What does student satisfaction look like in 2025?

In an increasingly competitive student market, understanding the drivers of student satisfaction has never been more important. This month, our Accommodation Matters podcast gets into what student satisfaction looks like in 2025.

Hosted by Jenny Shaw, our panel covers what satisfaction surveys tell us about student needs, the role of quality, wellbeing and value for money, and what might drive satisfaction for Generation Alpha when they arrive at university in a few years.

This month’s expert panel includes:

• Sarah Ead, Head of Insight at Global Student Living
• James Greenwood, Head of Residential Life at London School of Economics and Political Science
• Paul Watson, Group Operations Director at Unite Students

You can listen to the episode, or read the transcript, below.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of individual guest speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Unite Students and/or Unite Group plc. 

Episode transcript: What does student satisfaction look like in 2025?

Jenny Shaw: Hello and welcome to Accommodation Matters, where we talk about important and topical issues in student accommodation and the wider student experience. I’m Jenny Shaw, and today we’re talking about student satisfaction and how we measure it.

Student surveys are a very familiar part of the landscape in student accommodation. Both of the codes for student accommodation management require students to be surveyed, and we’re all used to doing it. But what does good practice look like? What’s our goal here? What really makes students happy?

To answer these questions and many more, we have as usual an expert panel.

Sarah Ead: Hi, I’m Sarah Ead. I’m Head of Insight at Global Student Living.

James Greenwood: Hi, I am James Greenwood. I’m Head of Residential Life at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Paul Watson: Hi, I’m Paul Watson. I’m the Group Operations Director at Unite Students.

Jenny Shaw: Brilliant. So let’s get straight into it. Sarah, can you set the scene for us just a bit of historical context really. So GSL has loads of data, loads of of data, so you can kind of look back on what’s been happening over the last few years. What have been the main drivers of student satisfaction during that time?

Sarah Ead: Well, yeah, as you say, we’ve got a wealth of data going back, I think, well 2008, so a long time. So I’ll briefly do a whistlestop tour of that. But yeah, I guess one thing to say really is, satisfaction has improved over time. Obviously it was impacted by Covid, which I’ll go into in a little bit more detail, but it’s worth saying as well that the importance of accommodation to students has never been more important in their decision. It’s no longer an afterthought. It’s part of the process and then that’s something we’ve seen in the data over the last 15 years I suppose.

I think looking back at 2008 to 2010, it was very much focused around price. Obviously students were relatively savvy about the condition and quality, but location was very much important and it was all about affordability. I think in 2012, obviously with the tuition fees reform, that was a bit of a turning point and we saw a shift in expectations and more discerning customers who were looking more for value for money, I suppose, as opposed to just affordability. So looking for that quality and just the overall experience rather than just the price.

I think in 2013 private halls took the leads, so we’ve always closely monitored ratings for private accommodation against university accommodation, and they were very much on a level playing field, but from 2013 onwards we saw private halls take over. I think there was more of a demand for ensuites and studio flats and things like that.

We actually saw of a trend towards less socialising and more about study. I think with the change in tuition fees, students were really wanting the most out of their money and really focusing on the study side of things. 2015 to 2016, I think WiFi and technology became a staple requirement for students. So WiFi had become 90% included in students’ rent by that point. So it was really a basic factor that students expected rather than something they had to pay more for.

Moving into 2017-2018, we saw wellbeing become in the spotlight and we added that to the set of questions that we asked students and we saw 8 out of 10 students saying that their accommodation impacted their wellbeing in some form, whether that was positive or negative – mostly positive, but in some cases negative. And if it did have a negative impact, it could really impact their overall university experience.

At the same time, we did see a bit of a decline in sense of community as well and saw this sort of trend towards privacy and students wanting their own space, and I remember doing a presentation before Covid about it and saying students wanted more privacy – well, boy, did they get that when Covid hit!

And then towards 2019 we saw this shift towards luxury and budget sort of a differentiation between the two I think. So students really making choices based on that really. And I think a willingness to upgrade from students as well, so students actually wanting to upgrade for things like better laundry facilities and better features in their accommodation.

And also we saw a massive impact on first choice. So whether a student had got their first-choice accommodation or not really impacted on their overall satisfaction. Funnily enough, that’s something that’s come up this year. We’ve seen booking and moving-in scores actually drop last year, and a lot of the verbatim comments that we were seeing were around students making a lot of effort to make their choices and then not actually getting the ones, even some cases the top five that they’d chosen.

Yeah, and then Covid hit and satisfaction dropped. University halls in particular were impacted, more so than private accommodation, but it had a huge impact obviously on satisfaction, especially the moving in experience, especially community. Communication took a massive hit as well.

But it has recovered and in fact, I think the sector’s learned massively from it as well, I think. We’ve seen absolutely huge improvements across the sector over the last five years. So satisfaction’s actually risen on average 2% every year for the last five years. So the sector’s working really hard and has definitely learned from Covid.

In particular, it’s been driven massively by improvements in softer measures, so management care and support, staff interactions, all those sort of things that really can enhance a student’s experience. Whereas before condition and quality was always the thing that drove satisfaction, it is now value for money always at the top. But I think what encompasses value for money is more than just affordability now – it’s management, it’s responsiveness to maintenance issues, it’s condition and quality of the buildings, it’s care and support from staff.

Jenny Shaw: That’s amazing.

Sarah Ead: Whistlestop tour!

Jenny Shaw: It’s like the history of student accommodation. It’s fantastic. It is like a journey through time.

Sarah Ead: A lot has happened, hasn’t it?

Jenny Shaw: It really has. It really has. And it is hard to get your mind into that place where we were 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

I just want to come to you, James, because you’ve been in the sector for quite a while. Is there anything you would add to that in terms of how things have changed within student accommodation over that time?

James Greenwood: Yeah, I mean some of those points that Sarah raised definitely resonate and there is definitely a difference there in terms of the experience across universities and PBSA student accommodation.

I definitely agree with the wellbeing aspect, that students demand and require more and more support. The needs and wants of students have changed over that period and external factors, whether that’s social media or others have really influenced student needs and wants around mental health and wellbeing. So I see that and I can see that over the past 10 years, almost year on year, there’s more of an increase in terms of that student requirement around their own wellbeing.

I do think that I started working this sector about 15 years ago and it was very much around really polished, shiny, beautiful gyms, facilities, et cetera, which some students still want, but actually the core bits that I’m seeing right now is that students want great/good quality accommodation. Location is a priority as close as possible to campus, which is safe, which is obviously clean, but price is the factor right now and everybody’s talking about price and I think that’s the piece. It’s location and price that are always our biggest challenge to try and hit.

Jenny Shaw: Yeah, absolutely. Paul, you’ve been in the sector for a few years now, and during your time at Unite Students, you have made quite a lot of changes to the way that student satisfaction is measured, I think brought it on quite a long way. Do you want to talk about what you’ve been doing and why?

Paul Watson: Yeah. So when I first joined student accommodation three years ago, I came from hospitality where I guess we were so laser-focused on the customer experience, and every day our customers would change. So it makes a lot of sense to measure that throughout the year.

For me, I came into student accommodation. I was quite surprised really with the level of focus that we placed at certain points of the year – in particular actually on check-in – which was when we really measured the student experience.

And there’s loads of great reasons for that, right? Check-in is incredibly important. How a student arrives. And James, to your point, the building looks like we said it should look, it’s clean, it’s tidy, it’s a really, really warm welcome. It’s really, really important for our teams, but it’s very much a moment in time. It’s almost a transaction and it’s not really what we can be measuring the rest of the experience on.

So we started to think about what does the rest of the year look, how does the student experience change? We did think about that and survey it, but again, quite internal looking and without really looking externally and benchmarking how well we were performing versus others.

So the other part to that was, if you are waiting only til autumn or to spring, you’re not sure how the experience is changing through that or actually other key moments for students every time they have a problem. How well did we handle that problem every time that they came into conversation with our teams? What was that interaction like? How did it feel for the student? How were they left? Did we take action on it?

So it became two points really for me, which was one, how do we measure those transactions that a student has throughout the year? How do we understand how well we’re dealing with problems, how well we’re handling complaints, how proactive are we? How much can we get to know students better to predict their needs rather than wait until things go wrong?

