Is there an industry crisis in terms of staff retention and attracting new talent?
Feedback from industry business owners and managers in recent weeks has highlighted an industry wide problem – that is – attracting new talent into job roles.
A client of The Able Agent recently stated that he had no applications to fill a property manager role, as he was looking for somebody who has previous experience in a similar role.
Whereas at The Able Agent, we are inundated with people who have very little industry experience or knowledge, but they are desperate for a career in property.
So an important question to consider is how can we balance the level of inexperienced individuals looking to enter the industry, with the immediate need for skilled and experienced staff to fill job vacancies? This blog explores the potential ways to overcome staff retention and new talent attraction challenges.
Attracting New Talent – Solving the Problem
When it comes to attracting new talent, the reality is that most of us end up in this industry by accident! There are very few of us who set out with a career goal to become an estate agent. And then we learn on the job!
Attracting new talent can be difficult, especially when you are wanting to fill roles with experienced individuals. However, hiring those with less experience isn’t a bad idea, asless experienced estate agents are often more eager to learn and are driven to prove themselves in their new role. Instead, you can train them to meet your expectations and fulfil your agency’s needs; this can done by combining on the job learning with off the job training.
Learning on the job has its own problems: we may learn bad practice, we learn what to do, but not why we do it, and there is often a lack of understanding in legal knowledge. If we don’t feel like we are succeeding and feel confident in our job role – we often decide to find a new career, when in fact more support and better knowledge of how to achieve our aspirations, would prevent us leaving. Having underpinning knowledge and a structured training plan means that staff hit the ground running quickly and confidently so new staff can start performing effectively in their job roles whether that is talking confidently as a property manager or spotting business opportunities and hitting targets.
Staff Retention – Solving the Problem
How well do you know your existing team? Who has aspirations to change departments? Who is in sales, but is considering leaving the business because they don’t enjoy selling? Could there be opportunities to transition people from estate agency to property management or from property management to listing or lettings management…
One of the most important roles of a business owner or manager is to understand the knowledge and aspirations of their team, to enable the team to grow and flex in relation to industry movement. Failing to understand and invest in your staff has a direct impact on your retention levels, as over 90% of staff would stay longer at a business if they invested in their training and development. As a result, training and development is an essential part of the business week. Work with your team to establish what knowledge they are lacking and set a training plan to support them. A more confident and knowledgeable team leads to better results and happier customers,
If you have experienced the scenario when a staff member leaves, and you are left with a gaping hole with nobody ready to fill it, then you need to consider how effective is your career progression strategy for your staff. Now is an ideal time to think about getting to know your team to help spot problems before they happen.
When was the last time you carried out staff appraisals for your team? A staff appraisal helps ensure that the entire team are motivated and clear on the business goals.
This is also a great opportunity to support any member of the team who is not performing to your standards. It’s easy to assume that they are unwilling, however in most cases performance can often be linked to a lack of training and development and confidence. Not everybody learns at the same pace and not everyone is skilled at explaining the reasoning behind processes.
Take the opportunity of a staff appraisal meeting to establish any concerns a team member may have. If it is motivation, this is pretty hard to fix. However, if it is knowledge and skill, you can implement a plan to solve these problems. If it’s lack of confidence, training can be an obvious solution.
Essentially, staff training for estate agencies can be away to overcome both the staff retention crisis and the attracting new talent crisis that are becoming an increasing issue in the industry.
If you would like help implementing a training plan post staff appraisal, book a one2one with Charlotte at charlotte@theableagent.co.uk.
Book a one2one with Charlotte
