8 signs social housing providers need better recruitment software

Housing associations are full of dedicated, passionate, forward-thinking people who are working incredibly hard to change lives in their communities. Great recruitment is instrumental, helping you attract and keep those people for the long haul.

But often, providers’ recruitment software is putting the brakes on progress.

Most social housing providers still either use basic bolt-on ATS functionality in an all-in-one HR system or one of the old-hat legacy ATS’ that dominate the sector but hasn’t evolved. And that’s if you’ve moved beyond spreadsheets in the first place.

This status quo isn’t good enough. Not for safe, successful, sustainable social housing recruitment that can meet your challenges today.

Here are 8 signs your recruitment software is holding you back – and what to prioritise instead.

#1 – Your ATS is clunky, unintuitive, and hard to use

For many social housing organisations, your current ATS is your first-ever. Maybe you’re building an in-house team for the first time (🎉), or you might’ve reached the end of your tether with spreadsheets (for lots and lots of reasons). But the upshot was, a basic ATS felt like an upgrade.

You had visions of faster recruitment; fewer workarounds; lower agency costs. One easy hub for hiring.

But those visions have become a distant dream, as your team’s saddled with clunky, hard-to-use software that everyone hates.

You waste hours troubleshooting basic questions just for recruitment-as-usual, because nobody understands how to use the system. And unless you breathe down people’s necks constantly, workarounds spring up and email and spreadsheets remain the order of the day. Leaving your software fathering dust.

#2 – Your ATS slows you down (when it should speed you up)

The social housing skills shortage puts a premium on fast hiring. The associations who can get offers out fastest are in the best position to compete for top talent. Which means efficiency is the name of the game.

But the status quo recruitment software many providers rely on is profoundly inefficient.

We endlessly hear the same complaints, about legacy software that has:

• Limited automation causing lots of manual workarounds
• Laborious, many-click workflows wasting everyone’s time
• No back-end control so changes mean waiting weeks for support

#3 – Your ATS slows you down (when it should speed you up)

Candidate experience is a major priority for practically every social housing recruiter. Delivering a fast, modern, engaging recruitment process is a huge component of competing for talent.

But the social housing sector has historically lagged here. And dinosaur talent technology is a major reason.

Your team would probably love to modernise the candidate experience. But if you’re reliant on a legacy, basic ATS your hands are tied, by:

• Basic, inflexible application journeys that you can’t customise by role
• Slow, frustrating application processes that look and feel dated
• No mobile-optimisation, despite two-thirds of applications coming from mobile
• Rigid candidate comms and processes that can’t be adapted for different roles
• No support for branding throughout the ATS
• Old-school plain-text job adverts that lack punch

Delivering for customers means consistently hiring the great people with go-get-‘em and good ideas. If you’re driving those people away with a shoddy candidate experience, it’s your communities who suffer.

#4 – You can’t do employer branding

One of the biggest challenges in attracting social housing candidates is a less-than-sexy sector reputation. To tackle that, employer branding is a crucial recruitment strategy.

But most housing providers can’t act, because your recruitment software can handle the functional basics of recruitment and nothing else. The barest of bare minimums.

• Recruitment marketing is out.
• Talent pooling is out.
• Nurturing candidates is out.

Plus all the candidate experience issues.

Ultimately, if your ATS can’t support modern, forward-looking employer branding, it’ll become a bigger and bigger roadblock to progress.

#5 – “Onboarding” is only about compliance

In 2023, 36% of housing associations reported turnover had increased from the year before. Churn is one of social housing’s deepest challenges, pushing costs up and morale down. And putting enormous pressure on recruiters.

There’s no single solution but better onboarding is an important piece of the puzzle. Best-practice onboarding has a proven impact on retention, productivity, and ramp-up – helping ensure your investment into recruitment pays off.

But most talent acquisition software across the social housing space offers extremely limited onboarding functionality.

It ticks the basic boxes to keep you safe – but it’s missing a much bigger opportunity, to engage, nurture, and inspire candidates. And it’s those critical early-hire metrics where you’ll see the biggest impact.

#6 – Your recruitment reporting sucks

Most housing associations’ recruitment function is a black hole, because they lack the data capabilities to improve visibility.

Most status-quo hiring software in the social housing space offers extremely limited reporting functionality.

And where data is available, it’s often gatekept by providers rather than in-built. So you’re stuck waiting weeks for outdated, retrospective reports that don’t tell you anything useful.

#7 – You can’t add to your stack to innovate

Your current ATS is probably good at integrating to the major job boards you use. We often hear that as a positive. But does it integrate to anything else?

Recruitment today is evolving fast, especially with AI disrupting candidate behaviour at a rate of knots. Smart TA teams harness a thriving ecosystem of third-party providers offering plug-in point solutions, to build a tech stack that does everything they want. And integrates seamlessly back to their ATS.

But most social housing recruitment teams can’t keep pace, because they’re stuck with closed, dead-end software. And even where integrations are possible, they’re rarely pre-built so they represent an enormous cost and time commitment.

#8 – You can’t do anything about ED&I

For most housing providers, improving diversity and representation is a major priority – to build workforces that better represent the communities you’re building.

But the mainstream social housing recruitment software does little – if anything – to support progress here. There’s:

• Little dedicated ED&I functionality
• Little-to-no diversity reporting
• Little process flexibility to accommodate adjustments
• Poor integrations to specialist ED&I solutions

Ultimately, most housing providers want to do more to build inclusive processes that support diverse workforces. But they’re paralysed by the wrong software.

Does your ATS support your ambitions?

Ultimately, knowing whether it’s time to upgrade your ATS hinges on your ambitions. If you’re mostly happy with what you’re doing now, then the time and cost of upgrading might be backburner-able.

But the question is, what does the backburner cost?

As the tide of change creeps across the social housing sector, ever-more associations are seeing the writing on the wall with reactive, disjointed, slow recruitment processes. And as more organisations raise the bar with modern software that helps them evolve, late-adopters risk falling even further behind.

Does your recruitment software help you accelerate to the front of the pack, or leave you in the dust? If the answer’s not the former, perhaps it’s time for an upgrade.

Tribepad is the trusted tech ally to smart(er) recruiters everywhere. Our talent acquisition software is a springboard for fairer, faster, better recruitment for everyone.

As an official NHF supplier, we’re trusted by major UK housing groups including Gleeson, Notting Hill Genesis, Yorkshire Housing, and the Wrekin Housing Group.