And then secondly, actually enter into a survey where we’re able to then understand how well are we performing versus others. We’re so internal looking, and sometimes thinking we’re doing a really good job, but actually there are areas we do brilliantly and areas that we perhaps can do better. The only way you get to know that is listening to your students, hearing what they have to say, and then making sure that we’re measuring that against competitors.

Whether that’s higher education partners, of which we have many and we’ve worked with brilliantly over the years, but we want to be able to demonstrate to them we’re doing a great job, as well as parents and the students themselves and really think about other PBSA providers and how well we’re doing it to them.

So that’s what we did. We entered in with GSL, which then allows us to get these really in-depth reports across all aspects of the student experience – both quantitative, so giving us a score against certain items, and also qualitative, telling us all about your experience so we can really get in depth data to be able to then support and make changes that is going to be beneficial to the student’s success over their stay with us.

Jenny Shaw: Just hearing you talk, Paul – you have to be prepared to be quite humble, don’t you? And to be quite humbled by what you might get back. You have to open yourself up to the actual feedback you get from students to be able to do this.

Paul Watson: I think so in some ways, when you are only measuring a check-in experience and a period of time, you’re celebrating that success with the teams and to your point, you’re not necessarily then hearing how that experience might change through the rest of the time. And it’s been a real learning for us. It’s been a real learning for our teams.

Jenny Shaw: Thanks, Paul. I’d like to just delve a little bit deeper into this idea of student satisfaction. We talk about satisfaction, satisfaction surveys, but the word itself is not a particularly strong one. It sounds a little bit standardised. It sounds like it might not be a very high bar just to make students satisfied.

James, I know that you set a very high bar for your residence life experience and you’ve got a very distinctive offer. So what does it mean to you as a university? What experience do you really want to give to your resident students and how does that fit in with your overall strategy as an institution?

James Greenwood: Yeah. Well, I mean, my background – Paul just mentioned about working in hospitality. My background before university is hospitality too. So with that, I’ve naturally got this drive of wanting to deliver really, really high service and satisfaction for our students, or sometimes we use the word customer.

But I work for the London School of Economics. We’re a data driven university. So the combination of that, that wanting to do the best in terms of the experience connected to data and driving data both from a student and a staff perspective, that’s within our DNA, it’s within the culture of the institution.

So we are very data obsessed. It’s really important for us year on year to know what’s happening, what our properties are doing, not just from hardcore facilities, but actually as you say, Jenny, the student experience, wellbeing, pastoral, what are we doing? And that’s not just rely on that one single satisfaction survey.

Let’s have lots of touchpoints throughout the year where we can measure that and be much more reactive. What I don’t like is waiting until the end of the year and then it’s too late, and then maybe you benefit the students in the following year, but actually there’s some great stuff we could do mid-cycle to quickly make some changes. So for me, that’s really important.

I do set really high expectations for our properties. So we always ask for at least 50% response rate in every property, and we achieve that. Some get up to 90% response rate. And what that means is that we have number one, a great sample size, but then when we break that down into say, more marginalised groups – what does it mean for trans students or neurodivergent students, those sample sizes are also really strong. So we’ve got solid data to work from, which is really important.

But then how do you use that data? And for me, it’s about having really, really clear action plans and every year working on what do they look like and how will we make some of that happen rather than just saying, “Yeah, we know the experiences of Black students are this, or the experiences of LGBTQ students are this” – what are you going to do to make that change? And what do you need from me? What can we provide to make some of that change? It’s really important.

So that’s really top of the agenda for me, is making sure that we actively act on things rather than maybe just talk about it. And universities can be slower. I’m not going to disguise that universities can be very slow to make decisions and make changes much slower than hospitality, PBSA and private accommodation.

Well, I’m more than happy to be open about that, but I think that we as universities have got to come together to kind of break that cycle and change some of that. So I’m quite passionate about those learnings from outside of universities and changing it all up a little bit and going against the grain.

Jenny Shaw: And what does that mean for the way that you staff your accommodation, the services that you provide? You’ve got a very distinctive particular offer. How do you make that work in practice?

James Greenwood: Yeah, I mean, I should go back to the university itself. I mean, we are a fairly unique university. More than 50% of our students are postgraduate students, so they’re much more mature students. The service they want is very different to the service. You see a typical standard university, and we definitely treat our students like young professionals, I would say.

