Social housing and a sense of purpose

Spending a morning at the National Housing Federation’s annual Communications Conference yesterday was really inspiring .   This was a major conference for people working (very hard) in the support and supply of social housing across the UK.  These are the people who every day are facing the realities of a shortage of housing stock, and the inevitable consequences that provokes.  I had expected to find a good deal of criticism – of government, economic conditions, the ‘austerity measures’ that have led to the hated bedroom tax and to the challenges of Universal Credit.  And perhaps a certain degree of world-weariness.

Yet during the hour given over to my Time to Think workshop on getting the best from meetings (standing room only!) and over lunch afterwards I was struck not by cynicism and weariness, but by optimism and dynamism – by a real interest in finding answers and  solutions to tough problems.

During the workshop and afterwards I had time to pick up on some of the problems being faced by those who work in this sector.  The Conference had kicked off with a session on public perception of social housing and the psychological effect of a tv series like Benefits St – and NHF people are certainly aware of and angry about the impact of the lazy binary language often used in the media, the kind of thing that divides us into ‘hard-working’ and ‘lazy’ when any fool knoweth that the world is much more complicated than that.

So when I asked a delegate over lunch why it was that he and his colleagues seemed so cheerful in the face of such adversity he said ‘I think it’s because we all know why we are doing it.  It’s so much easier to feel strong and motivated when your work has so much purpose.’  What a great thought.  Imagine what would happen for the world if everyone did a job that made them feel like that.  Working with purpose – every day.

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