Human resources always made one of the most critical departments of any company. This is more than understandable since, when all is said and done, employees are the single most valuable asset in the world of business and the role of HR is to keep these people rallied, satisfied, motivated, and engaged.
It really comes off as a surprise then that there has been very little talk about the role HR plays in the real estate industry. This situation is even more puzzling by the fact that the entire real-estate sector is very character-centric and that the native HR activities feature some intriguing nuances that can be exploited to improve the company’s ROI.
Let us try then to explore these issues in greater depth and see what we can do to make real estate HR even more efficient.
Higher emphasis on personal traits
As we mentioned earlier, the real estate industry is character-centric meaning the personality of its employees has a tremendous role in the daily going of any company, and real estate agents effectively serve the role of representatives of the brand in question. This tread will be present throughout the rest of the article so keep it in mind. Be that as it may, people doing HR for the real estate sector don’t have the commodity of looking at the people strictly as the cogs in the larger machinery but rather as fully realized personalities whose unique personal traits have a great influence on the success of an entire organization.
Diverse candidate pools
Real estate was always seen as a very lucrative sector for establishing a second income flow or even the ultimate second career choice for seniors. Bottom line, the lack of any strict requirements in terms of professional credentials and the high emphasis on employees’ personalities and one of the main driving hiring qualities are leaving the doors open for candidates of all ages, demographics, and backgrounds to take a shot at the glory. If we take a look at this situation from an HR standpoint, we will see that this cacophony of client profiles makes the hiring process trickier and warrants greater effort in this department.
Real estate becoming a global game
This ball was rolling for quite some time now and we can’t say that the globalized economy and the gradual transition to hybrid work arrangements didn’t contribute to this transition. Now, the only thing left to do is to summarize that real estate has become a global game and that it is perfectly feasible that US buyers will look for experts for real estate market in Montenegro. The HR departments need to leverage this global backdrop and expand their efforts to new markets, business models, and client profiles. Of course, remote working, telecommuting, and a hybrid workforce are all critical parts of this process.
Lack of formal experience in property management
In one of the previous sections, we mentioned that the real estate market serves as a great secondary or backup career option. This situation does offer some unique perks mostly in the fact that the HR professionals working in this sector have the benefit of working with an extensive pool of candidates coming from other, less sustainable industries. On the other hand, most of these candidates have little to no experience in the real-estate sector which means they need to undergo extensive onboarding and training before they are ready to tackle responsible assignments which is something to keep in mind.
Knowledge sharing practices
The fact that the duties of a real estate agent are so personalized throws a lot of the traditional HR practices that are implemented in team-based workplaces out of the window. So, in a situation like this most of the traditional HR practices need to be tweaked to bear results. For instance, on the one hand you may have a professional Inner West real estate agent with years of experience in the industry. On the other, there might pop up an absolute beginner taking crack on hasty New York market. The role of HR is to bridge the gap between these two employees and make them both work to the benefit of the company.
Specific policies and industry regulations
Last but not least, we would like to point out that even though the real estate sector doesn’t feature overly rigid candidate requirements, the sector is riddled with various policies and industry regulations the HR professionals need to take into account to get the desired outcomes. All these prescriptions are aimed at establishing unequivocal guidelines, preventing conflicts, encouraging favorable behaviors, and setting up the standards for workplace benefits, promotions, etc. In an environment as loose as the real estate sector, HR needs to take the implementation of these standards almost entirely on its shoulders.
We hope these couple of mentions gave you a general idea about the specific role HR plays in the real estate industry as well as gave you an idea of how you can turn these industry-specific circumstances to your advantage and help your employees realize their full potential. The most important thing to take out from everything we have talked about above is that real estate is a highly individualized sector and the only way to push your company further is to leverage the personal strengths of your employees in the most sensible and efficient manner possible.
The HR Tech Weekly® 