With something approaching normality returning before the end of the summer, more and more of us will be headed back to our offices, setting up in-real-life meetings and remembering how to network in 4D and not in our slippers.
For many it will be a welcome return to after-work drinks, pressing the flesh and building social capital through in-person relationships. For others there may be anxiety, an inability or just no desire to return to the way things were.
In a sector where career progression has very much been based who you know, what will the sector need to do to make sure that everyone is offered the same opportunity to succeed in a world that, for the medium term at least, looks set to be largely hybrid?
EG gathered four women across a range of real estate businesses to find out.
For Lauren Fendick, real estate partner and head of the life sciences real estate group at Taylor Wessing, the answer is clear.
“I think it is about everyone having empathy and a level of EQ where you really understand each other and can put yourself in other people’s shoes,” she says.
Empathy and emotional intelligence are two words that have not traditionally been thrown around in real estate circles, but as individuals begin to emerge from the mass homeworking experiment of the past 15 months, they will become just as vital as “bonus” and “salary” when it comes to attracting and retaining talent.
Comfort is key
The return to how work and careers used to be done will be gradual. Lessons will need to be learned about how to balance hybrid working patterns, enabling home and office workers to seamlessly interact and patience will be needed as people adjust to a new normal.
The first step in bringing talent back into an office will be in making people feel comfortable and bringing all the positives that the great WFH experiment has unearthed back into the office.
“I have really enjoyed seeing a lot of people higher up in the company online and seeing them in their comfort zone, in their own homes, has really brought some barriers down,” says Briony Grant, an asset manager at Oxford Properties.
She wants to see those barriers stay down, whether individuals are in the office or not, and see those relationships built up virtually, where a book on a bookshelf, child or pet interruption would lead to conversations that may never have happened pre-Covid.
For Octopus Real Estate HR business partner Zoe Cooke, part of the programme to bring people back to in-real-life interactions will be about emphasising the benefits of going back to the office.
“Something I have found by going back a little bit more is that those people that I didn’t know and didn’t have a necessary reason to just talk to, that I would maybe bump into at tea point, I’m already building stronger relationships with them about things that aren’t work-related,” says Cooke. “And that’s one of the real benefits, just that more personal connection that you might have with people that you don’t interact with on a day-to-day basis.”
Building relationships
“One of our key challenges is bringing those people who have joined over the course of the past 15 months back into the real-life face-to-face setting and building relationships for people that don’t have those existing relationships,” she adds.
To do that will require hard work by leadership, says JLL’s HR business partner Chenge Bobo. They will have to both lead by example by returning to in-real-life interactions while empathising with those who may be suffering with social anxiety around the return.
“There is a big part for leaders to play in managing the social anxiety,” says Bobo. “The whole leadership schedule becomes really important because as soon as the leaders feel confident to return to the office then, whether you’re a new starter or you’re junior or senior, that kind of presence gives comfort.”
But that challenge for leadership is not just going to be about showcasing normalcy, it is also going to have to focus even more heavily on inclusion.
In a world of work where meetings may be conducted with half of the attendees present in a physical meeting room and the rest in a virtual room, leaders will have a responsibility to make sure everyone is heard.
“There is a growing role for the chair [of hybrid meetings] to really bring people in, whether that be people sat around the table in the room with them or on a screen, and make sure that we have heard from everyone, which I think we would tend to do in a fairly formal meetings,” says Octopus’s Cooke. “But we will need a chair even more so in less formal meetings to make sure that everyone is being heard, particularly if you’ve got the majority, either at home or around the table.”
Rethinking networking
And that inclusivity isn’t just reserved to meetings, the industry has been given the opportunity to make its traditional networking events more inclusive too.
“To make face-to-face more inclusive, meeting rooms, event space, hospitality should really be repurposed as a place where people feel comfortable and want to stay,” says Oxford’s Grant. “Networking events should be in a more comfortable environment. We are so used to, pre-Covid, walking into a large room filled with people that we do not necessarily all know but it’s very daunting, especially for new graduates and interns.”
Taylor Wessing’s Fendick agrees.
“Social anxiety existed pre-Covid. You would have had people who didn’t really enjoy networking or didn’t feel like they had the tools or the skills to do networking,” she says. “So we’ve really got to focus on how we can make those people feel more comfortable, whether it’s in an online environment, whether it’s extra training, whether it’s having smaller event space and that kind of thing to make it feel more comfortable.”
“We are looking at breakfast meetings, lunch meetings, to give the availability to more people and also to take the focus away from the traditional socialising and within the industry,” says Fendick. “One of the things we are looking at is getting our juniors to do networking events across the piece, so with clients and with their advisers, to try and integrate and create a new networking opportunity.”
Cooke adds: “One of the things were starting to consider pre-Covid was how do we balance out keeping golf days – because they are popular – but also bring in more variety? I’m making sure that we get something that is engaging, that we do bring people from across all spectrums to and am looking at how we bring that into a more inclusive space for people who don’t necessarily have that network.
“Networking events work really well for people who are already networked and want to build them a little bit further,” she adds, “but if you’re brand new into the industry it can be really daunting, and that can be a real barrier for your career.”
“We are going to need to change as an industry, without a shadow of a doubt,” says JLL’s Bobo, but, she says, for the better, especially for talent. For while bumping into the boss while grabbing a cuppa and sharing a laugh about that time their cat jumped up on their desk during a Teams call or rubbing shoulders with the great and the good at an industry event might not happen for everyone in a hybrid environment, businesses now have the ability to draw talent from further afield and integrate staff from all around the world to create even greater career opportunities.
As much as the past 15 months have been a great big working-from-home experiment, the next 15 months could well be a great big returning-to-face-to-face experiment. Navigating the hybrid solution that is being proposed by so many businesses will undoubtedly come with some twists and turns but empathy, understanding and communication should clear a path through..
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews
