Unpacking three key trends in diversifying real estate

Diversity and inclusion was a strong theme in conversations at EG’s Pavilion at MIPIM this year. Here Clyde & Co partners Annabelle Redman and Will Deeprose and Real Estate Balance managing director Sue Brown share their thoughts on three key ED&I issues facing real estate today. Annabelle Redman: Encouraging and supporting women in moving from middle management to senior leadership Real Estate Balance did a survey last year and at entry level into the real estate industry, we are about 45% female, which is a lot better than it used to be. It was less than 20%. That carries on up to middle management, but you get to board level and it’s less than 30%. That’s nowhere near the 50% that we know is the population, so why is this? One of the reasons is responsibilities at home – and that’s not a sweeping statement. At entry level into industry, women are doing twice the amount of housework and childcare that men are doing. At board level, the gap is double that, which probably means that men on the board have someone at home who is doing it all for them and the women on the board don’t. A need for flexibility is also something that women are looking for, possibly more than men. Men are after it too, but a third of men, compared with 50% of women, according to the stats. That makes it harder to get to leadership positions unless we make those a bit more flexible. What we have been looking at at Clyde & Co to fix this is to make changes to what being on a board actually means, what being in leadership means. Whether that’s the frequency of board meetings, the location, how long they last for, or how to get on a board. What we also do is have a spreadsheet of all the female partners across the globe that is marked with their management experience, whether it’s at department level, local, national, regional, or global, so we can track where the gaps are. Then we know where to plug them and we can recruit, or we can train or coach to that next level. Sue Brown: Diversity of entrance to the profession The Real Estate Balance NextGen Committee has done a lot of work on what we call the “secret sector” and something we have identified as being quite unique to property, which is that when we speak to younger people in the industry, they’re saying that they found out about the sector through a friend, family member or by chance. On the basis that real estate is competing with tech, banking, the public sector and all other sectors with  increasingly diverse talent, the industry hasn’t done a good enough job of explaining the myriad roles and opportunities it offers, and also some of the basics, like what does a surveyor do? Would a young person with no industry experience or connections be able to answer that? No. The routes into the industry have also been too narrow, through professional body-accredited courses at particular universities – we call it exclusive by design. But that is now changing, with many companies seeing the benefits of apprenticeship schemes and non-traditional entry routes. This will be fruitful, but it will take time. When we speak to our recruiters, they say that property is asking for diverse shortlists but is unwilling to budge on certain technical specifications. So something has to give. But we can’t make meaningful change on this by ourselves, it has to be across companies and the industry has to take a unified stance on it, presenting how brilliant is it, with clear messaging for the next generations of brilliant young people. Will Deeprose: The challenges hybrid working brings to D&I Hybrid working could actually be slowing the rate of change. Real Estate Balance’s survey results suggest it is weakening the collegiality of the team. Reasons cited include that conversations about career aspirations aren’t happening because they are reticent to embark on it. They don’t feel they have the same level of trust with their managers. And that’s because management is failing to show sufficient empathy towards team members’ concerns. Add in that men view hybrid working more negatively than women and you get to a point where you have a more male-dominated office environment where those individuals may harbour subconscious bias towards the people who are working more flexibly. And those that are working in a hybrid environment may be harbouring possible imposter syndrome or lack of confidence. It’s easy to see how hybrid working may be making the drive towards a truly diverse management team that bit harder, but it also makes the drive towards a more diverse team that much easier because it creates opportunities for people to get involved, to get back to work, and to get into companies where that might otherwise not be possible in circumstances demanding a nine-to-five office environment. There is, of course, no easy fix. What is obvious though is that we have moved away from having a conversation about whether diversity is important into a conversation about how we implement it. We can only hope that the rate of change is exponential and that in the near future we don’t need to be discussing it at all. In partnership with Main image © Loïc Thébaud