And they’re, they’re not all sparkling brand new buildings. We do have some older stock and some more tired facilities, and I’ve just touched on this earlier, but they’re comfortable, they’re safe, we have great food. Catered halls is a big thing in student accommodation and for us on the university side, and we operate at about 90 to 95% satisfaction on the food. So it’s working and students want that.

And the other big thing for universities is that we’re able to provide that 24/7 specialist trained in-person support across our properties, which is hard and it’s challenging, but it’s very important. And I say as important as things like fire safety or safety on the street and the safety of the buildings.

So going back to your question around the staffing model, I’d say that I would say our current models aren’t correct. And I’d say Jenny, if I’m quite honest, they’re a bit out of date. And again, it’s a model that I’ve inherited and it’s a model that is very focused on how universities would’ve operated a long time ago – an Oxbridge model of wardens, et cetera. And that’s not sustainable for the future for sure.

But as a wider school and a wider university, we’re working on a much wider programme which we’re calling the Operational Excellence Programme. headed up by our president, who’s new to the university – he’s an American guy from Stanford.

And so what we’re really focusing on now is how do you reduce all of the unnecessary and time consuming tasks for our team so that they can really use that time and energy to focus on the really meaningful, productive and important things of their roles, the student facing things and community building support, student wellbeing, that might be a structural change. It could be a systems change and pulling back some of the layers that have been added on for many years.

So I’m really excited to be part of that. And then the other thing about the staffing structure is looking at: what other resource and tech have we got around to support us making some of those changes? And AI will be huge for us in the next few years as a university. We want to be a leading university for the positive use of AI. So most of our systems in accommodation are currently supported by AI in some way or another.

We talked about catered halls a bit earlier, and we use AI generally around food waste. We use some interesting technology that monitors all of the food waste on all of our properties. And that’s very interesting to see on a daily or an hourly basis what’s happening.

Ten we’re starting to now embed that AI within all of our student data and satisfaction information. So things like free text comments, there’s no point in my team spending hours, reading tens and tens of thousands of comments. AI can do that much quicker and tell a quicker story for us. I’m really excited about that.

There will be some changes and we do need to look at those staffing models for sure, and I’ll be really open and transparent about that. It’s not private information. The teams know and they support all of this change.

Jenny Shaw: Yeah, thanks James. It’s really interesting to hear you talk about AI, because I think a lot of people are talking about it in the sector, but I’ve also been struck by how much each of you have talked about the emotional maturity in the sector over time and how we are looking now to meet more emotional psychological needs of students. So I’m wondering if it might be that AI takes away some of the routine stuff, allowing staff to focus on that side of things.

Paul, I’m going to come to you now. It’s a similar question. You have set out some very bold ambitions about the student experience that you want to deliver, and I think it does lean into this sort of emotional maturity factor. Can you talk through what you are attempting to do and why?

Paul Watson: Yeah. I think it all goes back to why I joined Unite Students and it’s a purpose-driven business. We talk about creating a Home for Success for our students, and it really calls to me and gives me a real sense of purpose. The brilliant thing about anyone that works for Unite Students is you soon get a sense of that and whether you joined to deliver that purpose or not in the first instance, you soon really start to buy into it.

So I think we are really lucky to have that through our core in the first place. What I really want to do, what I really think about all the time is how do we turn the buildings we have into places that our residents call home? And that is what drives us. That’s what gets us on. So we have to think about what it is that the students actually want from us, from their building and from us as a service delivery team.

And we think about that in three ways. First and foremost, we have to deliver the brilliant basics. We have to get things right from the outset. Secondly, we need to drive a sense of togetherness and as people call it community, but I think overall, you are part of a community. Everything’s put together as a community. But actually, how do you create a feeling, a sense of togetherness, both the students themselves, but also us and students and how we work together within the building? Well actually, how we work within their homes, more importantly.

And then finally, it’s about being there if the student needs us. And that is a really critical part of what we talk about because actually we talk about and we focus a lot on the students that need our support and our care, and there are those students, but actually there are an awful lot more students who would prefer it if they didn’t ever see us in their home.

