Time to make housing a career of choice

It is time to make housing a career of choice.

Imagine for a moment you are taking part in a rather niche edition of Family Fortunes and you’re asked to think up the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word “housing”.

What would you say? Probably things like people, families, communities, lives.

Now consider what the average person would likely say. Houses perhaps? Bricks? Cranes? Mortgages?

“We must tell compelling and clear stories about the great work our people do.”

This is certainly what sprang to my mind before I made a tentative first step into a career in housing. And it was only when I saw first-hand the great work housing organisations do I realised how wrong I was.

It’s exactly this perception that we need to work on if we’re going to attract new people into our profession.

Recent surveys of millennials have found one of the key things they look for in a job is the ability to make a difference. And there’s no doubt whatsoever that we are missing a trick in getting across just how much a career in housing allows you to do this.

We’ve all seen the inspiring adverts encouraging people to become teachers, paramedics, police officers or members of the Armed Forces. And what do these jobs all have in common? They give someone a very real opportunity to make a difference to other people’s lives; to do work that matters.

Enter housing.

It’s only when you work in the sector that you see just how meaningful, varied and above all valuable the work of housing organisations is; they quite simply transform lives.

And when you consider the biggest challenges facing our nation what better opportunity could there be to make a difference right now than to work in housing?

It’s more difficult than ever to get on the housing ladder and the millions renting in the private sector are regularly spending up to half of their wages on housing. Meanwhile many people who need a home the most are stuck on waiting lists or packed into cramped conditions struggling to get by. And, worst of all, thousands of people sleep on our streets every night.

Want to do work that makes a difference? There’s no doubt that a career in housing gives you the chance to do just that.

It gives you the chance to be part of tackling what is one of the biggest problems in our society and to do work which directly contributes to transforming lives.

And you don’t have to be a housing officer to work in housing, though if you want to you’ll do fantastic work. You could work in repairs or finance, communications or care, customer service or research – the list goes on.

I’m preaching to the converted, I know, and as the sector’s professional body we recognise a big part of this sits at our door.

“It’s only when you work in the sector that you see just how meaningful, varied and valuable the work of housing organisations is.”

We have exciting plans to profile the work of professionals across the sector – from apprentices to chief executives – to help transform the image of a career in housing, and we recently set up an advisory group full of young housing professionals to play a key role in developing these plans to reach the next generation.

The energy, enthusiasm and commitment to make a difference they demonstrated at our first meeting last week was nothing short of inspiring. That’s what we need to channel, and the truth is every housing organisation can play a part.

We’ll also be working very closely with housing organisations to help them maximise the changes to housing apprenticeships which are taking effect and represent a key opportunity to bring new talent into the sector.

This all comes back to telling compelling stories about the work that we do. We need to help people visualise themselves working in housing. And it begins at home.

We need to be clear to our own people the difference that they are making and to do everything we can to help them understand just how integral their work is. That way they will become our ambassadors.

But crucially we must tell compelling and clear stories about the great work our people do. We must shout about it in our schools, colleges and universities. We must engage with careers fairs and be proud of talking about our work in our communities. We must be our sector’s biggest advocates.

That is how we will showcase what a great opportunity to make a difference working in the housing sector offers people, and it’s a key part of how we will attract the fresh talent we so desperately need to meet the many challenges which lie ahead.

Steve Hayes, communications manager, Chartered Institute of Housing

Mr Hayes is speaking at Housing 2017, the CIH conference and exhibition. Book at: www.insidehousing.co.uk/housing2017