For Real Estate Balance managing director Sue Brown, real estate has come a long way since she began her career in the sector 40 years ago. But while the sector has learnt to talk a good a game, has it actually learnt how to play?
When it comes to diversity, or difference, in the workplace is real estate doing enough to move from a position of tolerance to celebrating the opportunities that an authentically diverse and inclusive workforce can bring to business?
“People sometimes say that there’s not been any change,” says Brown. “But I’ve been around the industry for 40 years and there has been huge change. For the first 20 of those 40 years, I was the only woman in the room, and that has changed dramatically.”
Embracing difference
But while Brown says change has taken place, she admits it is still not enough.
Jane Hollinshead, the recently installed managing director of people and culture at Canary Wharf Group, says progress has been glacial and any movement there has been has largely been short-lived.
“If we turn the clock back 10 years, progress is absolutely glacial. We’ve had these spikes where the real estate industry has been jolted into doing things differently, whether it’s MeToo, whether it’s Black Lives Matter, all of those things that really make people sit up and listen,” she says. “But then if we’re being really honest with ourselves, they are just spikes, aren’t they? And they fall back down, and we end up going into a bit of a torpor about pace and the direction of travel.”
For JLL’s Sasha Covington, chief operating officer in the firm’s valuation advisory business, real estate is still very much in the position of tolerating differences, and it is that that is holding the sector back from making real, lasting change.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” she says. “Embracing is where we want everyone to be. There is a difference between embracing and tolerance, to me. Tolerance is a willingness to be different in the moment. Do it long enough to tolerate it, I’ll acknowledge your difference now and then I’ll go back to my normal ways. When we’re tolerating something, we are still experiencing judgment. That’s not where we want to be. We want to be embracing, and I really don’t think we’re there yet, we’re not in that path where we are embracing race, embracing culture, embracing different disabilities, LGBT and gender.”
And it is imperative that all businesses, regardless of sector, move from tolerance to embracing if they want to attract talent, retain talent and deliver a good service.
“The difference is really about the energy in the organisation that having a more diverse workforce brings,” says head of HR at Savills Noel McGonigle. “And that energy has a number of benefits. It benefits us in terms of attracting talent to the organisation because when people come to look at us on work experience or through the various programmes then they feel that energy and that attracts them to the organisation. I think similarly for our clients, it means that not only do we have a broader range of thinking to provide better services, but they like the energy that that diversity brings too.”
Diverse workforce for diverse communities
And, for an industry that builds communities for everyone, being able to understand and live those differences is essential, says Oxford Properties’ Pierre-Etienne Accarier-Francoz.
“The very important thing for us is that we’re building real estate for communities,” says Accarier-Francoz. “How could we build real estate for such a diverse type of community if we don’t have a diverse workforce?”
The solution it seems lies in the next generation. A generation where the debates that are being had around boardroom tables today seem bizarre.
“For a lot of the next generation it is a complete anomaly that any company thinks like some real estate companies do,” says Hollinshead. “I think there has to be that generational shift, with certain people passing over and out and a whole new generation of people coming through and being the senior leaders and the decision makers because they do see life through a different lens.”
The current lens is very much focused on the superficial reasons that diversity is good for business. Changes today are being led by our heads and by our purse strings but for the real shift to embracing diversity and celebrating difference to happen it has to be deep in a company’s DNA, in its heart.
“It has to sit within every single business decision that you make about your business at every single level, from the top down to the bottom,” says Hollinshead. “The real estate industry right now has got on board with the cerebral bit of why this stuff is really important. And I think particularly those real estate companies that are listed or are funds, where they’ve got pressure being applied from their investor base or from their shareholders, they’ve got those levers that are being pulled on a regular basis. But that, even where you’ve got those companies, there’s still a distinction between fulfilling targets and dealing with Hampton-Alexander, or Davis or Parker whatever the best practice is, and the gap between that and the real emotional buy-in of understanding why this makes the business better.”
She adds: “The connection between the two hasn’t gelled yet and I think that’s probably why we’re in this position where we’re still talking about fear, because we haven’t demonstrated that transition from hearts to minds.”
Stick to the roadmap
But real estate can demonstrate that shift, says Michael Toft, head of care homes at Octopus Real Estate. He believes that the sector has taken some giant leaps forward in changing minds and hearts but that it’s just taking a little bit longer than we’d all like.
“We are on a journey,” he says. “We have seen some great steps and are moving in the right direction. It’s just a bit of the old proverbial oil tanker. It does take a long time to change but I do think that the stepping stones and the roadmap are in place and that we can actually move towards embracing and celebrating diversity in the workplace.”
And real estate shouldn’t be too hard on itself, adds Hollinshead. The wider world is in a bit of a state itself.
“The challenge is, can you out-manoeuvre society?” she asks. “Because some of the stuff that’s going on in society is permeating into what’s happening within our industry. So how do you flip it on its head and make our industry watertight? So that some of the really awful stuff that happens to societies is not happening within real estate and real estate becomes a centre of gravity for attracting difference.”
It is a great ambition for real estate to have. To move from those spikes of tolerance to becoming a mecca of acceptance for everyone. And it’s an ambition that isn’t really optional. There’s a “moral imperative” says REB’s Brown, “you can’t afford to stand still”, says Octopus’s Toft and there has “never been a more critical time” to listen and make the change, says Canary Wharf’s Hollinshead.
So, will you?
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@eg.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @EGPropertyNews