That brilliant basics is such a core part of what we do. If we don’t get that right, then nothing else really follows. So how do we ensure that the building is always safe, warm, and dry for the students? How do we ensure everything is as they expect it to be, based on what they were sold? Does their room look like the showroom, do we deliver that consistently? So everything has to work as it should, and that’s the brilliant basics and we have to get those right, absolutely every time without exception.

And then that togetherness piece really becomes about enabling the students to live independently, getting the information that they want that will benefit them in the way that they choose to, not how we force it onto them. So coming at them and speaking them through multiple channels, whether that’s about being there in person or through posters or on an app or via email.

But we have to meet the students really on their terms and provide the information that they want when they want it, and we’ll have to provide them the opportunities to build their own community and to be themselves in their homes. And that means having a space where they feel truly safe, their bedroom, hopefully the flats with whom they live in close proximity, but also brilliant amenity spaces to support their studies and also to really drive that social engagement.

And then as I say, the final piece is always being there when they need somebody. So when they need help, there’s always someone there to assist them to solve the problem. And so we moved to 24/7, 365 day a week staffing model about two and a half years ago, which was a big change for us.

What it has meant is we don’t necessarily want to have people in reception all the time, and we’re moving to welcome hubs because we’ve set that expectation with receptions by putting a reception there. You are telling people, someone always be sat here – but that’s not necessarily what our students want. But they do want a presence. They want to feel our presence. They want to know that we’re there and they want to know that we’re going to be there to help whenever they want us.

And if we can achieve all those Jen, we feel that we’ll be delivering a brilliant experience, but actually that’s what every student should experience in my opinion.

So actually the really core part of all of this is the accommodation has to provide value and services that support their success in the way that other accommodation can’t for us to stand out. What are those additional key drivers that a student is looking for that’s really going to add value to their stay?

Jenny Shaw: Thanks, Paul. Really, really like your ambition for all of this. But here’s a killer question for you. How will you know that you’ve succeeded?

Paul Watson: I think it’s a really great question. Obviously we have GSL, so we’re able to look at the competition and benchmark our scores and we want to win. As Unite Students, we want to be delivering a brilliant experience to all our students, and that’s really when we know we’re winning. We want people to choose to want to live with us, not to live with us just because we’re present in the city.

And it’s that point, where students are looking at us and they are wanting to live in a particular building because it’s got Unite Students over the door, because they know they’re going to feel safe. They know everything’s going to work, they know they’re going to be part of a brilliant community, and they know that something should happen when they’re at university or within the accommodation, that we are there for them to support them.

That’s when we know where we are winning because they know what we stand for and they choose to live with us to experience that.

Jenny Shaw: Yeah.

So I’m going to ask the next question to all of you, but Sarah, I’m going to start with you. It is about generational change. So I think we’re all very comfortable with Gen Z and what they need, but soon we’re going to have a new generation coming through. Now my kids tell me that this is a very different generation, Gen Alpha. What are they going to want from their student accommodation? How will things change?

Sarah Ead: Well, I also have four Generation Alphas in my house. We’ve just moved house and we didn’t have internet for over a week and they could not cope. So yeah, I think my youngest is four and he’s been embedded in digital from the moment he was probably born. So I think they want seamless technology, fast, integrated into their way of life, I think.

I think as well, a lot of the younger people I see love creating content as well as consuming it. And I think any opportunity to build spaces where students can create, collaborate, connect with each other, I think will be really important.

Even just getting them involved in the survey that we run, we’ve started to do that. Students can upload a video rather than writing a free text comment. We give them feedback as well and say, based on your results, this is similar to what other people are saying, and we personalise the experience.

And I think students want to feel a personal touch as well. I think they’re used to having that personal experience on their phones based on this, we think that you would like this, for example. You see it all the time on Netflix or any platform or YouTube algorithms that tell them things that they think they would like based on their behaviour. I think that’s definitely somewhere that probably things will move.

I think sustainability and recycling will become more important. I’m asked all the time, mommy, what should I do with this? Is this recycling? Is this not? And I think it’s part of their lives, it’s part of their education as well. I think that will become more important than it is now.

I think they’re more health conscious, fewer are drinking. I’ve seen loads of research about the numbers of students that are now using alcohol, and I think having those amenities that support that and yeah, just the balance between privacy and community.

