East Lothian Housing Association: Adapting our workforce for the future

East Lothian Housing Association (ELHA) is an affordable housing provider with over 1,500 homes in Scotland. 

Martin Pollhammer, chief executive says they are “a progressive housing association” when tackling their ways of working in the sector as all of their services are provided through digital channels.

Their stats confirm this: 

• 91 per cent of tenants transact digitally themselves
• 88 per cent are paper-free

In 2012, whilst working on succession planning for ELHA, the organisation came to the realisation that the age profile of their workforce was over 70 per cent aged 46 and over, meaning in around 10-15 years’ time they would be losing nearly three quarters of their business to retirement.

With around 15 per cent of their business in the retirement age groups already (post 56 years) they knew they would eventually have to take action to recruit more young people into their workforce with the skills and knowledge they were losing to retirement.

Hitting a tipping point

In 2018, due to a low turnover rate in the team, they now had 30 per cent of staff aged 56-65 and another 30 per cent aged 46-55. It was time to put the plans in place to bring in a modern apprenticeships programme before they lost the opportunity to have the long term members of staff train the younger people joining.

The programme would set the groundwork for their succession planning in key roles where they would need particular skills or knowledge that would usually be hard to recruit for such as digital and financial skills.

To enable the programme and training that it required for modern apprentices coming in, the company implemented long and extended notice periods for the workforce to allow for better succession planning.

Long and extended notice periods

The long notice periods applied to everyone except the chief executive, and offered employees the chance to give 12 to 18 months’ notice, for which the staff member would receive a bonus equivalent to six weeks’ pay when leaving at the end. Staff could also still give a normal one month notice period during this period if they needed to, but obviously would not receive the bonus if they left earlier.

Extended notice periods were offered to key staff members (not including the chief executive or directors who already had longer contractual notice periods) on an annual basis as part of the preparation of the annual succession plan. This required key members of the team to give three months’ notice (rather than the standard one months’ notice) in exchange for one additional salary increment.

These extended notice periods gave ELHA more notice to hire a replacement into any key roles becoming vacant in the short term, whereas the long notice periods gave time to recruit and train new people, and wherever possible modern apprentices, to fill roles becoming vacant in a more planned way elsewhere in the business.

What have the outcomes been at ELHA?

Nearly one in five of the team at ELHA are now current or former modern apprentices, with that rate growing. You can see the transition in the age profiles in 2012, 2018 and then through 2020-2024 in this video:

This shows that in 2024, the number of staff in the retirement bracket, post 56 years, was down to 20 per cent, whilst the overall age profile is much more balanced, with a greater number of younger staff members, but this remains a work in progress.

So far, the long notice periods are working, giving time to plan and train new staff; it has been taken up by five people, and two of their successors who came in on modern apprenticeships are now already at officer level.  At senior level, two new directors overlapped with their predecessors for one month, despite the need for a full external recruitment process and the new directors serving three month notice periods with their previous employers.

Extended periods also work, but no one that has opted to take it has actually left yet. This has given the business greater certainty around key posts, but for a few that decided not to accept the offer, it prompted conversations about future options and intentions, and gave greater insight into their risk of leaving.

ELHA have updated their recruitment policy so whenever an assistant role becomes available, they consider any modern apprentices already in the business, who can be asked to vary their duties to the assistant role for the remainder of their modern apprentice contract (whilst remaining as a modern apprentice). Then, when their apprenticeship is finished, if they are successfully undertaking the duties of the assistant role, they can be offered it on a permanent basis. Modern apprentices can also be ‘poached’ from other departments too if their skills and knowledge appear to meet the needs of a vacant role in another area of the business, encouraging progression and transition, but more importantly providing a flexible way to ensure promising modern apprentices are able to progress into a career in housing as vacancies arise.

Leading the future generation

ELHA are active in their local schools talking about their work in the sector with managing homes and homelessness in their area to help encourage more young people to consider a career in housing.

Our president’s campaign for 2024/25 is CHOOSE HOUSING and aims to highlight the choice of available housing careers to young people. ELHA are doing their bit to share the message and now with the CHOOSE HOUSING toolkit everyone can play their part in sharing housing as a career of choice.

CHOOSE HOUSING toolkit