This week on Episode 7 of Putting the Human back into technology podcast we speak with Ben Morris, the Head of Information Technology for National Residential Landlords Association You can check out their website here https://www.nrla.org.uk/

We know that landlords, along with many other groups in society have found it tough during the last year or so and it was interesting to chat with Ben to understand how the NRLA were able to help and support their members during this time.

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Key Takeaways

It was interesting talking to Ben some of the key takeaways are:

• You don’t need a degree to work in IT
• Big change was possible even at the start of the pandemic
• Lockdown has driven an improvement in staff technical skills
• Technology was key in helping the NRLA through the pandemic

Previous PHIT Podcast Episodes

You can view previous episodes here:

• Episode 1 – Special Guest Mark Williams
• Episode 2 – Special Guest Simon Jones
• Episode 3 – Special Guest David Rawle
• Episode 4 – Special Guest Ben Kite
• Episode 5 – Microsoft Build Edition
• Episode 6 – Special Guests Simon Grosse and Liz Rogers

You can read the transcript of Ben’s interview here

Tell me a little about what you do, your business, job role?

Benjamin Morris  

Yeah, sure, sure. So I’m the head of IT for the National Residential Landlords Association, one of the largest landlord associations in the country. We’ve got 70,000 plus landlords and growing, and we represent landlords at Westminster. We have a Landlord Advice Service. We do Landlord accreditation training services. We also have an excellent third-party network that is growing due to our recently released partner scheme. We’ve got relations with insurance companies, credit checks, and a whole host of other third party services.

In my role, I’m in charge of the infrastructure and service support team. I also manage the ongoing maintenance of our web systems, eCommerce systems, CRM. We have been growing. The IT department’s doubled in size in the last year, which shows that the company’s undoubtedly supportive of the IT function and its value in the NRLA.

Has technology become a key driver for your business?

Benjamin Morris  

I think a lot of businesses have appreciated that in the last 12 months. The need to have technology at the forefront of our business and our IT is at the forefront of our business because, you know, most of our revenues are driven over IT systems. The vast majority of it is all from core-based IT systems, whether it be the website or the phone system. So if IT isn’t good, if IT isn’t good quality and providing valuable service for both colleagues and our members, then you know that those revenue streams will be less productive. So we’ve been very much putting IT at the forefront of the business.

How has the last year impacted your business?

Benjamin Morris  

Well, you know, in terms of the business, we’ve done quite well, during the last 12 months, we’ve probably brought on about 20-25 new employees into the business, which, considering so many businesses, sadly are no longer around and, and a lot of companies shut up shop in terms of hiring, it’s just shown how well the company has weathered the pandemic. The IT department has increased and I’ve got a new member of the IT department joining in the infrastructure team on Monday.

So while you know that there have been challenges, certainly a major challenge was the business was predominantly in the office working model before the pandemic and almost overnight, the IT team had to transition the business to a predominance of pretty much everybody working from home. And at the first stage, it was everybody working from home. We’ve only just started in limited quantities returning to Office-based work, but no, we had a drastic change in the model. I mean, thankfully, the business invested in IT over the last, especially two or three years. We did a major IT overhaul in 2019, a year after I joined the business, where we invested heavily in our infrastructure across the board introduced new data centres, new hosting platforms, and a new telephony system. And the versatility that provided the business played a massive part in its ability to transition and whether they’re very challenging time but the last 12 months.

Was there a surge in people looking to make use of your services?

Benjamin Morris  

Well, yeah, you may make a valid point. You know, we have seen a noticeable increase in our main contact centre lines. A large portion of our hiring over the last 12 months has been in the contact centre to cope with the additional traffic that’s going through. It has been an incredibly challenging 12 months for everybody, and it continues to be an incredibly challenging time for landlords. You know, we’ve had a lot of government policy changes, we’ve seen a lot of effects on landlords ability to obtain rent from their tenants due to court closures and other government policies, which has been around for the last 12 months. Landlords require our services, especially our advice services, because they encounter many challenging circumstances with the tenants. We have had a noticeable jump in our services which is good, but at the same time, we need to make sure that we are supporting our members through what continues to be an extremely challenging period for the private rental centre.

How do “people” fit into your IT departments/business delivery model?

Benjamin Morris  

In terms of a culture in the IT department I’d say it’s a very enjoyable, casual feeling in the department. People report to me – I’m very much a work hard play ER type of person. I want to people to enjoy working for me and working for the company. And but at the same time, I want people to perform. I need people to support me and support me and my performance and obviously for me to perform for myself. So you know, in terms of a culture of in the IT department, we want hard-working people. Firstly we want quality people that can provide value as that is distinctly important in a business such as ours, which is a not for profit organization. Value is a very frequent measurement of success. So we need people that fit into that type of culture. You know, while we talk to each other in a very jovial manner, we are, have a nice culture in terms of being relaxed and casual, but at the same time, people know how to get on the job. Success will be measured by getting the job done.

