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Samantha HerelleSector needs more diverse leadership to truly understand communities
Samantha Herelle has completed Leadership 2025 – a new leadership development programme aimed at BME people in the housing sector. She explains why the sector should embrace inclusivity
Leadership 2025 is backed by Inside Housing as part of its Inclusive Futures campaign to improve diversity among social housing leadership teams
I am currently director of operations at Mount Green, a general needs housing association in Surrey, and I am a board member of Optivo, a G15 housing association. I’m also one of the participants on the first cohort of the Leadership 2025 programme. I’m an experienced senior housing professional.
Yet, up until this year, I’d be in a room with other senior housing professionals and more often than not I would be the only black woman in the room.
My disappointment at being the lone BME woman is not unique to me but forms part of a wider narrative within the sector that surrounds a lack of BME leadership at a senior level.
The Leadership 2025 programme offer when launched was thoroughly compelling and for me ground-breaking.
I wanted to personally test myself as to whether I had the capabilities to become a CEO.
“I’d be in a room with other senior housing professionals and more often than not I would be the only black woman in the room.”
With the support of Mount Green, I applied for Leadership 2025, an intensive nine-month leadership development programme, in partnership with Roffey Park business school, available exclusively to senior leaders from BME backgrounds working in the housing sector.
Leadership 2025 has been fantastic, and it’s been an absolutely amazing year for me. The programme has been challenging, working with peers both within and beyond our sector, getting direct learning from a sector mentor, and a range of specialist masterclasses from experts in their field. It’s been tough but rewarding, providing me with a chance to identify my leadership style and also my strengths.
I’ve also found my sector voice.
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I’ve got things to say on the challenges we face, including how the sector should be bold in meeting not just the expectations of the Social Housing Green Paper, but also the challenges of delivering a green, energy-efficient future.
My year culminated in winning Professional of the Year in the Women in Housing Awards – an award I was proud to receive because it was about my work, not my colour. And my thanks go to Mount Green and to Optivo for investing and believing in me.
But I’m not exceptional. There is so much diverse talent out there – it needs sector leaders and employers to identify and support it. And it also needs those who have got the talent to come forward and to step up and be part of Leadership 2025.
The second cohort has kicked off the programme and more people are coming through, but the sector needs to own the initiative for our leadership to become more diverse. Only if we create a more diverse sector leadership will we be able to truly understand and represent the needs of our communities.
I am privileged to now be part of the Leadership 2025 alumni, and the first six of us look forward to working with the future cohorts of the Leadership 2025 programme and with sector leaders who want to deliver diversity at all levels, and in particular at the level of leadership.
Samantha Herelle, director of operations, Mount Green, and board member, Optivo
Inclusive Futures
Inside Housing’s Inclusive Futures campaign aims to promote and celebrate diversity and inclusion.
We are pledging to publish diversity audits of our own coverage.
We are also committed to proactively promoting positive role models.
We will do this through the pages of Inside Housing. But we will also seek to support other publications and events organisations to be more inclusive.
Our Inclusive Futures Bureau will provide a database of speakers and commentators from all backgrounds, for use by all media organisations.
We are also challenging readers to take five clear steps to promote diversity, informed by the Chartered Institute of Housing’s diversity commission and the Leadership 2025 project.
THE CASE FOR CHANGE
34%
of housing association chief executives are female
1%
of housing association executives have a disability
1.6%
of housing association board members are LGBT
Women make up 46% of the UK workforce, but Inside Housing research found that they are under-represented on housing association boards (36%), executive teams (39%) and among chief executives (34%).
Almost a fifth of working-age adults have a disability (18%), yet associations reported only 1% of executives and 4.5% of board members with a disability. Many were unable to provide details.
Nationwide, 14% of the working-age population come from a BME background, climbing to 40% in London and Birmingham. Yet our research found that 6.8% of board members identified as BME, compared with 4.5% of executives.
Statistics on representation of LGBT people in the workforce are in short supply, but official statistics suggest that 2% of the total UK population identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, rising to 4.1% for 16 to 24-year-olds. Our survey found that 1.6% of board members and 10 executives were LGBT – but most organisations were unable to provide figures.
THE INCLUSIVE FUTURES CHALLENGE
Inside Housing calls on organisations to sign up to an inclusive future by taking five steps:
Prioritise diversity and inclusion at the top: commitment and persistence from chief executives, directors and chairs in setting goals and monitoring progress.
Collect data on the diversity of your board, leadership and total workforce and publish annually with your annual report. Consider gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, age, and representation of tenants on the board.
Set aspirational targets for recruitment to the executive team, board and committees from under-represented groups.
Challenge recruiting staff and agencies to ensure that all shortlists include candidates from under-represented groups.
Make diversity and inclusion a core theme in your talent management strategy to ensure you support people from under-represented groups to progress their careers.
INSIDE HOUSING’S PLEDGES
We will take proactive steps to promote positive role models from under-represented groups and provide information to support change.
We pledge to:
Publish diversity audits: We will audit the diversity of the commentators we feature. We will formalise this process and publish the results for future audits twice a year.
Promote role models: We will work to highlight leading lights from specific under-represented groups, starting in early 2018 with our new BME Leaders List.
Launch Inclusive Futures Bureau: We will work with the sector to compile a database of speakers, commentators and experts from under-represented groups. The bureau will be available to events organisers, media outlets and publications to support them to better represent the talent in the sector.
Take forward the Women in Housing Awards: Inside Housing has taken on these successful awards and will work to grow and develop them.
Convene Inclusive Futures Summit: Our new high-level event will support organisations to develop and implement strategies to become more diverse and inclusive.
The Inside Housing Diversity Audit: how diverse has our coverage been?
The media plays a key role in championing diverse role models, so we designed a project to measure Inside Housing’s track record.
