Wellbeing in real estate: an exercise in empathy

If the coronavirus crisis sped up changes in the business world that were already happening, one of the most welcome must be the heightened focus on wellbeing. Already working its way up the corporate agenda before the pandemic struck, the events of the past 18 months have made it even more critical that business leaders prioritise the mental health of their workforce and help team members to tackle the varied, individual challenges they have faced. That’s no simple task. As EG’s latest mental health survey showed, for every real estate professional who has found a better work-life balance during the pandemic, there is another whose mental health has suffered during more than a year of isolation working at home. As workers begin to return to the office – whether for a couple of days a week or five days on the trot – companies will need to offer different ways of working to support different needs. “We are going to be in that messy hybrid space with different levels of hybrid arrangements for different people,” says Juliet Smithson, head of operations at LionHeart, the benevolent fund for the RICS. “As leaders, we have to be comfortable with the fact that there is not a ‘one size fits all’ and a spectrum of working processes is probably where we are going to be.” Smithson joined EG with guests from the Crown Estate and Savills to discuss the results of the survey and the lessons that business leaders should take away from the experiences of the past 18 months. Talk from the top The fact that most respondents said their employer’s focus on wellbeing and mental health has improved over the past years is an inarguable win, our guests agreed. The key now is to keep on course and improve further. “Anything that helps keep that conversation going is great,” says Smithson. Real estate companies that have prioritised wellbeing for years have found new ways to advance the cause during the pandemic. Savills started its mental health programme in 2017 when it signed the Time to Change pledge, set up to help break down the stigmas around discussing mental health openly. Louise Ashley, a human resources business partner at the firm, says the agency has made strides over the years since in terms of embedding wellbeing in the business. “We have trained a lot of mental health champions across the business – we’ve got just shy of 200 now – and in the past 12 months we have set up a programme for managers’ mental health training. The take-up of that has been really good,” Ashley says. “We’ve also got senior management engaging in conversations about mental health, and executive directors who are mental health champions.” At the Crown Estate, the team introduced My Whole Self sessions once a month, giving employees a forum in which they can come together and share stories and experiences. Many of those have been deeply personal, says Clara Dawson, HSE and wellbeing business partner, tackling topics such as anxiety and team members’ transgender journeys. But some of the greatest breakthroughs in terms of making wellbeing part of the workplace dialogue have come from the top, Dawson adds. “What has worked really well for us is when the senior management have been talking positively about wellbeing and mental health like an everyday subject,” she says. “They have made it the norm. There is so much power in sharing stories and talking… When leaders have spoken positively about wellbeing and mental health, we all seem to follow.” Visible and invisible struggles Dawson now hopes those leaders, across the industry, will show empathy to their team members as businesses adapt to life after the pandemic. “When we break any bone or damage any organ, people understand our pain and struggles. I just find that anything associated with mental health – which is our brain and which is an organ – we seem to struggle to understand and empathise sometimes,” she says. “We need to treat mental health, the brain, the same as every other organ in our body.” Readjusting to working in an office for at least part of the working week will be a challenge for many, says Savills’ Ashley. Some may find they are now better able to draw a line between their home life and the pressures of work. “Because there has been this blurred line between the office and your home space, people have been working long hours,” Ashley adds. “It has meant not having flexibility or that break between home and work.” For others, the move to head back to the office risks being “the straw that breaks the camel’s back”, says LionHeart’s Smithson. “If [people feel] ‘I’m keeping my plates spinning, but I’m at home’, [employers asking] ‘could you go into the office three days a week?’ is the thing that feels like the breaking point – just one extra change. One extra demand,” she adds. “We have to be trusting of our teams to say, ‘I can’t do this right now’, and not to keep things hidden and keep going until they just fall apart.” If the dialogue remains open even when Covid-19 is – hopefully – a memory, there is at least one silver lining from the events of the past 18 months. “We can’t stop the conversation,” says Dawson. “At the Crown Estate, wellbeing touches every single department. We are designing in wellbeing, so it’s with the development team and designers. It’s on our construction sites. It’s with sustainability. It’s with the people team. It’s heavily with the health and safety team. It’s with everybody. Wellbeing is not something in isolation that we just talk about for two years and then suddenly it’s over. It’s ingrained in our lives.” To send feedback, e-mail tim.burke@eg.co.uk or tweet @_tim_burke or @EGPropertyNews Image © Pexels/Kindel Media