HousErasmus+ Project Evaluation: Uniplaces as case of study

Abstract

Due to the widely acknowledged positive impacts that student mobility has on the higher education sector and society at large, Europe has seen a rapid increase of student mobility in the past years. The European Union has set the target of having 20% of all higher education graduates take part of a mobility experience by 2020. Unfortunately, the infrastructure required to further increase student mobility is often not sufficient. Finding accommodation has become a major obstacle to student mobility and it is a real challenge for those that decide to study abroad during their studies. Thus, the HousEramus+ project was created to improve this situation (Kuzmane, Jahnke, Encinas, Alfranseder, & Fellinger, 2017). The HousErasmus+ project in its attempt to magnify it’s reach also included associated partners to better achieve its objectives, one of those Partners is Uniplaces, a Lisbon-based startup which business model focuses on providing accommodation for students done solely via online. According to their website “Uniplaces is trying to change a difficult, bureaucratic and oldfashioned process of booking accommodation, into an easier, enjoyable and modern one, by doing it online” (Uniplaces, 2020). In this Report, I aspire to evaluate Uniplaces actions and behavior regarding the Recommendation & Good Practice Booklet created by the HousErasmus+ project in 2017, in which the project offered to create a platform for exchanging experience and good practices for stakeholders in the student accommodation business. I aim this by using the knowledge, skills and attitudes learned during the master’s and the internship I did in Uniplaces, within the Customer Experience Team. Therefore, I aspire to research and analyze the disparities between the design and implementation of the HousEramus+ Program within the company using the lens of Corporate Social Responsibility. The internship allowed me to gain analytical experience within the company and built an integrated project related to help reinvent the accommodation marketplace in which Uniplaces works, mainly analyzing the HousErasmus+ project a European Union initiative, with Uniplaces as one of its partners. To accomplish this objective I tried to understand the company’s dynamics, asses the commitment of the company to the project, use qualitative research to analyze the views from several different departments regarding the practice of the booklet and evaluate the feasibility of adopting the recommendation and good practices Booklet of the HousErasmus+ project. In conclusion, I am aiming to evaluate and keep track of the impact of acting accordingly to the booklet teachings. Along my traineeship I was able to interact with students and landlords via phone and email, making sure any issue and complaints regarding their accommodation was dealt with and solved according to internal policies. I often liaised with other teams to come up with solutions and trained newcomers in specific job-related subjects. Also, contributed to the internal knowledge base with written updated content about processes and sales best practices. This helped me audit Uniplaces performance through the lenses provided by the HousErasmus+ program.