Running a team of volunteers has a set of challenges that’s only unique for this type of organisation, one of it being its resources - time, to be exact. Each member of the RA committee has varying capability & capacity. For this reason, precision and efficiency is at the heart of everything we do.

Having this dynamic means that we should be very strategic in terms of how we plan, manage and respond to the needs of the residents. What we have learned in the past is that WhatsApp communications tend to be reactive, incomplete and repetitive. People also seem to have greater tendency to misunderstand each other while communicating via WhatsApp, creating an atmosphere that is ripe with unnecessary conflicts and bitterness.

While being reactive all the time may offer some short term benefits, we run the risks of setting an unsustainable standards that not only can cause burnouts to our committee members, but also set the residents on the path of unmatched expectations and disappointments in the long term.

How we handle your inquiries

At the core of it, we basically employ a combination of a simple queue, divide and conquer system. Each inquiry that reached our inbox will be categorised based on its topic; priority is to be decided upon elements such as severity, urgency and volume (i.e. how many people affected by the same issue). These will then turn into tasks that get assigned to the respective teams within the RA.

Once a solution has been formulated, it is then just a matter of communicating it to the residents effectively through mediums such as Email, WhatsApp, and web articles. While we can’t guarantee that every problem in existence can be solved when handled in this manner, you are almost always guaranteed to receive a response from our team regardless of the outcome.

This process undoubtedly seems slower in comparison to simply responding to chat messages as it requires more thoughtful coordination and planning - but that’s really the point! We aimed to keep everyone being able to contribute to the best of their abilities in a highly collaborative environment while requiring only absolutely necessary amount of commitment and urgency.

Keep in mind that not all issues have to go through the same rigorous process. Most issues in fact have repeatable solutions that can be solved almost on-the-fly. Some of you who may have written to us in the past can already testify to this.

Let’s learn and re-learn

Today marks the first week of a new year, the third year that most of us have spent our lives here. There’s still a lot to learn from each other, and there’s probably more that we should re-learn about each other. The RA team would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for supporting us on this journey as we continue doing our best to serve this community. With the spirit of a new year, we wish to inspire everyone to start afresh and move on towards a happier, stronger, and unified community.

Happy 2022!