How did you support people with their mental health during the pandemic?

Benjamin Morris  

So I’ll answer that question from a general business part first before answering the technical part of that response.

Our business has made a real effort to realize and identify that this has been especially taxing on people’s mental health working from home. Some people work well in it. Some people don’t. And the company has implemented several policies and procedures and ways of working such as regular check-ins from managers. I know I call the people in my team regularly, sometimes every day, sometimes a few times a week, but I check in to make sure their mental health and have them as the people are okay. And I believe that it’s happening in all areas of our business.

Our HR departments worked well and hard on this front. We’ve implemented workshops for mental health discussions and trying to, you know, empower and help people to think that, you know, they aren’t  all alone. You know, we have a wide-ranging of people in our organization where people have families, have single people, and live by themselves, who feel quite isolated. So, you know, from a cultural perspective, we’ve had to go hard on this, because it has been noticeable that, you know, some we’ve had people that have struggled, but we’ve tried to in my information and knowledge, really engage with our colleagues to ensure that they’re okay, as well as we can do that which has been good of the business to do that.

In terms of technology services, I think the one platform that we’ve had to, we were using before the pandemic. Still, one platform that we found utterly invaluable during the last 12 months, Microsoft Teams, your ability to do video calls, voice calls, chats, and increase that interaction between colleagues has been critical in our ability to get through the last year well as we have. Using technology platforms like Microsoft Teams has been a great boon in giving people an ability to express themselves and give and receive valuable communication, which, you know, not just from a mental health perspective but a general business communication perspective.

Do you think users have grown in their confidence in using technology?

Benjamin Morris  

I think they have to be honest. You know, it was quite a challenging time, 12 months ago, because we had people working in new ways, working on new systems. So, from an IT perspective, there was a huge amount of change 12 months ago, because the actual NRA merged, actually began as a business a year ago, it merged from two previous organizations, the Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association, came to want to join as one combined, merged organization. So we had that a year ago that merger took place on the first of April.

Literally a week after the first lockdown, we merged, so we had a new website, we had a new CRM, we had everybody on new laptops because most of them were on desktops in the office. So we had to provide our entire contact centre with laptops. Nobody in the contact centre had a laptop. We had about two weeks to do that transition in terms of a desktop to a laptop. So had all that change and the pandemic and new IT systems all into one. So the fact that we got through that is well, this is a great pat on the back for the IT. And for our users.

We have obviously had, you know, it wasn’t all singing and dancing, we had a lot of challenges, a lot of education. And to be honest, we still have a lot of education. I get regular requests for staff, colleague training. And we’re actually going to be looking to improve our services on that front in the IT team in the next few months to increase our colleague’s IT knowledge. So I mean, from where we were, say 15 months ago, 16 months ago, we started the pandemic to where we are right now, you can see that a noticeable increase in colleague confidence and competence with their IT systems because you can see it in the ticket numbers. You know, there’s been a reduction in our ticket numbers purely based on the fact that people have become more familiar and more confident with the tools that they’re now using.

How do you drive value from data /technology for your business? Are you on a cloud journey – which Cloud? And are you there yet?

Benjamin Morris  

So we are currently in hybrid cloud space, we have some systems which are not cloud-based, and some that are, the business has made a decision that it wants to go to a full or as much as possible cloud setup. So we have a number of project streams on at the moment to look at our current infrastructure and how we go about that. The systems that we’re having in place at the moment in the company are basically based on the point that we were predominantly a work from office business. So the architecture is set up to make that as efficient and as expedient, and as high performance as possible. And so, the architecture that was put in place in 2019 during the IT refresh is geared around that type of strategy.

Obviously, the strategy is a massive change since then. So you know we are on the road to full Cloud, and we hope to be there in the next 12 to 18 months. There’s going to be a lot of challenges in that because it’s not as simple as switching a bunch of virtualized infrastructure in the public Cloud. I think the big challenge will be migrating our colleagues and ensuring our member’s data secure. Those are probably the two biggest challenges about those types of that type of project. But we are very much we are part of that journey in terms of where we currently are. And we are looking and are in the middle of making a full journey to cloud systems likely to be very Microsoft based as we currently are. We want to provide greater versatility to our colleagues, is that something that’s been very apparent in the last 12 months that you know, we are working in a manner which the current architecture is not perfectly suited to, and we need to move to an architecture that is more suited to whatever the norm may end up being, which is still obviously very much open for debate at the moment, or what, where we actually land on that real norm in terms of operating versus work from home to in the office.

Who do you think should be driving an organizations adoption of digital transformation?

