View publication - Chartered Institute of Housing

FUTURE-PROOFING THE HOUSING PROFESSION
Membership through the professional qualification, as pressure on organisational
budgets may be focussing employers and employees to look for immediate rather than
longer term returns. This doesn’t enable either employers or graduate employees to
move their organisations forward to meet future challenges affecting the industry.
Skills needs to meet the new operating environment
As the social housing sector diversifies, there is pressure on a ‘one size fits all’
professional housing qualification or sector skills specification. Increasingly organisations
are seeking learning ‘products’ that meet their organisational development needs rather
than qualifications that only benefit individuals (though we would argue that this is a
short term view).
With reduced rental income anticipated as a result of welfare reforms and reduced
subsidies to invest in assets; organisations need to adopt more commercially aware
practices. This means that wherever they are situated in the business, staff need to be
aware that what they are delivering is a part of the business plan. Staff need to be
equipped to operate effectively in the leaner world into which we are moving; and
leaders will need to make the right decisions which take their teams forward. This will
lead to equipping existing staff and new recruits with skills associated with the
managerialist rather than professional paradigms – but the two need not be mutually
exclusive and this is where with some creative thinking a new housing professional
can emerge.
A new housing professional
By way of illustration, the repairs and maintenance side of the social housing industry
has been grappling with the challenges around an ageing workforce and anticipated
skills shortages for some time. There are many examples of social housing organisations
developing schemes to enskill people from local communities and working with local
schools to ensure that they have a workforce with the right skills for the future. 1 As part
of this forward planning, thought is being given to the creation of career paths for
technical staff working in repairs and maintenance functions to move into management
and supervisor roles. Attention is being given to balancing the time spent away from the
workplace for formal study and training needs with maintaining the service. Hence there
is an increasing emphasis on more job related training.
Organisations could also be thinking about how they can attract good graduates,
building on the opportunities presented by working in the industry. We need to better
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