A vital part of being a housing professional
At the heart of being a housing professional is serving people, meeting their needs. And to do that we as housing professionals and members of CIH need to understand the people and communities we serve.
Everyone who lives in our communities is an individual, with individual needs, desires and dreams – and also individual life experiences. These experiences will be informed by the culture in which we grew up; our gender, age, religion and sexuality; and how the limitations of our bodies – mental and physical – impact on the way we live our lives.
Equality means that the housing sector is striving for a better balance in opportunities, resources, and decision-making processes for staff, customers and communities. Being more aware of and proactive about the diversity of customers will ensure housing organisations provide the right services and meet the right needs and aspirations. An inclusive housing sector acts transparently and fairly; builds good relationships; and works collaboratively with tenants, partners, customers and communities to achieve better outcomes.
EDI framework
The CIH EDI framework can be used by individuals or landlords/housing organisations to make positive changes across the sector. It features self-assessment tools so you can think about where you are currently with regards to EDI and consider how you can make further improvements to working practice.
- For individuals, the EDI framework compliments the CIH professional standards and directs you towards the steps you can take to champion and improve EDI in your organisation.
- For landlords, the EDI framework sets out a series of commitments underpinned by a range of outcomes.
EDI census
We are committed to improving equality, diversity and inclusion in our organisation, throughout our membership and across the housing sector.
In order to do this, we’re asking all our members to complete our EDI census so we can capture data and discover what our membership, and in turn, the housing profession looks like across the UK. This will help us identify where the sector may be underrepresented in different areas across the UK.
We'll continually challenge everything that we do are working to ensure that all aspects of our work are inclusive, including the work with our member steering group to drive professional standards across the sector.
We are committed to continuing to promote a variety of cultures and diversity across the housing sector. We'll continually challenge everything that we do to ensure that all aspects of our work are inclusive.
We have signed up to Race Equality Code which is an accountability framework on how we are embedding race equality within the organisation. As a signatory we have committed to transparent reporting on the actions we are taking to support race equality and to education and training to challenge existing unconscious bias. We will report regular on our progress to members and the sector at large.
Over the past two years we have:
- Formed both an internal and member-led EDI group made up of individuals from various backgrounds to drive positive change within CIH and the sector
- Become a member of Housing Diversity Network, giving us access to online self-assessment tools, webinars, video and audio resources and a host of other benefits
- We have also rolled out online training for all CIH colleagues
- We are actively working with other professional bodies as part of PARN, learning from their experiences and sharing good practice
- In 2021, we developed a new Welsh language scheme and set up a bilingual service on our new website
- We'll collaborate with other housing organisations to learn more about great practice already in place - and then implement that at home and spread the word abroad.
