Lesson 1 – innovation drives change, growth and development:
I have always found comfort in the knowledge that letting agents do not easily lend themselves to moving fully online. The need for boots on the ground, local knowledge and local contacts is pretty huge if customer service is your driver. Lockdown has not changed that, but it has highlighted just how much innovation can change our business. The speed with which we have had to introduce new systems and embrace new ways of working has surprised all of us. Increased recognition and acceptance of remote working has also accelerated our growth and development plans. We started a significant new project last week with increased confidence and determination. If we can innovate to manage lockdown, we can definitely also innovate to expand and grow our business.
Lesson 2 – the need for a high trust, high support culture:
The most obvious change is of course the ability to work much more flexibly between home and the office. We manage a lot of property and definitely need staff cover for our busy west end office, but "why" each member of the team does or does not come to the office each day has now become a much bigger and more interesting question for them and for us. Previously, the option to work from home felt like some sort of additional staff benefit, now it just feels like common sense. As lockdown increasingly moves into the past getting the right balance will demand a progressive high trust, high support culture and call out the best in all of us.
Lesson 3 – more peer to peer learning:
An incredibly effective way to increase skills in the workplace is to have a strong peer to peer learning culture. Some of our best staff meetings have been learning new skills together. When we learn something new that is helpful we naturally want to share it with others. Getting the message across in the most effective and helpful way takes a bit of practice - we are all getting much better.
Lesson 4 - don't rush the big decisions:
When the heat is turned up and hard decisions have to be made, strongly held views and supressed frustrations find their way to the surface. Putting all of these views on the table and covering all the bases before making big decisions has made all the difference. Even though we are still a small business, lockdown has challenged and developed our management team. It has increased our sense of joint responsibility, lead to better and more workable decisions and increased our understanding and respect for each other.
Lesson 5 – chasing new technology is huge:
Seeking out and developing new technology has always been an important part of who we are. During lockdown we have developed a number of new internal and remote systems to increase efficiency and support our customers as much as we possibly can. In order to provide service and benefits to our customers that stand out and really make a difference we need to constantly develop, adapt and improve our existing systems and embrace new technology whenever and wherever we can.
Lesson 6 – you quite simply cannot ever focus too much on customer service:
Support from our customer base (our tenants and our landlords) has made such a difference during lockdown. The team have all been hugely focused on customer service throughout and decisions to strengthen and develop our property management team earlier this year got us off to a really strong lockdown start. We are all more passionate than ever about helping our customers!
Ewan McLean-Foreman
Managing Director