Tracey McEachran, Senior Associate Campbell Tickell
The new Competence and Conduct Standard is a huge step forward for technical professionalism in housing, but without equal attention to “soft” people skills, it risks becoming a compliance exercise rather than a catalyst for better experiences for tenants and colleagues.
From regulation to real relationships
The Social Housing (Regulation) Act and the new Competence and Conduct Standard mark a clear shift in how we think about professionalism in housing. For the first time, senior housing executives and managers will be required to hold formal, regulated housing qualifications. That’s important.
But tenants and colleagues don’t experience a Level 4 or 5 qualification. They experience the conversation on the doorstep, the tone of an email, the quality of a one‑to‑one, how a complaint is handled when they are already distressed, and how leaders behave when things go wrong. Those are “soft” skills, which, as many sectors are now recognising, are the ones that most determine our trust in any person or service.
In this piece, I want to explore how the new standard creates a foundation for technical competence, and why boards and executives now need to go further, by taking the professionalisation of people management just as seriously.
What the new standard actually changes
At its heart, the Competence and Conduct Standard does two main things.
First, it sets minimum qualification expectations for those in senior housing roles. Senior housing managers will need to hold, or be working towards, an Ofqual regulated housing management qualification at Level 4. Senior housing executives will need a Level 5 or equivalent, broadly at foundation degree level. The aim is obvious and necessary: if you are responsible for social housing, you should understand housing law, tenancy management, building safety, complaints, safeguarding, and the regulatory framework in which you operate.
Second, it requires providers to ensure that staff have the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours needed to deliver high-quality services. That language is encouraging. It recognises that professional competence is not just about technical knowledge; it is also about how people show up in their roles.
However, I believe there is a gap. The standard is very precise about what level of qualification is required, but much looser about what kind of skills and behaviours must be developed and how. It doesn’t and probably can’t spell out the detailed human capabilities that tenants and colleagues feel every day: the ability to listen, to hold difficult conversations, to lead under pressure, to create psychological safety, to communicate with clarity and respect.
That is where the soft skills agenda comes in.
Tenants probably won’t feel qualifications, they feel behaviour
When something goes wrong, damp and mould, antisocial behaviour, a serious repair, a complaint that has dragged on for months, tenants do not ask whether the person in front of them has an Ofqual‑regulated Level 5. They notice:
- Did this person listen to me without rushing or dismissing me?
- Did they take my concerns seriously, especially if I’m scared or angry?
- Did they explain clearly what will happen next, and by when?
- Did they show empathy and respect, or did I feel judged, blamed or “processed”?
Similarly, colleagues’ experience of professionalism is largely mediated through their managers and leaders:
- Do I understand what’s expected of me and why?
- Can I talk honestly about problems without fear of being punished or ignored?
- Does my manager back me when I’m doing the right thing, even if it’s hard?
- Is there space in our one-to-ones for sense‑making, not just task lists?
When I ask participants at my leadership programmes to talk about leaders that have inspired them, whilst they talk about the leaders’ knowledge, more often they point to the leaders’ ability to listen, to not be judgmental or to act calm in any crisis. In other words, professionalism is relational as much as it is technical. You can have a technically flawless policy and still deliver a deeply unprofessional experience if the human encounter is poor. Conversely, you can be managing a complex, messy situation and still leave people feeling respected and heard because of the way you communicate and behave.
If the new standard raises the bar on the “what” of housing, the law, the processes, the standards, the soft skills agenda is about the “how”: how those standards are actually lived, interpreted and embodied in daily work.
Soft skills as the delivery mechanism of the Standard
The irony of the phrase “soft skills” is that it makes this whole domain sound optional or secondary, when in fact it is the primary way that professional competence shows up in practice.
Think about the areas that the new regime is most concerned with: complaints, tenant voice, safety, serious detriment. Every one of these is highly dependent on soft skills.
- Complaints handling relies on active listening, emotional regulation, conflict de‑escalation and the ability to own mistakes without becoming defensive.
- Tenant engagement and scrutiny rely on building trust, facilitating constructive challenge, and being able to hear very uncomfortable feedback without shutting down or retaliating.
- Building safety and compliance conversations often mean explaining technical issues in plain language, being honest about risk and uncertainty, and supporting tenants and colleagues through anxiety and change.
- Internal assurance and culture depend on whether staff feel safe to raise concerns, whether they are encouraged to think critically, and whether leaders walk the talk.
Technical knowledge is the ticket to entry here; you need it to make sound decisions, but it is soft skills that determine whether those decisions are communicated and implemented in ways that uphold dignity and trust.
If the sector responds to the standard by focusing only on getting people through housing qualifications, we will end up with more technically competent managers who may still:
- avoid difficult conversations,
- communicate in ways that feel cold or opaque,
- mishandle conflict and feedback, and
- unintentionally shut down tenant and colleague voices.
That is professionalisation on paper, but not in culture.