I think like Paul was saying about the visibility of staff, I think staff are absolutely crucial to the success of an experience. I think gone are the days of security like manning the sites and it’s more discreet and students will expect that.

Communities, I think – we are moving away slightly from that in GSL. We tend to talk about belonging more now than community because I think students want to feel seen. They want to feel included, they want to feel supported, that they also want that opportunity to tap out should they want to as well, and have their own space.

And mental health and wellbeing support as well. I think they expect it now. It’s ingrained in school life and it’s part of enrichment programmes in secondary schools. And diversity as well is a norm almost for students. That’s my take on it, anyway.

Jenny Shaw: Thanks, Sarah. That’s really great. That’s a great prediction for the future. Paul, what are your thoughts?

Paul Watson: I think certainly we know students are hugely digitally savvy that that is coming out in everything they’re doing. I do look to the future and we see the students want choice. They want to be able to really understand and choose. I do wonder how far that choice will go in terms of choosing who they want to live with, rather just choosing the building they’re going to.

Within all of that, we are building pictures and I think Gen Alpha are very used to being under scrutiny and their parents are watching their every move on Apple phones and they’re seeing them come home and what time they’re arriving home through Ring doorbells, et cetera. And they’re used to that. They’re used to being under that level of scrutiny, but they’re also therefore used to having a picture built up around them and therefore service being personalised towards their needs.

And so I think we need to be far quicker, far more predictive in what the student is likely to want to have and really change and be a bit more flexible in the service delivery that we offer to become a bit more personalised towards every individual.

And we see that in the feedback when I’m looking at our responses, but they talk a lot about kitchen cleanliness, a need for more storage, and ultimately that comes down to flat disputes and wanting to live with the people that are like them and they’re going to behave and operate in the same way. They want more communal spaces.

They want more control of their own environments too. So within their bedroom, they want to control the lighting, they want access to plugs so they can personalise spaces. They want to be able to control the heating. And so I just think those expectations are changing.

Jenny Shaw: Thanks, Paul. Yeah, it is an interesting one about wanting to live with people similar to them. I see that come out quite a lot in research in terms of particularly marginalised or disadvantaged students feeling, “I want just that safe place to start me off,” but it’s then also offering those opportunities to branch out once they feel comfortable. Otherwise, you get a lot of little different sort of groups who don’t mix very well. So it’s a challenging one.

James, what are your thoughts on this subject?

James Greenwood: Yeah, I mean, just going on that I think we’ll potentially see more and more universities and maybe even the private world creating those opportunities where communities can be more connected, whether we have set areas of buildings that are safe spaces for certain communities, that would be interesting. And some universities have done that really well actually. So that’d be interesting.

But I think Gen A definitely have a much heightened sense of responsibility, I’d say around social issues and the wider environment. And I think it’s a bit deeper than just thinking about sustainability and recycling.

It’s way more than that. It’s thinking about how do we as universities and accommodation providers create and provide programmes where there’s opportunities for students maybe to support local areas or share their talents wider. They’ve got some great skills right on the doorsteps of some fantastic communities. How can we provide mentoring programmes potentially and go out and support enterprise in the local area?

I think that would just be absolutely wonderful. And there’s a shared benefit there, both for the students but also the local community.

I do think we need to think about shared rooms. It comes up quite a lot and it isn’t as discussed in PBSA world, and I think given budgets are getting tighter and tighter for students, are the next generation more comfortable with that maybe? And it’s something to look at.

I think another big thing I tend to see in here is students want more and more understanding of other cultures and backgrounds, and they want that to be much deeper. So, being given those opportunities for students to come together and learn from each other.

Sarah touched on this, but the gig economy is growing and growing and growing, and I think students will want those opportunities to pick up a bit of freelance digital work, maybe a bit of influencer work or even some online teaching, going back to that skillset piece. So, do our spaces and our residencies provide that space both to live and potentially work? They could almost do a full on career from the residence where they live. Are we providing that opportunity?

And actually a lot of, I think maybe in universities, our contracts are so tight, they say you can’t run a business from the student accommodation. So do we need to change those contracts legally to allow that to happen for the students?