Benjamin Morris  

Well, we’ve appointed a Chief Technology Officer, to the business in the last six months, actually just before Christmas, and he represents the IT function and the technology function at a board level. So you know, he’s a key player in that digital transformation. And he has some really good plans for the company.  He’s quite a democratic character and wants to engage as much as possible with not just the IT department, but our colleagues overall. In terms of engaging what that digital project is, we are very much a data-driven business, which is really good to see. You know, we are very big on the analysis of data and how that can help make our business decisions more intelligent. I think that’s only a good thing that we think more like that and make sure that we are using making the best use of our data and business intelligence in order to strengthen our business strategy and on our investments, especially in digital products, and we are engaging some new work streams in the next year. One of those will be we’re going to be doing a bit of diversification of the business into property technology, which we currently haven’t done, where we’re looking at a property portfolio system, which we will soon be announcing to the market. With that, and you know, we’re very much engaging the continued process of digital transformation and development.

Is that some kind of service you are going to offer?

Benjamin Morris  

yeah. And I and you know, I’ve been saying this to the organization for the three and a half years that I’ve been here, and thankfully the new NRA board are very much for that type of thing. There’s a space there for us to become, to really drive an increased portfolio of offerings to our members and non-members. You know, while we want people to come members and of the organization, and we have a very passionate set of colleagues about the private rental sector and, and landlords in general and want to provide services, which know empower landlords to be better landlords, and make landlords lives easier. And as we discussed earlier, in a very, very challenging market space.

What advice would you give your younger self or those starting out or changing their career into the IT industry?

Benjamin Morris  

Oh, maybe at a good thing about this, obviously, because, you know, you kind of send me the questions earlier in the week. I’ve got quite a controversial opinion on this one. Businesses are and probably should be, becoming less focused on whether somebody has a degree or not. There was a time when you know, on, especially more junior positions, people were basically saying, you know, on the job application, do you have a degree? I see that less and less now. And I agree with that. Because when I add but the irony is everybody in the IT department, or the NRA has a degree. Yeah. So when I say this, but you know, I personally feel that if I was a somebody starting out in it, or wanted to get into it, that I would focus on getting industry accreditation, whether it be music, Cisco ITIL, you know, there’s so many out there, but I personally feel from a hiring manager perspective, I will be looking at what qualifications and experience but how some of these people started out, obviously don’t have that experience. But I would look at those two things more than I would look at, say, Oh, this person has or hasn’t got a degree.

And also, a big thing in the IT Industry is the ability to learn and willingness to learn. Yeah, I’ve been in it now for almost 20 years. And I am far from perfect. I’ve always got something new to learn. And I’m always very open to learning new skills and knowledge. And I would say that anyone starting out needs to be very open-minded and very willing to learn. It’s important to learn not just technical skills but personal skills as well. Which I think is a major challenge for some IT professionals, with the greatest respect to some that they don’t have personal skills or great personal skills. So when we’ve had challenges, some more junior staff that have had personal skill issues, and we’ve engaged an upskilling process to help them overcome those challenges.

Do you think “UK plc” should be more encouraging short internships to allow young people to get experience?

Benjamin Morris  

Well, personally, I think, you know, everyone needs a chance in life. To know, to get on, people need opportunities to do that. And However, on the flip side, security has to be a play an important role in the IT world because our level of access, for example, on the NRLA, is network admin, so a lot of trust is placed in me and everyone in the IT department. I would like to see more opportunities such as that. However, it’s quite a difficult balancing act, because, you know, for me personally, training someone or putting time into somebody, and then them disappearing and then restarting over, IT will personally have an effect on my colleagues and me as we’re engaging, putting effort into that type of person or coming in, and then they go again, and you start again, off after the restart, that would be extremely difficult for us, because, you know, we’ve got our own jobs on our own responsibilities and our own targets. However, I do think that, you know, those types of internships and apprenticeships are our key way forward for especially right here right now, where there’s got such issues for the younger generations and the post-grad generations finding work at the moment.

Do you need a degree to work in IT?

Benjamin Morris  

No. I remember 20 years ago when I graduated from University, pretty much every single job advert asked, do you have an art degree? You don’t see it so much anymore.

Tell me a fun fact about yourself that perhaps nobody else knows about you?

Benjamin Morris  

So I alternated between a couple of fun facts. One is I’m actually trained in psychology to quite a high level, which is a bit of a random fact. So I’m not just an IT person. I’m a psychologist as well.

Had I not been IT, I would have probably liked to have been an archaeologist. So I’ve got a huge passion for history and a great affinity for history. I think that had not done IT that I would have liked to have gone into some kind of geology or archaeologist type role in my life. I would love to work on a dig, digging up fields and dig sites.