View publication - Chartered Institute of Housing

PART ONE: LEARNING TODAY
Staff development for the future – a perspective from
Incommunities
By Adrienne Reid: Assistant Chief Executive, Neighbourhood Services, Incommunities
Summary
Putting customers at the heart of a service and responding effectively to their
needs requires a combination of different organisational initiatives and
actions. This ranges from a customer focused sense of purpose, to how people
think about the design of work; and clarity around organisational values. Staff
development is a key foundation block that underpins an organisation’s
aspirations and it can be instrumental in helping to deliver these aspirations
on the ground.
At Incommunities, we have been giving a great deal of thought to what we
prioritise in terms of staff development. We have concluded that we should
put the greatest investment into developing technical mastery and aligning
this to organisational values. In combination with a systems thinking approach
to the design of work, we feel that good customer service is an outcome of
this focused approach rather than a specific skill in itself.
Skills for the future – what do we need?
There has been a lot of debate in the housing industry about the skills, knowledge and
behaviours needed in the modern housing service. There is some focus on developing a
set of behaviours or soft competencies expected of the role, I hear talk of ‘a new type of
housing officer’ and ‘a different skill set from the past’. There have been some very high
profile customer service initiatives credited with improving the customer experience in
some major organisations.
What I do not hear much about is the combination of alignment of staff to the
organisation’s values and the development of harder technical knowledge: what I have
termed ‘mastery’ in this article. The housing industry needs to pay as much, if not more,
attention to developing technical mastery as we have done over the past few years to
softer people skills.
A lack of focus on technical skills can lead to wasteful and bureaucratic work practices
with staff becoming bogged-down and disempowered. As a consequence, whilst
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