If you’re a brokerage leader worried about “The Great Resignation,” you’ve got a lot riding on keeping your staff engaged, happy and productive through one of the most difficult market disruptions the industry has seen. After all, your agents’ success, and hence your brokerage’s success, largely depends on the level of support your staff members provide your agents.
While you might think, “my staff has stuck around; they will stay,” you’re missing a huge factor that will likely come into play in the next few months. As the market continues to shift and on job demands remain high, your employees might come to find themselves lacking motivation, and feeling unfulfilled and burnt out—if they are not already there.
Here are some ways to start shifting your focus to keeping your staff loyal to your brokerage before they start looking elsewhere.
Take a hard look within. When things become chaotic or overwhelming, or you start to feel like you’re losing control and you keep losing staff, the first thing you might be thinking is that it is “normal” to lose team members.
While there are certainly reasons why employees leave even though they are happy at their jobs, there are often problems that could have been solved by taking a close look at what’s really happening within your brokerage.
It might be time to start focusing on your own organizational strengths and gaps and fill the needed gaps to provide an environment that stands apart from others. If you’ve lost track of these strategies, now is the time to reimplement them or bring them to the forefront.
It isn’t always financial. Boosting your staff with a raise is not going to cure a cultural deficit in your brokerage. You may pay them more, but if you fail to acknowledge their needs, give mutual respect, and encourage personal and professional growth, you will miss out on far-reaching effects that most leaders underestimate. When you incorporate the human factor into your brokerage culture, you begin to win not only by fostering a positive work environment for your team but see a significant positive change in your bottom-line results.
Learn to invest. You might be thinking “I don’t have time” to focus on staff initiatives and programs to help boost morale and overall support, but you’ll be spending far more time and money hiring and onboarding if your valuable employees decide to go. Invest the time now into understanding their motivation and goals, and how you can build upon that going forward. It might take some time and resources to create a better work environment that keeps them loyal and feeling valued, but you will be thanking yourself later.
Marion Weiler serves as the executive advisor, growth strategist and CEO at Weiler International LLC, advising brokerage leaders and executive teams during times of growth and change to maximize brand loyalty internally and externally and retain and attract talent driving growth. As a global citizen and former senior executive of industry-leading firms, Weiler has a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges brokerages face, particularly complex when expanding across regions and addressing market differences. Visit www.weilerinternational.com for more information or follow us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/weilerinternational.
