Across recent Neemar Search roundtable discussions with Chief People Officers and HR Directors in the housing sector, one message has become increasingly clear: the people agenda is no longer sitting alongside organisational transformation. It is becoming one of the primary vehicles through which transformation will succeed or fail.
The themes emerging from these conversations are strikingly consistent. Housing organisations are facing immediate workforce pressures linked to cost of living, colleague wellbeing and employee expectations, whilst simultaneously trying to respond to longer-term questions around artificial intelligence, organisational design, leadership capability and future skills. For people leaders, the challenge is no longer simply to manage policy, process and employee relations effectively. It is to help shape the future organisation.
Managing Cost of Living Pressures While Maintaining Sustainability
One of the clearest tensions is the need to balance short-term colleague support with long-term organisational sustainability. Rising fuel costs, for example, are being felt particularly by customer-facing and patch-based colleagues who are regularly travelling into communities. Organisations are reviewing mileage rates, car allowances and agile working arrangements, but there is understandable caution about making permanent changes in response to what may be a temporary cost pressure. The practical lesson is that communication matters as much as policy. Where organisations are clear about their current position, explain their rationale and commit to keeping matters under review, colleague concern appears easier to manage.
That same need for balance is visible in the conversation around artificial intelligence. AI is now present across most housing organisations in some form, but many people functions are still at an early stage of understanding how to use it safely, ethically and effectively. The discussion is moving quickly from curiosity to practical application. Tools such as Copilot are being used in some organisations, AI steering groups are emerging, and people teams are beginning to explore how technology can support report writing, data analysis, HR queries, employee surveys, learning content and workforce analytics.
Yet the concerns are equally real. HR teams are already seeing AI influence employee relations, with grievances and complaints that appear to have been drafted or expanded using AI. Recruitment is also being affected, with AI-generated applications making it harder to assess authenticity and suitability at sift stage. There are also legitimate concerns around accuracy, confidentiality, data protection, hallucination and the risk of AI drawing on inappropriate legal contexts. For people leaders, this creates a dual responsibility: enabling the organisation to innovate, whilst also safeguarding fairness, judgement and trust.
Using AI to Improve Performance Management
The most mature conversations around AI are not focused on replacing people, but on removing low-value administration and improving consistency. One particularly practical example discussed was the use of AI to create objective templates within performance management. Rather than asking every manager to draft objectives from scratch, role profiles can be input into AI platforms to generate objective frameworks aligned to corporate priorities, behavioural expectations and organisational outcomes. These templates can then be reviewed and refined by managers and colleagues before being used across teams.
The value of this approach is not simply time saving, although the administrative benefit is significant. It also addresses a recurring weakness in performance management: inconsistency. In many organisations, colleagues in similar roles can end up with very different objectives depending on the confidence, capability or style of their line manager. AI-generated templates, when properly checked and contextualised, can create a stronger golden thread between corporate strategy, team delivery and individual accountability. They can also create more space for managers to focus on the conversations that matter: coaching, development, wellbeing and performance improvement.
This links to another recurring theme: the disconnect between colleague engagement and customer outcomes. Several senior leaders reflected that strong engagement scores and positive colleague sentiment do not always translate into improved customer experience. This presents an uncomfortable but important challenge. Housing organisations have become increasingly sophisticated at measuring employee experience, but the real test is whether that experience drives better outcomes for residents.
Performance Management as a Leadership Discipline
Future performance frameworks will therefore need to do more than record objectives and prompt annual conversations. They will need to connect individual contribution to organisational priorities and customer impact. The emphasis is shifting away from performance management as a process and towards performance management as a leadership discipline. That requires clarity, accountability and better-quality conversations throughout the organisation.
Leadership capability is emerging as one of the biggest constraints to change. Whilst executive teams may be aligned around transformation, the real test often comes in the middle of the organisation, where strategic intent has to become operational reality. Many managers are being asked to lead through ambiguity, redesign services, adopt new technology, support colleagues and improve customer outcomes, all while maintaining day-to-day delivery. The role of the manager is becoming harder, not easier.
This has significant implications for leadership development. Traditional programmes focused on generic management skills may no longer be sufficient. The sector needs leaders who can coach, make decisions, use data, lead change, understand technology and create accountability without losing empathy. The strongest people strategies will be those that recognise leadership capability as core infrastructure for transformation, not as a standalone development activity.
From Buying Talent to Building Talent
Workforce planning is also changing. Across the sector, organisations are facing growing competition for specialist skills, particularly in operational, technical and customer-facing roles. However, there is increasing recognition that competing harder for the same limited pool of talent is not a sustainable strategy. The sector will need to become better at creating talent rather than simply buying it.
This points towards a greater emphasis on early careers, apprenticeships, partnerships with educational institutions, accredited learning pathways and internal talent development. It also requires a more forward-looking view of capability. The skills housing organisations need in five years’ time will not be identical to those needed today. Data literacy, AI confidence, digital capability, customer insight, commercial awareness and change leadership are likely to become increasingly important across a much wider range of roles.
Rethinking Organisational Design Around the Customer
Organisational design was another major area of discussion. There was strong support for moving away from restructuring exercises that start with teams, functions and reporting lines. Instead, future operating models need to begin with the customer journey and work backwards. When organisations map processes from the customer’s perspective, they often uncover duplication, unnecessary hand-offs, unclear accountability and legacy workarounds that have accumulated over time.
This has profound implications for the future housing association. If transactional activity becomes increasingly automated, human capacity should be redirected towards higher-value work: resolving complex issues, supporting vulnerable residents, strengthening relationships and improving outcomes. The question is not simply where technology can reduce cost, but where people can add the greatest value.
It also raises more fundamental questions about the nature of roles. As technology changes work more quickly, fixed job descriptions may become less useful as the primary organising principle. Organisations may need to think more in terms of capabilities, adaptability and contribution. This is not straightforward, particularly where contractual structures, grading frameworks and union relationships are involved. However, the direction of travel is clear. Many roles will evolve significantly, and people functions will need to help organisations prepare colleagues for that evolution rather than simply react to it.
Holding Competing Priorities in Balance
What stands out across both roundtable discussions is the need for people leaders to hold several competing priorities at once. They must support colleagues without overcommitting the organisation. They must
encourage innovation without being reckless. They must use AI to improve efficiency without losing human judgement. They must simplify performance management without weakening accountability. They must design future organisations without forgetting the lived experience of colleagues and residents.
This is why the role of the people function is becoming more strategic. The issues now sitting with Chief People Officers and HR Directors are not narrow HR matters. They go to the heart of organisational performance, customer experience, culture, leadership and long-term resilience.
What Will Define Success Over the Next Decade?
The housing organisations most likely to thrive over the next decade will be those that bring these strands together. They will use technology pragmatically, build leadership capability deliberately, create future talent pipelines, redesign around the customer and maintain a clear connection between colleague experience and resident outcomes. The future people agenda in housing will not be defined by policies alone. It will be defined by the ability of people leaders to help their organisations adapt, simplify and lead with purpose in an increasingly complex operating environment.
The insights within this article were drawn from discussions taking place across our HR Director and Chief People Officer Communities. These communities provide a confidential forum for leaders to share challenges, exchange ideas and learn from peers facing many of the same workforce, leadership and organisational issues. We are always keen to welcome new voices and perspectives into the conversation and so if you are a senior HR or People leader working within the housing sector and would be interested in joining future discussions, please do get in touch with me or a member of the team.
