saying about that accommodation. And then they're looking at reviews to find out how that reflects. Once they've done all that, they might well be ready to book. So what we've learned is that it's massively important to be in all of those areas, but also as an operator to be monitoring what's going on in all of those areas. You know, how many operators are looking at what students are saying in the student room, for example. And if they are on student crowd, are they responding to the, you know, the reviews? Because, you know, that's a key part of customer service that students are really looking for. So yeah, they're looking for the real, they're looking for much less curated content. So yeah, that's that's the highlights really um but yeah do make sure that you look up the full report because it could really influence marketing in student accommodation and beyond

SPEAKER_01: 25:49

i saw that from gareth duffin this morning wasn't it talking about tiktok and incidentally gareth duffin's podcast know your shift is very focused on shared living pbsa and various other sectors too well worth a listen but yeah really interesting to see that he you know he's putting things out there on tiktok who knows maybe it's something that we'll try but i've also seen the likes of harris a sort of marketing pbsa buildings for sale using the likes of tiktok or taking a you know a very different approach to the sort of typical commercial sales agencies as well so yeah it's it's really fascinating to see how social media in particular is used through you know all the entire life cycle of a pbsa but but yeah i think it's always instagram will will stay for for quite some time i think but i'm sure the market share of tiktok will creep up. So that's going to pose a bit of a headache for some operators to create that video content and make sure it's engaging and not just your typical dull, like 360 of a room or whatever it might be. There's really good opportunities to be a bit more creative, a bit more innovative with your content. So some exciting marketing projects coming up, I'm sure. So that I think wraps up episode two for us. Thanks very much for listening. Let us know what topics you want us to cover. This is very much your podcast as much as it is ours. So we want to make sure there's plenty of engagement from all areas of the shared living sector. Do please get in touch. Do want to cover as much as possible. Thanks ever so much and we'll catch you soon for episode three.