View publication - Chartered Institute of Housing

LEADING PLACES OF CHANGE – SKILLS AND LEARNING CHALLENGES
Managers will also need to work even harder at being visible and engaging leaders of
their staff. They will need to provide a clear vision which their teams can buy into; and
empower their people to navigate uncertainty. They will need to collaborate to arrive at
creative solutions to situations that have become far too complex for one person to
‘manage’.
Real People and Twentysix Consulting: two consultancies working with social housing
clients, ran a HR and Pay Barometer Survey in late 2012. The overwhelming people
management concern for participants, in particular homelessness organisations, was
anxiety about being able to recruit the right people and engage them to provide high
standards of services in an environment where both pay and job security have dipped
dramatically over the last decade. Managers in the sector need to develop the skills and
confidence to motivate people by providing them with the kind of direction, support,
coaching and empowerment that transcend pay and contractual benefits as drivers of
commitment and excellence.
One trend that was in its relative infancy when LPoC began was the explosion of social
media as a means of communication. Managers of homelessness services need to
understand the potential of already available and emerging platforms to enhance their
ability to respond to strategic challenges. The LPoC programme needs to support
participants in embracing the potential of social media as a way of marketing services,
sourcing staff and volunteers and using the voice of service users to influence policy and
commissioner purchasing decisions.
Learning and skills for the future in a nutshell
In summary, despite a landscape of widespread job insecurity and low pay, homelessness
services continue to attract great people who have an immense passion to make a
difference and the cognitive and emotional intelligence to do this well. This is
particularly true at entry level for those organisations that invest in people with superior
levels of core competencies but little or no previous experience.
To source, develop and engage these people in the face of all the obstacles there are to
recruitment and retention we need great leader-managers. The secret is to make sure
they are selected for their potential to be just that rather than being automatically
promoted and then to give them access to a programme of learning that exposes them
to the skills and tools they need to deliver on that potential. At the heart of every great
service is an excellent service manager. Conversely, no service is sustainably good if the
manager is unskilled or underperforming in their role as leader of their staff team.
The creation of LPoC marked the dawning recognition of this fact among decisionmakers
and influencers in our sector. Since its implementation, LPoC has made a
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