By Jane Atherton, lead associate of HQN’s Leadership and Organisational Development Hub.

Housing providers continue to face significant workforce challenges; including a tight labour supply for key roles, along with the need to drive up skills and technical knowledge across the sector. This solutions-focussed event brought together a host of speakers to share what’s happening and how they’re tackling the problem.

Kicking off the summit we heard from Nicola Hosfield, social housing quality programme department – programme implementation director, for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Nicola’s presentation talked us through the next steps for implementing the new competence and conduct requirements that will form part of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill.

The Bill will introduce a requirement for senior housing managers and senior housing executives to have or be working towards a Level 4 or 5 housing management qualification.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has now entered a period of engagement with the sector with timings for consultation and implementation to be produced in due course.

Registered providers will need to be ready for the new requirements as part of their learning and development strategy and resourcing plans. For more information about housing management standards and job roles in scope, click here.

Next, we welcomed Richard Youngman, head of client relations at Networx Recruitment. Rich shared the trends, patterns and challenges Networx are seeing in recruitment today; in specialisms such as construction, development, building safety and customer care.

We heard how the ‘great resignation’, brought on through the pandemic, has had a knock-on impact for talent pools and how important it is for registered providers to positively promote their vacant roles, so they stand out to candidates.

Richard’s takeaways were:

• Think about the candidate experience – walk through your recruitment policy, process and touch points and make it quick and easy for people to apply.
• Don’t just rely on job boards to get to the right candidates – reach out to ‘passive’ candidate pools.
• Candidates spend just 8 seconds on deciding if a job role is for them – so be sure to get your employer brand across with impact.

Kathryn Bowe, head of talent acquisition and employee experience at Sovereign Housing Association introduced how they are taking a fresh approach to addressing challenges in the labour market and how candidate’s expectations / wish lists have changed in recent years. Kathryn’s presentation explained how Sovereign have reviewed their recruitment strategy through three lenses – Attract, Engage and Hire.

Kathryn’s takeaways were:

• Understand your organisations employee value proposition to leverage it as a key selling point for current and potential employees.
• Look at different EVP’s that may be appropriate to reflect the segmentation of your business.
• Think about personalisation of your recruitment and onboarding practices.
• Have people-centric policies available before people start work, so there are no surprises about what’s on offer, such as your maternity policy.

Elaine Johnson, director of people, Great Places Housing Group shared the varied ways that they are taking a proactive approach to attracting and retaining talent.

Elaine’s takeaways were:

• Make use of local jobs and careers fairs, plus, get involved with the sector careers event that will be taking place at the Housing 2023 Conference in June. All registered providers can get involved.
• Reach out to tenants for your recruitment talent pools.
• Optimise apprenticeships, traineeships and mentoring schemes.
• Think about engaging with different demographic groups for talent such as over 55’s.

Helen Allen, people and talent manager, Stepping Stone Projects which provides accommodation and support across the North-West to care leavers, people who are homeless and those currently at risk of losing their homes. Helen shared her organisation’s different challenges which were as a result of significant growth and a need to recruit skilled staff at speed.

Helen’s takeaways were:

• Tap into different talent pools to attract people who might be excluded or inhibited by some traditional workforce practices, such as neurodiverse candidates.
• Develop manager capabilities to lead a positive recruitment experience for candidates, through improved guidance and resources.
• Use existing colleagues as ambassadors for your organisation by introducing a colleague referral scheme which offers an incentive/reward.

And finally, we heard from Hanifa Blakemore-Razaq, a talking together project coordinator at Clarion Housing and shortlisted in HQN’s Housing Next Generation 2022 competition, who shared with us her career history and personal journey to working in social housing. This session encouraged participants to think differently about how we can make the housing sector attractive for prospective employees.

A big thank you to all our speakers for joining us for an informative and interactive event.