Year in review: Mental health and diversity

It’s been a funny old year. We’ve been separated and isolated from others, we’ve worried about our jobs, we’ve faced huge uncertainty and now, as we enter 2021, we have a glimmer of hope that this pandemic will finally end. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is being rolled out across the nation, marking Britain’s biggest-ever vaccination programme, and we can finally take stock and reflect on what has been one of the most challenging years in modern history. This reflection is needed – especially when it comes to addressing mental health and diversity in real estate. This year has thrown both of these issues into the spotlight, and property now faces a tipping point: it can step up to the mark and prove that it truly wants change (and fast), or it can let this rare opportunity slip by. So which were the milestone stories of this year? Start-up founders struggle The rapid spread of Covid-19 at the beginning of the year led to a government-enforced lockdown on 23 March. By the beginning of April, many businesses were starting to feel the financial impact, especially start-ups. Start-up founders spoke to EG about the toll that keeping their business alive was having on their mental health. Rebeca Perez, chief executive and founder of Inviertis Properties, said she got to a breaking point and felt she couldn’t carry on. “The first few days, I could barely sleep,” she said. “Every time, as a start-up founder, you bet and you risk all your wealth – your family’s wealth.” Others had to completely change their business models just to survive, such as Property Overview founder Cleo Folkes. Property Overview was founded to run face-to-face property courses but had to pivot to providing consultancy work suited to risk management in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. “After the traditional routes for income at Property Overview dried up overnight, owing to the crisis, I decided that I had to do what I could to survive,” she told EG. Redundancies impact Real estate, like many other industries, has been hit hard by Covid. Many businesses felt the impact on their bottom lines. Many property professionals were put on the government’s furlough scheme, but it soon became apparent that companies were having to make the difficult decision of making permanent staff cuts to survive the pandemic. For the agency sector this happened as early as April, when Cushman & Wakefield was revealed to be planning redundancies following a strategic review of the business. By July, hundreds of jobs at the top agencies were put at risk: JLL, Knight Frank, Avison Young, Allsop, CBRE and BNP Paribas Real Estate were among the list of companies embarking on redundancy consultations. By September, many who had lost their jobs had started consultancies of their own, talking to EG frankly about how they viewed their redundancy as an opportunity. But others talked to EG about how they had struggled much more with the process of losing their job, and the prospect of finding another in a tough market. Many people spoke to EG about feeling “forgotten about” and said lessons needed to be learned by companies for the future  . Pandemic pressures on mental health Across the industry, the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of property professionals began to emerge as the months ticked by. Research from London South Bank University showed that working remotely was having a “detrimental” impact on staff wellbeing. EG discussed the research further with the university’s professor of organisational behaviour, Karin Moser. The true extent of the pandemic’s toll on the industry’s mental health was revealed in EG’s annual mental health survey. More than half of property workers said their state of mental health had not improved or had worsened since last year, and two-thirds said the impact of Covid-19 had had a negative effect on their mental health, with many suffering from social isolation, mounting workloads, job security fears and heightened anxiety. Jason Sibthorpe, Avison Young’s UK principal and president, said it was “troubling, but not that surprising” that the majority of property professionals had found working through Covid a struggle. He said he thought the property industry was “struggling more than many other professions”. Racism in property One of the biggest stories this year was the death of US citizen George Floyd on 25 May while in police custody. His death sparked outrage across the world, and the Black Lives Matter movement was a force for power and change. As white privilege was put under the spotlight, it caused many within the industry to ask some searching questions: why is the majority of property’s workforce still overwhelmingly white? Why are there hardly any BAME people in senior positions? And what can we do to change this? Many people from BAME backgrounds talked to EG about their own experiences of being a BAME real estate professional, including Cubic Lease chief executive James Owusu and WiredScore head of London markets Hamish Dupree. Other founders came forward to talk about why BAME tech founders faced fundraising challenges simply because of the colour of their skin. EG also ran a race diversity survey at the height of the BLM movement, which revealed that institutional racism in property was very much the norm. Hundreds of BAME property professionals spoke out about feeling let down, shut down and silenced working in this industry. Property leaders called the survey results an “appalling” insight into racism and discrimination in the industry. As a result, EG turned the mirror on itself and pledged to make changes within the copy we write, the stories we tell and within EG too. To help on that journey we established an inclusive content advisory panel. To send feedback, e-mail lucy.alderson@egi.co.uk or tweet @LucyAJourno or @estatesgazette