Is Your Real Estate Organization A Desirable Place to Work?

Company culture has never been more important to maintain the employee satisfaction of your real estate business. Good company culture directly correlates with a higher likelihood of your talent staying with your company for the long term. It should never be overlooked, and it should never be a side project to work on for later – because your company culture is already present whether you like it or not. As defined in sociological terms, culture is the set of beliefs, behaviors, characteristics, and perspectives common to a particular group or society.

Company culture is the same thing as culture as in the sociological term. Your organization’s culture should not be mistaken with free gourmet food, weekend company retreats, holiday parties, or health benefits. Instead, culture is what gives people a shared sense of belonging and purpose. It’s a common way to define themselves and align with the organization’s vision and its contribution. Most importantly, culture encompasses acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. So the question is, are you going to leave it up to chance and random factors what your company’s culture is, or are you going to make an active effort to shape it in the most beneficial way to your success?

While strategy is the vehicle’s steering wheel, culture is the rest of the vehicle. It’s how the engine roars, how the tires grip, and how the transmission transfers power. Strategy is essential, and you have to get it right. However, strategy is the art and science to get all variables working together, yet the most impactful and most volatile of those variables are people. People decide to perform or leave by looking at the culture even if they don’t put it in this way. Even if you get the best talent, whether agents or administration, and provide them with very lucrative compensation packages and incredible benefits, you can only make them stay with a great company culture for the long haul.

In essence, culture is the unwritten rules of the game that you want people to play and stay in your company. You can create a fair, fun, and challenging game or a game that is unfair, where everybody is for themselves, rules constantly change, and people feel undervalued. You can leave the rules of the game to chance and random factors and hope for the best; or actively engage in shaping them. People will either adapt to the rules in that company or quit. In either case, if you have a dysfunctional set of rules for your game, you have just lost a valuable employee.

Here are the core areas that make up a fantastic company culture:

1. Inspire your employees by giving them meaningful work. Meaningful to the business and meaningful to them.

2. Teach, coach, and encourage the members of your organization to master their current job so that it’s done extraordinarily well. Set a standard that mastery is not just about doing their job as best as it can be done, but a philosophy that extends in all areas of their life.

3. Create an environment of respect, energy, transparency, and joy. That means hiring people who visibly demonstrate these qualities. You can’t hire second-rate people to build a first-class business.

4. Celebrate the big wins as well as the small ones. Whether it’s a project completion, a significant sales transaction, or excellent customer feedback, it’s essential that a job well done is recognized and broadcasted among peers.

Take a hard and honest look at your real estate organization and ask yourself the following questions:

Can you define your company culture?

What are the steps your business is actively taking to encourage that all members of your organization are aligned with the company vision and its mission?

How does your organization accommodate your team members to make it a calm, flexible, and inclusive environment?

What changes can your organization make to enhance or realign your employee’s sense of purpose and belonging in your organization?