Mr & Mrs stressed out

‘I love my job,’ declares one of the respondents in Inside Housing and recruitment company The Resourcing Group’s exclusive job satisfaction survey.

Housing professionals’ passion for their work shines through in some of the comments from the 608 UK housing officers, managers and senior executives who took part in the online research between March and April.

However, the clearest message to emerge from the statistics is one of uncertainty. The combined pressures of the recent recession, impending budget cuts and widespread organisational restructuring have left many of those working in social housing uncertain of their job security.

Now the general election has been and gone, the social housing sector waits with baited breath to find out where the new government’s public sector spending cuts will fall. ‘These are very uncertain times for the housing association sector,’ sums up a housing association chief executive in the open comment section of the survey.

Scott Alger, managing director of The Resourcing Group, which specialises in public sector recruitment, says employers have been holding off making staffing decisions until after the election. ‘Nobody knows what is going to happen,’ he says.

More than half of our respondents - 75 per cent of whom are either housing officers or managers - expect their organisations to make redundancies over the next 12 months. Perceptions of job security are increasingly negative. While a quarter of those who completed the survey feel more stable than they did a year ago and 32 per cent feel more or less the same, 43 per cent report that they are ‘slightly’ or ‘a lot less’ secure than they were 12 months ago.

Getting real

Shifting from perceptions to reality, housing sector employees are experiencing a very real impact of the recession - on their bank balances. Half of respondents’ salaries have been frozen for the past year and 11 per cent have taken either a ‘small’ or ‘significant’ pay cut. Meanwhile, a third received a small pay rise and a lucky few - 6 per cent - saw their pay increase by a ‘significant’ amount.

Up until a couple of years ago, many housing professionals could bank on the cost of living-related salary increase they received every year, explains Helen Giles, managing director of homelessness charity Broadway’s Real People human resources consultancy. Now, ‘pay has been depressed across the sector,’ she says.

Ms Giles suggests that some of those who report they’ve received a large pay rise will have been waiting for that increase for some time. ‘Their salary could have been frozen for one or two years [prior to their pay boost],’ she says.

As for a thaw, don’t count on one happening anytime soon. ‘I don’t expect a raft of increases until there is a clearer picture of what the future holds,’ states The Resourcing Group’s Mr Alger.

Financial worries may well be contributing to another of our poll’s findings. Going by the results, stress levels in housing are currently going through the roof. Half of respondents say they are either ‘extremely’ or ‘quite’ stressed at work. Forty per cent say that the reason they are so stressed out is that their work ‘involves dealing with stressful situations’.

Whatever the economic climate, frontline workers - who make up at least 31 per cent of our respondents - handle difficult situations on a daily basis, for example, dealing with instances of anti-social behaviour, says Ms Giles.

The heat is on

Pressure has increased as a result of employers demanding ‘ever better customer satisfaction scores’ and individuals being given larger case-loads, she adds. The introduction of the Tenant Services Authority’s regulatory framework for social landlords in England last month places greater emphasis on tenant empowerment. ‘There’s an expectation of better tenant services but fewer resources,’ says Ms Giles.

Forty-four per cent of all of those who completed our survey report they are ‘overworked’.

‘The increased demands on time have changed the job from an interesting and rewarding career to one where there are not enough hours in the week,’ says one officer. Meanwhile, a customer services officer blames the trend for landlords to merge or acquire other providers in recent years for their rising blood pressure. ‘I really like what I do but since we got larger there is too much work and not enough staff,’ they say.

Organisational restructuring and cost cutting have become commonplace in the social housing sector over recent years. One finance manager who completed our survey sums up the situation like this: ‘Most organisations are cost-cutting which means those left behind will inevitably have to work harder’.

‘Employers are slicing staff to do more with less,’ states Ms Giles, adding that staff working with vulnerable people are often most affected. ‘Any organisation with a supported housing arm will have seen [the government’s Supporting People] contract prices shrink dramatically and they will have to reduce staff accordingly.’

For some, organisational change seems to be an ongoing process. ‘Constant restructuring is leading to poor management, with unclear or changing direction,’ explains one senior manager in our survey.

In it for the long haul

Despite their increasing workloads, our survey reveals that 20 per cent of respondents expect to stay in their current job for more than four years and a further 18 per cent for at least two years (see graph 4). It seems employees want to sit tight and ride out the storm. ‘Even though I would like another job, in this current economic climate it seems safe to stay with the job security and existing job,’ sums up a team leader at a local authority in his survey response.

With salaries declining across the sector, staying where you are might be a wise thing to do - a pay freeze is, after all, better than a pay cut. ‘A lot of people are stopping tight, because if they go somewhere else they’ll get the depressed market rate,’ explains Ms Giles.

To say that housing professionals are mostly motivated by money, however, would be misleading. When our survey asked ‘What will be your main reason for looking for a new job?’ the most popular answer was ‘career development’ at 49 per cent. Mary Keegan, a housing administrator at Ducane housing association in west London is one such respondent - her employer is funding her career progression, resulting in her having no desire to move to another organisation.

‘People expect a fair rate of pay, but they would rather move onwards and upwards and receive an increase in salary where it reflects their skills,’ explains Ms Giles.

A pat on the back

‘Greater recognition’, is likely to motivate 12 per cent of respondents’ next move. Recruitment expert, Mr Alger isn’t surprised. ‘It does come up,’ he says. ‘People think the only way they will get recognition is to move on.’ The recognition employees need ranges from ‘a pat on the back to a promotion,’ he says.

One survey respondent, repairs and maintenance manager David Richardson, (see box: Mr Upbeat) says that a letter of thanks from the chief executive recognising when good work has been done always goes down well among his colleagues at Cross Keys Homes in Peterborough.
It stands to reason that when everyone in an organisation is under pressure, good management becomes even more important. ‘It is vital that managers place a high priority on supporting their employees throughout periods of change,’ says Martin Winn, director of professional development at the Chartered Institute of Housing.

Eleven per cent of survey respondents who are stressed at work put it down to ‘bullying in the workplace’, suggesting not everyone is creating a supportive environment. Reponses within the survey reflect mistrust between levels of management: ‘I feel that our management now feel that they can bully us as there are few jobs for us to find in housing at the moment, and when the public sector cuts come, the situation will only get worse,’ says one manager of their own bosses.

‘My boss is not open and honest. They always have a backstage agenda,’ states another manager.

A universal problem

Social housing is not on its own. The pressure of recession and its fallout are affecting employees in all sectors in similar ways. A survey published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in January showed that job satisfaction across all organisation sizes and sectors had decreased over the previous three months. Forty-one per cent of employees said they felt under excessive pressure either every day or once or twice a week, and just under a fifth of employees thought it was likely or very likely that they could lose their job as a result of the recession.

The CIH’s Mr Winn is fairly upbeat about housing’s future. He says that while our survey respondents’ feelings of insecurity are ‘understandable’, perceptions do ‘not necessarily tally with organisations’ plans’.

A chief executive who completed our survey is equally optimistic. He says that although things are unsettled at the moment, social housing organisations will be better for all of the changes they’ve been going through. ‘Social businesses are becoming much more focused on providing value for money, efficiencies and driving out waste than ever before,’ he says. This, alongside the increasing emphasis on landlords’ role in transforming communities ‘makes the job so worthwhile, even in a scary recession’.

When it comes down to it, social housing is more fortunate than other sectors - through it all, budget cuts, organisational restructuring, pay freezes, those who work in it believe in what they do.

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