COMMENT How best to attract, nurture and reward talent? Like so much else, it’s changing fast. And nowhere is that change most evident than in tech.
For those involved, the hardest job to recruit for in real estate today is chief technology officer.
It is by no means the most common role. It’s certainly not the best understood. But for sizeable real estate businesses, it is becoming increasingly necessary. And that is why it’s a problem.
Ambitious CTOs working in other sectors won’t yet routinely think of commercial real estate as a sector which can add sparkle to their CV.
Meanwhile, firms in the sector that are hiring may not know what they expect of this newly influential cadre. No wonder it’s tough.
The market won’t make life easier. London may continue to be the top city destination both for tech talent moving within Europe, as well as for those entering the tech industry from outside the region, but ongoing success cannot be taken for granted.
One in four UK tech businesses say that the triggering of Article 50 has affected their hiring decisions, according to Atomico’s State of the European Tech Industry report. As Parity Technologies’ Jutta Steiner told the authors: “A lot of smart people I know in tech are moving from London to Berlin after Brexit – they are really open to trying to go elsewhere.”
UK real estate needs to work hard to draw fresh talent to the sector and to ensure it stays in the country. These challenges are not unique to tech, of course. And as the sector rightly focuses on creating a more diverse talent pool, fresh thinking on luring talent applies across the board.
As it does when it comes to nurturing and rewarding talent once in the business.
In the old days the end goal was so much simpler: a seat on the board with the money and status it would bring. But is that so covetable these days? Little in the business world is scrutinised as closely as boardroom pay, and company directors’ obligations have swelled in number and onerousness.
One chief executive tells me he spends more time talking members of his team out of their boardroom ambitions, rather than encouraging them to pursue them. “I tell them I can pay them the same as if they were on the board and they escape the scrutiny that comes with it,” he says. When it comes to talent, it may be time to discard all the old assumptions.
More than one in 10 commercial buildings are at risk of being unlettable when the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards come into effect next April. The market has known about the 2018 deadline for five years now. Yet in 2014 the figure for unlettable buildings was a not-dissimilar-enough 16.5%. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
There are only four uses of the word “urgent” in Sadiq Kahn’s new London Plan, a document which reveals much about the London mayor’s priorities. Its 140,624 words include just one mention of “real estate”, although there 30 of “property”. It contains 50 uses of “collaborate” or “collaboration”, 138 of “regenerate” and “regeneration” and 209 of “residential”. “Architecture” is there on just five occasions, but “design” crops up a reassuringly high 481 times.
However, it’s the 673 uses of “housing” and 1,412 of “develop” and “development” that resonate most. If that doesn’t speak volumes about this mayor’s priorities I don’t know what does. He will be held to account on that.
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