Living & Learning: The Future of Home According to Gen Z - THE LEGACY
As The Property Marketing Strategists move through a series of research pillars, our latest webinar - focused on our five research pillars as whole - reviews data collected from our Living and Learning survey.
Gen Z is already disrupting worldwide views and movements. As they move into the student population and working world, we can expect to see great change influenced by their values, beliefs and expectations.
In this final, concluding webinar, we wanted to take some time to reflect on all of the research carried out over the past year, and the key points highlighted from our findings.
We discussed some of the most pertinent topics to come from our research findings and how they can be implemented practically into the student living experience, for the benefit of providers and the students themselves.
Our expert panel for this webinar included Sarah Canning and Deenie Lee who were joined by; Jon Wakeford of UPP, Mike Adams of UCAS, Kevin Brady of Apudos, Carrie Scrivener-Leask of Dataloft, Greg Hutley of Dig-in, Caterina Maiolini of Co-Liv, and Benjamin Hall of Loft.
Zafar Bhunnoo hosted the webinar, and kickstarted the discussion with one of the most fundamental topics of discussion: community.
‘Community’ - where people come together, and overcome feelings of isolation was one of the key outcomes of the surveys that seemed crucial to the success of PBSA model. As Zafar pointed out, the community aspect really encourages “residents' stickiness, a reduction in costly void periods, and turning that net to gross leakage into something positive; it's important to try and understand that it's absolutely fundamental.”
Cate further defined what community means within this model. “Community for me is an ensemble of like-minded people who spend time together and want to do something together. So if you’re talking about students, they want to feel like they belong.”
Expanding on this opening point, Cate spoke about the importance of the shared kitchen facility, and how food can be essential in bringing everyone together. The research pointed to Gen Z wanting to eat together, not necessarily cook together. A feeling of belonging and community is especially important to young adults who are having their first experience of independence.
Cate: “What really struck me is that the younger students were more inclined to prefer a sense of community, whereas the older students preferred some time alone.” These nuances are important to note when dissecting the research and are something we will refer back to later.
Greg spoke about community curation, and how Dig-in tries to bring students together using an on-boarding process including welcoming boxes and physical items such as board games. “These acted as ice-breakers.”
This highlights the importance of operators facilitating those initial introductions, where students may not feel confident enough in approaching others straight away. There are many mechanisms that providers can use to facilities that, and kickstart the feeling of a community.
In PBSA, this varies across properties and often sits on the shoulders of the building managers. So according to the splits, who craves community curation the most?
“Future students have higher expectations than those in second and third year.” explains Greg. “As a student settles in, they develop their own friendship groups outside of the property. Which could explain that change across the data splits.”
Mike Adams went on to explain the result of some of UCAS’ findings around ‘community’. “Every town and every student is different but they are looking to establish their new support network in a town they don’t know. They generally do this early on in the cycle and after that stage in the first year they will venture out into the wider community from communal living to independent living, forming their own social groups.”
Mike pointed out the interesting change in perceptions and expectations following the cost of living crisis: “68% of the students we surveyed have lowered their expectations of the type of experience they’re going to have because of the cost of living crisis. The cost of living crisis is also having an impact on how much they rely on their accommodation to support them through this. 70% have indicated they will cut back on anything extra curricular.”
Zahar asked the panel about the juxtaposition between the cost of living crisis and the sense of community: “Many of the respondents actually found that shopping at local shops, restaurants, working in cafes, actually helped them feel connected to the community. Where do you think the solution lies?”
Jon answered with some interesting insights. “One of the things we do is, when a student arrives at our accommodation, we have student experience teams, customer care teams from the university, and some rooms in our accommodation, and we like to make sure that’s integrated. We ask the student experience teams to try and help those students in embedding into the local communities. “
Jon’s response highlights the onus that is on accommodation providers and universities to consciously implement processes that help students become integrated into their community. The ‘town and gown’ concept has been widely referenced throughout our webinar series, but the impact it can have on blending the community aspect with student experience is undeniable. This is also great for the localities themselves, encouraging students to spend locally and bolstering the local economy.
Sustainability
Gen Z are ever conscious of what and how they are consuming. So how does this play into accommodation? What do they demand, and expect from their buildings?
What’s interesting is how accepting Gen Z are of used products and second hand furniture. They will happily support a circular economy.
Benjamin elaborated on the importance of consulting the end user. You can’t simply assume that features will be embraced or used. Benjamin spoke about internal communication and having an internal intranet to facilitate communication between residents. This way, they can find out how to better support the circular economy within the housing unit.
For example, if something is broken, who can fix it? Rather than buying something brand new, the community can come together and share practical skills that can help to promote sustainability and the acceptance of upcycling.
Carrie spoke about how sustainability is being driven from the top down, from developers and shareholders as well as government policy. In terms of data capture, there is a gap between educating the user and educating the developers and operators. “From the end user, they tend to gravitate to things that will save money, so anything that is energy efficient. Young people generally have a good awareness of sustainability, but we need to educate them on what else can make an impact, even if it doesn't necessarily save money.”
Mike then added how there is very much a desire for occupants to demonstrate their own commitment to sustainability. “Recycling facilities are a big driver in choosing accommodation because it’s a behaviour they can implement themselves and they’re looking for ways to support this.”
Technology and learning
What do students do above and beyond pizza nights and social nights? The findings pointed more toward self-improvement. They wanted to learn practical skills such as CV writing, cooking classes nutrition or access to TED talks. Sarah offered a point about how students view their accommodation experience as an extension of their learning experience, and can expect to learn new things.
This conversation segued into a discussion about smart technology and how it can improve information availability in many aspects.
Essentially, operators need to build accommodation models that support all of the data findings we are uncovering through this research. Once you become a student, your view of the world and your behaviours start to change and accommodation providers can support this. Yes, we have information at our fingertips but we’re not necessarily great at communicating that impact. This circles back to community wellbeing and sustainability. How can we communicate to Gen Z what we’re doing as a collective to ensure everyone is part of the journey towards a more sustainable building?Deenie spoke about how PBSA has an onus to start communicating this information better to investors and students. “We are in a real information age now and we have information at our fingertips. As a sector, we're not very good at communicating that. We need to communicate in a way that shows real impact.” This expands to energy efficiency, community, and technology.
Mental health and wellbeing
The research uncovered some interesting findings when it came to mental health and wellbeing too. What is starkly obvious is that while operators are implementing mental health first aid and events that focus on community, the biggest impact on mental health come from holistic contributions such as a good night’s sleep, the quality of the building, the insulation, and amount of natural light. This is something we don’t often monitor: the impact of the building on mental health. As Deenie pointed out: “It comes back down to what we're putting in our buildings, or the things that are accessible to the communities, and are we communicating the impact that they could possibly be having on them?”
Kevin continued this point and spoke about the potential of having one dedicated person responsible for wellbeing. For many students, just knowing someone is there who can be contacted either in person or anonymously, is incredibly valuable. “Communication is key in feeling connected.”
But Kevin reiterated the importance of human interaction and how this cannot become a robotic process.
Benjamin concurred by offering a further point about the level of isolation that students are feeling, which is evident from a lot of research. Plus, after COVID a lot of people fell out of the habit of socialising.
Mike: “We know that of the students we surveyed, 84% said that accommodation quality directly affects their sense of well being. So that plays into everything we're hearing about in terms of sleeping and soundproofing. And, the idea about the actual nature of that accommodation. And yet, actually reinforcing the idea that well being measures whatever they are, are now discriminatory. For the students. We know that, from the research we've done this year on the accommodation application, 66% of students are very positively influenced by a provider that is demonstrating commitment to well being and 61% on inclusivity.”
Affordability
Affordability is the primary driver for decision making, and one of the most important factors so far. Over 50% of students have a part time job just to afford their rent. It’s also well known that for many students across the UK, University results in a huge net loss.
How do we address the triangle of cost, affordability and wellbeing?
Jon spoke about the importance of offering models to suit every budget: “Because only when you solve the availability issue or the price issue, can it resolve itself. And I think in the meantime, we can do what we do, which is have a very wide spread of prices to try and reach out to every budget, if you can.”
All-inclusive models are becoming more attractive since they reduce the burden of financial surprises pertaining to emergency bills or cost hikes. But this needs to be balanced effectively with the level of quality of services, and the quality of life that accommodation can offer. Otherwise, providers will face retention issues.
What this means for the future…
This research can help policymakers, investors and key stakeholders in the overall supply chain really understand what is important to the customer and how we need to be shifting and changing.
Constant communication with the end users, and actioning the results from this ongoing research, will be critical in emerging as a market leader and impacting positively on a new generation.
It’s clear that the research pillars to come from this year are all closely interconnected. An affordable product that promotes community and sustainability, as well as managing wellbeing will be key.
Budget will always play a big part, so it’s important to cascade the growing findings from this research to stakeholders, while communicating how best to leverage these findings for operators and managers. Sometimes the answer isn't absolute. Which has been concurred throughout our webinar discussions. The nuances across the demographic subsets, and the differences across class and income levels are clear.
What is perhaps most important to address is that while this research offers quantitative and qualitative data to take forward into the market, this must be balanced with a level of empathy. Gen Z are human, and all of our expectations are often proved right. For Gen Z’ers approaching university, we can expect to see similar behaviours to the students that preceded them. This is their first taste of independent living. Often, they are in a brand new town or city for the first time. Add to that the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, their mental wellbeing is a high priority. Offering wellbeing support, promoting a sense community, while addressing modern day topics such as sustainability and better inclusivity, will be essential in moving the PBSA sector forward with this forward thinking generation.
Watch the full webinar here
Listen to the session as a podcast