What “professional soft skills” look like in housing
Soft skills are sometimes caricatured as “being nice” or “having a good bedside manner”. In reality, they are a rigorous set of capabilities that can and should be developed over time. In the housing context, I would name at least five:
- Relational communication The ability to listen deeply, ask good questions, communicate clearly under pressure, and adapt to meet the needs of the person in front of you. From tenants in crisis to board members scrutinising performance.
- Emotional intelligence Recognising your own emotional state and that of others; moving from reactions to considered responses when you are under pressure or feeling of attack; and staying grounded enough to make wise choices rather than reactive ones.
- Conflict competence Not avoiding tension, but working with it: surfacing issues early, making it safe to disagree, and helping people move from blame towards constructive problem-solving and an opportunity to be creative.
- Coaching and people development Using one-to-ones and everyday conversations to develop others’ thinking and resilience, not just to check tasks. Asking, “What sense are you making of this?” as well as “Have you done it?”
- Systems and self‑awareness Seeing how your own behaviour affects the wider system, understanding how stress and pressure distort judgement, and being able to step back from your own story to take a wider view.
These are not add‑ons. They are the skills that allow technically sound decisions to land well with tenants, and technically complex standards to be translated into day‑to‑day practice with staff.
The gap the standard leaves – and why boards should care
The Competence and Conduct Standard provides boards and executives with a clear compliance checklist: identify who is in scope, ensure they have or are working towards the right qualification, and put in place systems to assure competence and conduct. That is necessary, and it will occupy a lot of attention between now and implementation.
But there is no regulated minimum for “number of hours in people management training” or “evidence of coaching capability at line manager level”. The standard points to behaviours; it does not prescribe the journey by which those behaviours are built and sustained.
This creates a real risk of what I think of as professionalisation lite: we tick the qualification boxes, we update our policies, but we do not invest deeply in the human capacities that make all this live.
Boards should care about this for at least three reasons:
- Risk: Many of the most serious failures in housing have had an interpersonal dimension – tenants not being believed, concerns being minimised, cultures where staff were afraid to speak up. These are failures of soft skills as much as of process.
- Reputation: The sector’s public standing will increasingly rest on how professional it feels to residents. That feeling is shaped in conversations and encounters, not just in annual reports.
- Retention and wellbeing: Under intense regulatory and media scrutiny, the emotional load on staff is high. Without good people management, we will burn out exactly the kind of values‑driven colleagues we most need to keep.
Professionalising soft skills, then, is not a “nice‑to‑have”. It is part of how organisations manage regulatory, reputational and human risk.
Integrating soft skills into the professionalisation agenda
So how do we connect the new standard with a serious commitment to soft skills, rather than running them as parallel, unconnected efforts?
A few practical moves:
- Design development pathways, not just qualifications When mapping who needs which housing qualification, build in a parallel map of people management capabilities. For example: “As you progress to Senior Housing Manager, we expect not only a Level 4 qualification, but also evidence of development in coaching skills, conflict competence and leading under scrutiny.”
- Pair technical learning with reflective practice Encourage learners on housing qualifications to bring real-world communication and leadership dilemmas into reflective groups or coaching. This turns technical content into lived practice rather than exam answers.
- Use culture and alignment data to target investment Instead of sending everyone on generic “leadership training”, use insights from staff surveys and tenant feedback to see where alignment and communication are weakest. Then target soft‑skills development at those levels, often the middle manager and team‑leader layers where messages are translated, not just the top table.
- Reframe line manager development as a regulatory response Help boards see that investing in one-to-one capability, feedback skills and psychological safety is not indulgence. It is part of ensuring that staff feel safe to raise concerns, that complaints are handled well, and that the organisation lives up to the spirit of the Competence and Conduct Standard.
Model professionalism at the top
Professionalisation is not something “we roll out to staff”; it starts with how boards and executives behave. The way senior leaders handle challenge, listen to tenant and colleague voice, and talk about mistakes will set the tone more loudly than any qualification.
From qualified to truly professional
The professionalisation agenda in housing is an opportunity, not just an obligation. It gives the sector a chance to say: “We take our responsibilities so seriously that we are willing to raise the bar on what it means to be a housing professional.”
The new standard anchors that in technical competence. The next step is to name, with equal clarity, the human side of professionalism: how we communicate, how we listen, how we lead ourselves and others when things are hard.
Because in the end, tenants and colleagues won’t remember which level of qualification we held. They’ll remember how we made them feel, what we did when they were at their most vulnerable, and whether our behaviour matched the values we claim.
If we can connect the regulatory push for competence with a genuine commitment to soft skills, we won’t just have more qualified housing managers. We’ll have more humane, resilient, and trustworthy housing organisations and I believe that is the kind of professionalism this moment really calls for.
To discuss any issues raised in this article, email: tracey.mceachran@campbelltickell.com
Find out more about our Competence and Conduct Standard support.
Read our blog: The Competence and Conduct Standard: 5 essential steps to prepare
