In conversation with Becca Hayhurst, Head of Resident Experience

We caught up with Becca Hayhurst, our Head of Resident Experience, about her highlights and priorities for the year.

Q: In your role, you oversee the residential experience we provide to residents as well as our sector-leading welfare provision. How do the two intersect?

A: Our customer service principles CARE – which stands for ‘Connect, Act, Respect, Encourage’ – play a really important role in wellbeing. By getting that service right, you’re creating an environment where a resident is more likely to tell one of our employees if they’re having a difficult time.

We also have a network of Resident Ambassadors who are in most of our buildings, helping to run events, provide peer support and being paid Real Living Wage for their time. The events they run build residents’ sense of belonging and reduce social isolation, which benefits their mental wellbeing.

What have been some of your highlights from this academic year?

We take part in the Global Student Living Index, where residents tell us what they think of their accommodation experience, and our growing scores for care and support have been a real highlight. It reassures us that what we’re doing is working. It’s not just the scores themselves, it’s seeing what our residents are saying about us – “I feel like a member of a community”, “I feel cared for”, “I know my Resident Ambassador and they’re brilliant”. These are the things that drive us.

We’re continuing to embed the Resident Ambassador programme consistently across the country – where we’re doing it brilliantly, our residents, Ambassadors and teams are all happy.

What are some of your priorities for the rest of 2025?

We saw in the 2024 Applicant Index that applicants were less confident in their independent living skills, like signing up to a GP or navigating difficult conversations with flatmates, than the previous cohort. So, there’s a gap before students have even moved into their accommodation in terms of being prepared to live independently, and this has come through as a rise in low-level wellbeing and conduct issues.

So, we’re developing a piece called Prepare to Stay to support the transition to university, which will build on our existing pre-arrival communications and six-week welcome programme to help residents settle in quicker. It’s an offshoot of Support to Stay, our overarching framework for managing wellbeing and conduct cases.

At the moment, we’re also rolling out a new customer relationship management (CRM) system which will give us a full 360 view of a resident and their time living with us. This will help us with case management and seeing all the touchpoints we’ve had with a resident, including maintenance requests and noise complaints, to give us the full context of a wellbeing or conduct issue, for example.

We’d like to collaborate more with our Higher Education partners too, particularly around data sharing agreements and training. What are they doing brilliantly that we can mirror, and what are we doing that we can share with them?

How important is it to provide 24/7 touchpoints for support in student accommodation?

It’s crucial. Whether it’s 3am or 3pm, we’ve got staff in our buildings who are there with procedures in place to support residents, and a service with a professional counsellor at the end of the phone or on the other end of a live chat through our Health Assured student assistance programme.

We’re seeing increasing numbers of students being diagnosed with mental health conditions both before they come to university and when they’re there. A resident might not be getting what they need through their GP and there are sometimes waiting lists for university support services. These services fill a gap without treading on anyone’s toes.

You can read more about our student support and resident experience approach for 2024/25, and listen to Becca on our latest episode of Accommodation Matters on compassion – student wellbeing’s latest buzzword: