Another 2.8 Million Real Estate Candidate’s You’re Missing—Part 2

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Windshield-repairs -April 25Earlier this week, I pointed out a new trend that has developed in the workforce.  This trend is the long-term and extensive use of temporary or contract workers.

If you need to catch-up, read the WorkPuzzle posted earlier this week.

The fact that these workers exist (and many are frustrated with their current work situation) was our previous topic, but how can a real estate hiring manager engage these workers successfully?

Finding where they work.   The first step to engaging contract workers is finding where they work.   Here are the industries where you’re most likely to find temp/contract workers:

Agricultural, Automotive Repair, Barber/Beauty/Nail Salons, Computer Programmers, Software Designers, Consultants, Insurance/Financial Services,

Long-Haul Truck Drivers, Medical Professionals, First Level Health Care /In Home Care, Office Personnel , Pharmacists, Political Campaigns / Petition Gatherers, Inside/Outside Sales, Telemarketing, Travel Agents, Information Technology, Engineering /Scientific, Accounting/Finance, Management (including executives), Legal.

It may seem a little awkward at first, but many of these workers are people that you could connect with during your normal business and personal dealings.  

For example, let’s suppose that you’re having a life insurance physical and the person sent to your office to take your blood sample shows up for her appointment.

It’s not that hard to say something like this:

“Hey, do you happen to be a contract worker?  I was reading recently that about the increase in contract positions…”

Learning about their frustration.  If individuals are doing contract work and they’re frustrated with their situation, they’ll be more than happy to tell you about it.

Ask a few questions such as:

“How did you get this job?” 

“Was this your first choice, or were you originally looking for something more permanent?”

“Do you feel like there is a future in this job, or is it a stepping stone to something else down the road?”

During the discussion, ask a few more open-ended follow-up questions based on their answers.   It won’t be long before you uncover a bunch of frustration about their employment circumstances.

Most of the frustration will center around two issues—they’ll probably dislike the work their doing, and they won’t see a viable future in staying in this role for a long period of time.

Offer a Better Alternative.  If someone is experiencing a high level of frustration, they will naturally be more open to new ideas.   It’s not hard to say something like this:

“Considering your situation, have you ever thought about working in a field that would offer more long-term potential and give you more control over your future?”

“I manage a local real estate office, and I work with many great agents who come from all different career backgrounds and now have successful careers.  Perhaps this could be a fit for you.”

As you carry on this part of the discussion, it’s helpful to also point out that transitioning to real estate from a temporary or contract position can be less risky and financially more palatable for workers in contract positions.  

Why?   Because contract workers often have some flexibility over the number of hours they work and the schedules they keep.   They may be able to slowly ramp down their contract work level as they increase their focus on real estate.

There are a lot of temps/contract employees working in today’s job market.  Try identifying them and engaging them in a discussion about their careers.  It’s not as hard as it may sound at first, and soon you’ll start to enjoy the challenge.  Let me know how it goes!

 

BenHessPic2011Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Another 2.8 Million Real Estate Candidates You’re Missing

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Last year, I wrote a WorkPuzzle on the large pockets of workers in the economy that would be well
positioned to transition to a real estate career.  In total, there are over 6-million workers who are “underemployed” and could potentially use their education and talent to upgrade their careers in the real TempWanted - April 22 topestate industry.

Over the weekend, NBC News reporter Martha White uncovered another 2.8 million employees in today’s workforce who may be open to transitioning to the real estate industry.

Who are these individuals?  They’re temporary or contract workers (often called temps), and they now make up over 2% of the workforce in the United States. 

They may be more open to transitioning to industries such as real estate because the nature of the temp employment world is changing.   What used to be a pathway to fulltime employee status in many companies is now a dead-end road.   White makes these observations,

For Americans who can’t find jobs, the booming demand for temp workers has been a path out of unemployment, but now many fear it’s a dead-end route.

With full-time work hard to find, these workers have built temping into a de facto career, minus vacation, sick days or insurance. The assignments might be temporary — a few months here, a year there — but labor economists warn that companies’ growing hunger for a workforce they can switch on and off could do permanent damage to these workers’ career trajectories and retirement plans.

Like underemployed workers (those working less than 29 hours per week), these individuals are not receiving traditional employee benefits.  This “levels the playing field” for what real estate companies are able to offer new agents.

So while the frontend of the arrangement for real estate agents looks similar to the value proposition being offered to temp workers, there is much more upside potential in the real estate industry.   Agents who are successful establish independent businesses that produce higher wages and earn the capacity to purchase the traditional employee benefits. 

Most temp workers will never have this advantage.  White points out the structural changes that are happening in the workforce are probably here to stay.

Economists say it’s typical for temporary hiring to rise initially as the economy recovers, before businesses are ready to commit to hiring full-time employees. But, … the current pattern doesn’t fit historic norms.

Right now we’re seeing something interesting.  We’ve seen [temporary hiring] surpass its previous highs, so it looks like there could be a structural shift going on, too. There’s a reason to believe we might see some increase in the use of temporary help in general.

No one wants to be stuck in a temp job with little opportunity for growth and advancement, but that’s what most traditional companies are offering these workers.  To a person in this situation, transitioning to a real estate career may seem compelling.

Tempgraph - April 22 bottom

Finally, who are the people who find themselves in this position?  In addition to being numerous, they also share a few other characteristics.  First and most importantly, they are people who want to work, and are more established in their careers.

Second, they generally have education and skills that allow them to get up and running certain jobs quickly.  For example, White demonstrates how diverse the temp worker market has now become:

More kinds of businesses seem to be drawing that conclusion, as industries not thought of as traditional temp work territory are using more contract workers. [For example, even] adjunct college professors face much of the same uncertainty and lower wages than their full-time counterparts.

Bottom line

There is a large and growing part of the workforce who are employed in temporary/contract jobs.  While many of these individuals are educated and talented, they are frustrated because they are not being offered permanent positions and see little hope for career advancement.   Transitioning to the real estate industry may be a better option for some of these individuals.

In my next WorkPuzzle, I’ll address the issue engaging these workers successfully and helping them make the transition to a career in real estate.

BenHessPic2011Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

To Be or Not to Be – Audited

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

It's not that I have anything to hide, but the prospect of an audit just doesn’t sound very pleasant. Although I have some friends who tell me that their audits were pain free, I nevertheless hope to avoid the experience.

My curiosity led me to Google a search about the odds of an audit. Here is what I found in a Washington Post article written by Christopher Ingraham.

“The Associated Press reported Monday that your chances of getting audited are the lowest in years. ‘This year, the IRS will have fewer agents auditing returns than at any time since at least the 1980s,’ the report says. Noting that less than one percent of individual returns were audited last year, the story quotes IRS Commissioner John Koskinen as saying that the audit rate will be even lower this year.”

If you want some historic perspective, the IRS doesn't make it easy. It has reported on annual audit rates for decades, but these figures are buried deep within PDFs of its annual reports. I dug up the audit rates going back to 1980, which I charted below.

April 17th
 

Last year did indeed mark the first time audit rates dipped below one percent since 2006. But the rate was even lower in previous years, bottoming out at 0.49 percent in 2000. Audit rates were highest over this time period in the early 1980s, when more than 2 percent of individual returns were examined by auditors.

Audit rates differ by income. The IRS doesn't provide consistent income breakdowns of the audit data over time, but in 2013 your chance of getting audited was 0.88 percent if your income was under $200,000, 3.26 percent for incomes greater than $200,000, and 10.85 percent for earners making over $1 million per year.

In sum, you're about half as likely to get audited today as you were in 1980, but twice as likely as you were in 2000. If you get audited this year, congratulations! You are the one percent – at least when it comes to tax filers.”

This was an informative article and I hope it relieves some anxiety… except, of course, for those of you who make more than 1 million a year. 

Have a Happy Easter or Joyous Passover or a Great Weekend!

 

DMPhotoWorkPuzzleEditor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

New to the Endangered List: Reading

Sunday, April 13, 2014

I’ve noticed over the last couple of years that my ability to read for long stretches of time has shortened. Blog April 15thI’m now reading four books at once, partly because they are easily accessible on my Kindle and partly because I can't seem to focus on one for any length of time without getting distracted and moving onto the next one.

In fact, when I read at bedtime I find myself falling asleep after reading just a couple of pages. And, until I read the recent article in the Washington Post I believed that it was all due to being busy and perhaps older.

There is apparently another cause for all of the above symptoms.

Neuroscience researchers are discovering something pretty alarming.

“Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.

“I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing,” said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of 'Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.'

If the rise of nonstop cable TV news gave the world a culture of sound bites, the Internet, Wolf said, is bringing about an eye byte culture.”

Here is an excerpt that describes where we’ve been and where we are now:

“Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways — one page led to the next page, and so on. Sure, there might be pictures mixed in with the text, but there didn’t tend to be many distractions. Reading in print even gave us a remarkable ability to remember where key information was in a book simply by the layout, researchers said…

The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all — scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. This is nonlinear reading, and it has been documented in academic studies. Some researchers believe that for many people, this style of reading is beginning to invade when dealing with other mediums as well.

“We’re spending so much time touching, pushing, linking, scroll­ing and jumping through text that when we sit down with a novel, your daily habits of jumping, clicking, linking is just ingrained in you,” said Andrew Dillon, a University of Texas professor who studies reading. “We’re in this new era of information behavior, and we’re beginning to see the consequences of that.”

What will the consequences be? What about this next generation? Apparently reading wasn’t something our brains were designed to do originally, and because of this it may not take much time to unwire the reading ability:

“The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read.”

I doubt and sincerely hope that reading does not become a de-evolving experience of human behavior.

I, personally, am going to reduce my internet scanning and I will do my best to read to my grandson every chance I get. 

DMPhotoWorkPuzzleEditor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Key to Organizational Success Part 2: Teaching Agents to Get Over Small Offenses

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Earlier this week, I highlighted research that Gallup recently published on the characteristics of high-performing managers.  Here is the list of common traits that great managers share:

They motivate every single employee (agent) to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.

They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.

They create a culture of clear accountability.

They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.

They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.

Overlooking Offenses - April 11thAs I think about leading my own team of employees, these traits set a high bar.  I personally need to make improvements in all five areas.

There is one trait on this list, however, that I think is particularly difficult to implement (#4): Building relationships that create trust, open dialog, and full transparency.

Why is this one so difficult?  Because it’s the only trait that requires the full bilateral engagement of those I manage.  I can’t create trust unless the other person chooses to trust me.  I can’t have an open dialog unless the other person agrees to talk.  We can’t have a fully transparent relationship unless both sides agree to reveal themselves.

Improving on #4 is certainly a complex topic, but I wanted share a strategy I’ve personally been trying to use to improve the trust and openness with those I manage.

The technique was brought to my attention by an article I read a few months ago written by Esther Inglis-Arkell on a blog called IO9.  Here is an excerpt from Arkell’s article:

We seem to have a kind of pettiness built into our nature. We will watch soppy movies about the redemption of murderers, or a long television series about gleeful serial killers, but have a character in a movie litter and we want them in prison.

Our real lives are not exempt from this. We can nurse a grudge against someone who gave us a dirty look for years. When someone we love screams at us, we forgive them in a few days.

A team of scientists from UCLA, Harvard, and the University of Virginia conducted a series of experiments that showed the people are bad at predicting how hurt will affect them over time.

We tend to assume the more painful injuries, the major ones, or the ones committed by loved ones, will cause the most pain over time… [But the opposite is true]. If the hurt is minor, we [tend to] let it fester…

Why do we furiously resent the minor insults but forgive, or at least let go, of the major ones? Why do we let those close to us insult us in ways we'd never take from a stranger? According to the study authors, it's because we can afford to….

If holding a grudge means we have to be angry and miserable for a long time, we find a way to stop being angry. If we just suffer a little annoyance, we allow it. Or sometimes we even enjoy it.

So, here is my new strategy to create trust, open dialog, and full transparency with those I manage: 

I am making a point to overlook and forgive the small offenses that commonly take place in the work environment.

In addition, I am going to encourage others to do the same (both with me and with each other).  

My goal is to make this way of relating an integral part of our company’s culture:  We don’t hold grudges, we overlook the small stuff, and we forgive those around us who commit small offenses—even if they don’t ask for forgiveness.

Is this something you could also implement on your team?  Like me, you’d have to start with your own behavior and then let it grow into becoming part of your culture.

According to the research, this change will improve your chances of building trust-filled relationships among those on your team.  Combined with the other traits, you’ll then be one step closer to becoming a great manager.

Note:   If you like all the social science/organizational psychology stuff, you may want to read all of Arkell’s article, or download the original research paper.  Both are helpful in understanding why forgiveness in helpful in building trust.

 

BenHessPic2011Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

Key to Organizational Success: The Right Manager

Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Are you a great manager? If so, you’re amongst a small minority of individuals who work for companies in Employee-Engagement - April 9th the United States.  If you are not a great manager (yet), keep reading.  There is a recipe of talents that great managers possess and it is not as complicated or illusive as you might imagine.

The research on this topic (done by the Gallup Organization) was recently reported in the Harvard Business Review (HBR).  It outlines both the importance of good managers and the scarcity of their existence in business world.

Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. Yet our analysis suggests that they usually get it wrong. In fact, Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time. 

Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units, Gallup estimates. This variation is in turn responsible for severely low worldwide employee engagement.

Gallup reported in two large-scale studies in 2012 that only 30% of U.S. employees are engaged at work, and a staggeringly low 13% worldwide are engaged. Worse, over the past 12 years these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work.

So, high-performing managers cause employees to increase their engagement in their day-to-day work. That begs the question: Why is employee engagement so important?   HBR goes on to explain:

Gallup has discovered links between employee engagement at the business-unit level and vital performance indicators [such as] customer metrics, higher profitability, productivity, quality (fewer defects), and lower turnover…. When a company raises employee engagement levels consistently across every business unit, everything gets better.

A negative chain reaction seems to be at play in most companies.  Employees (agents) who are disengaged cause companies to perform poorly, and employee (agent) disengagement is primarily caused by low-performing managers.

The purpose of this WorkPuzzle is not to beat up on managers.  Even if they wanted to do so, most real estate companies would have a hard time replacing their existing managers with higher-performing alternatives.

In most cases, it would be a better strategy to help the managers who are already on the job make improvements.  More specifically, these developments should be focused on the task of improving employee engagement.

Gallup outlines five critical talents that good managers possess as it relates to increasing employee engagement:

They motivate every single employee (agent) to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.

They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.

They create a culture of clear accountability.

They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.

They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.

If you’re a manager, review this list and take inventory of your day-to-day actions.  Are these the behaviors you find yourself doing?  If not, how can you start to focus your attention on these important tasks.  Remember, these are the tasks and traits of managers who manage highly engaged agents.

If you’re managing managers (owner, general manager, regional VP, etc.), set the example by making these traits part of your management culture.  Then coach your managers to take on these traits as they manage their own teams.

As a result, you’ll hopefully have more engaged agents who will produce the business metrics that make your company more successful.  That’s a purpose everyone can get behind.

 

BenHessPic2011Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.