Change management: your biggest barrier to success

As a supplier to the Real Estate Industry, one of the challenges we face is helping Principals integrate a remote team into their agency. Principals understand the commercial benefits of remote offshore support: firstly, it is more cost effective to have a low cost resource doing the non-revenue generating, or low value work and, secondly, the opportunity cost that it creates in terms of freeing up the local team’s time to focus on revenue generating work is also very clear. However, the commercial benefits alone are often not enough to convince the Principal’s local team to buy into the idea. This is not a problem unique to Real Estate and it accompanies every new project in every industry. The simple answer to all Real Estate Business Leaders out there is to expect the initial push back and have effective tactics in place to address it and, ultimately, convert it into employee buy-in.

In a former career, working on Enterprise-level IT project implementations, I very quickly learnt the change management plan and the project management plan were the same thing - you can’t have one without the other. Here are 5 tactics we have used before that will help you get buy-in from your team and start to create a change culture in your agency.

The reason you get push back from your team is uncertainty. They are uncertain about what the new changes will bring and how those changes will affect their role in the business. Your team want to know What’s-In-It-For-Me (WIFM). There are plenty of ways you can do this; however, the most effective method we have found is work shopping how an offshore team will benefit them.

Get your team in a room together and ask them to write down those tasks they love doing in their job and those tasks they hate doing. They should end up with two lists. I bet the tasks they hate doing will more than likely be mundane, repetitive, and process driven; which are perfect for sending to an offshore team. On the other hand, the tasks they love doing should be the revenue generating tasks that will ultimately result in agency growth and a more profitable business. Ask your team, “If someone else did the tasks you hate doing what impact would this have on your productivity and happiness at work?”.

It is always beneficial to introduce your team to the supplier; in this case, your outsourcing partner. Why hide the identity of who will be working with your team? At Beepo, we strongly encourage client teams to jump on a video conference call with our Philippines team. This really helps your team understand the cultural similarities and take away some of the stigma associated with working with a foreign team. Better yet, don’t discount the option of taking some of your senior members to the Beepo office in The Philippines - guests are always welcome. Keep an eye out for our next industry study tour!

Do your staff truly understand why the change is important to the business? Have you included them in your decision making process and explained to them what things might look like if the new project doesn’t go ahead? Getting the team together and work shopping the current business challenges you face, and how those challenges may impact each one of them individually can be very powerful. Fear of change is often caused by a lack of understanding

Be comfortable in the knowledge that you are not the first horse to bolt. There are plenty of other real estate agencies already building offshore teams. So reach out to your peers and see who can talk to your team about how outsourcing in The Philippines works for them. If you can’t find anyone that is already doing it, ask us; we can easily pass on the details of some customers who would be more than happy to talk to you and your team about their experience.

Objections from your local team can sometimes be as simple as, “how is it practical to work with someone who is based 8500kms away in another country?”. To overcome this, demonstrate how easy today’s technology has made it. All you need is a webcam, headset, computer and a cost effective, easy to use web conferencing tool (we use Zoom). We have found that once we have shown customers how to use Zoom to record training videos, whiteboard ideas, meet with multiple stakeholders etc. employees start to see how easy the technology is to use and can see, in a practical sense, how outsourcing can work for them.

Don’t let employee push back be the barrier to you implementing an offshore team in your agency. Push back is normal and it is your role as a leader to educate your team, secure buy-in from them and ultimately create a change culture in your business.