Lyndsey’s blog: “I learnt a lot about how the different teams within the organisation interact with each other”

“The CIH promotes good practice amongst the housing community by championing ethical working, how social housing should be performing, and what it should look like,” says Lyndsey.

“I completed the level 4 CIH qualification back in 2016 when I was working for Progress Housing Group, which RWP is part of. To qualify for level 5, I also needed relevant experience in the field. I looked at what courses were available and chose one that suited my goals. My line manager then supported me in applying for funding.

The course consists of six modules, spread over a year, and they are all online. You organise your own time and you work through each module, and each one takes about six to eight weeks.

Relationships, communication, and leadership modules

The first module I have completed (and I’m pleased to say I have passed!) focussed on relationships in housing. This means relationships between housing providers and contractors, between housing providers and tenants, and stakeholder relationships such as those with local authorities and public services.

It was really interesting and quite meaty! I learnt a lot about how the different teams within the organisation interact with each other. I made some really good connections and relationships with people, learning about their roles in the business. I have a much better idea about the challenges departments are facing and why there might be delays. So, it's helped me to explain those things a bit more to tenants. Also, how tenant relationships are influenced by the and what they want to see happening, such as tenant engagement.

Communication strategies and customer profiling was really interesting, too. It took me a long time to get my head around what profiling and segmentation involves, and to understand how we use that information to feed into our strategies and policies; and how it's used to make a communication strategy with tenants. It helped me understand how tenant forums operate and how to get involved.

The module that I am studying at the moment is all around leadership and management and what an ethical leader looks like. It’s also about what sort of skills and qualities people need to be good managers and good leaders. I hope that I can take some of those skills and use them to progress into more career opportunities. It’s already helping me to develop my management knowledge in my role as a line manager.

Strategic planning and future goals

I’m looking forward to future modules on strategic planning. It will involve understanding how big decisions are made by the senior leadership team,  how that’s fed down and what that looks like on a day-to-day basis. It covers where social housing sits in the housing market in the UK, and what challenges it faces due to benefit reforms,  public funding cuts and the shortage of housing.

Ultimately, I would like to be involved in strategic decision-making. That is the overall ambition, but there's other experience to be gained before taking that next step. Having strategic knowledge helps at multi-agency meetings because, I think, it enables you to talk quite confidently about what work the organisation is doing and what our practices are.

In my current role as a housing officer, it's about shining a light on how valuable it is to have face-to-face contact with tenants and understanding what they want and need. Getting to know their feelings about the services that we provide is important, and how it relates to the work that we do overall.”