The other thing that I think might be on the horizon is just thinking about the development of young people right now. And so you’ve talked about your young kids, your four young kids, and what they’re potentially being exposed to. Some parents are very protective out there right now. It’s fantastic people, but actually we can’t protect every child from seeing or not seeing everything. And we saw that recently with the Adolescence series on Netflix.

And so what demands will back bring for the next generation? I think we need to really start thinking about and building that into our wellbeing and mental health programmes around how do we support some of that learning from a young age potentially. And that’s really deep, but it’s really, really important, I think.

Jenny Shaw: Brilliant. Thanks James. Some great ideas there. And definitely I think if we’ve got a whole generation of content creators, let’s harness that and let’s give them that opportunity. Of course, the flip side is there’s no way to hide. If something goes wrong, everyone’s going to know about it. So we’re going to be under a lot of scrutiny, but I think probably that’s quite a good thing.

We’re coming towards the end of the show now. I’m going to ask each of you for a top tip. So based on your knowledge and your experience, what is just one small thing that accommodation teams could do that would make a difference to students? James, can I start with you?

James Greenwood: Sure. I’ve just come back from the ASRA conference and a big learning for me – and I spoke to a lot of students who are at the conference, which was great, and there’s a few international students – they were talking about not being prepared for their arrival in the UK, and a lot of it was due to weather and how cold it is around.

We actually think September when students arrive, it’s going to be lovely and warm. It isn’t. It’s usually quite cold in the UK around that time, and it’s getting colder and colder. So my advice would be around those pre-arrival communications. What information do we send to students before they get here to make it really clear on what it’s going to be like?

And Paul touched on service and standards, and I think that connects around: what room have we signed them up for? What the expectations around that too, and making it very clear what they’ve signed up to, but it’s wider than that. It’s about the living environment, both in the building and wider and simple things like make sure you pack plenty of different clothes for different environments and layering is very, very important.

So I know it’s very basic, but it would make a huge impact for students to really understand that, especially if they’ve never stepped foot in the UK before.

Jenny Shaw: That’s a great one. Thanks James. Paul, what’s your topic?

Paul Watson: That’s a great one, James, that keeping on the simplicity theme for me, it’s the basics. So I had the pleasure recently of doing a bit of a UK tour talking to our Resident Ambassadors, and they’re so full of great information. They live as part of those communities and they have so much information to share. So listening to those individuals.

But I think one of the things that we have done on Unite Students that’s made a really big impact as we have a programme called ‘In your name’, and that’s quite simply getting to know a student’s name and using it at every opportunity because there’s so much value in that. We mentioned it before, but that gives a student a sense of belonging, that sense of being seen. It’s just a really simple but very critical part of someone feeling that they belong to our buildings and feeling they’re at home that they’d known.

And the only way we can achieve that is by getting our teams out in front and proactively saying hi to the students, using their name, asking how they are so they can speak and hear and listen to the students and take action on what they’re told. So my view will always be just get out in front, use the students’ names and help them feel like they belong.

Jenny Shaw: That’s a really nice one, I think just makes students feel like they’re at home when they first go away from home. Sarah, what’s your tip?

Sarah Ead: I guess I’m coming at it from a slightly different angle, but just based on the data, I guess get to know your residents from all your data and understand what they really want. Design your programme around that. Personal touches, I think, really work.

And also, this is a side point, but valuing staff. I think good quality staff really drive a strong experience for students. So just keeping the good ones and really trying to give them the credit they deserve, basically. That’s kind of why we started the Accommodation Heroes that we do every month. Just really highlighting the value that one individual can have on a person’s experience and even sometimes their life. So I think, yeah, that would be another tip.

Jenny Shaw: So important, isn’t it? I mean, the really good staff with really good emotional intelligence make such a difference. Such a difference, don’t they?

So that’s a wrap. That’s it. Thank you to all of my guests today. You’ve been a brilliant panel. Thank you to Jen Steadman and Ed Palmer who make this podcast happen. And thank you to you for listening. Do give us feedback on the show. What would you like to hear more of or less of? If you’ve got an idea for a show, just let us know.

We’ll be back next month with a brand new episode, and it’s all about the buildings. But in the meantime, take care of yourselves and, of course, your students.