Track2Realty Survey
Indian real estate may have emerged as one of the best pay masters in the corporate world, yet the high attrition rate defeats the Indian realty emerging as one of the best employers.
The Covid-hit real estate and infrastructure industries are hungry for talent. The real estate and construction sector employs 50 million, of which only 2 million are professionally qualified. They are not getting the qualified professionals, and even when the fat pay cheque attracts a few qualified professionals, the developers fail to retain them.
The reason of disenchantment for the professionals ranges from perception issues to scary work culture; high attrition rate to lack of positive competitive spirit; and absence of learning opportunities to coping with clients’ unmet promises.
In terms of attracting the young talent the Indian real estate has been successful to some extent, at least in the last over a decade. They have poached on professionals from established and matured sectors like IT/ITeS, banking, finance and telecom etc, of late, to showcase that professionalism is increasingly making inroads into the sector.
The fair attraction for a rewarding job has, however, not translated into job satisfaction and career growth for the professionals with major share of this young and qualified work force getting back to the core sectors, even at the expense of salary cut.
The results of the Track2Realty study are not encouraging for the real estate striving to be seen as ‘employer brand’. Young professionals who switched career to join real estate sector in the last five years have either came back to their previous jobs or are planning to do so, many of them are clueless whether to learn the balancing act in real estate and only few wish to continue with real estate.
However, the feeling of company’s growth leading to personal growth has few takers in this sector, as the metrics to judge employees in real estate is not really performance.
Many of thse profesionals have already returned back to previous employers even with a salary cut. Most of them cite scary work culture & unprofessionalism as the prime reason of quitting the real estate job where coping with the employers’ expectations and buyers’ unmet commitments are not bearable.
They also maintain the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear of being sacked anytime is next big hurdle. It is a fiercely competitive job but the competition is mean than healthy, due to absence of learning opportunities.
A large number of professionals do not stay in real estate beyond a year in one company. So much is the level of dissatisfaction, and rather lack of trust, that most of the professionals do not buy the property from their employers. The apprehension of leaving the job on a bitter note is a significant deterrent.
Classical reward theory
If real estate is still a tempting sector it is due to fat pay package. The last few years has made the professionals even more sceptical with realty jobs due to the slowdown and in some cases salary cut has been the prime reason of low morale of these professionals.
Interestingly, this is one sector where women get better pay package and still there are few takers. Most of the female employees do not think it is a motivation and they often conceal their employer’s identity among the peer groups due to perception issues.
Many of them feel money is good but such a high pressure job can be managed only till they are single and after marriage they have no plans to continue with the real estate.
Realities of realty employment
With most of developers believing in monologue than dialogue, the role of realty professionals is only to execute and not ideate or innovate
Professionals who migrated from matured industries ready to get back even with a salary cut
The question is whether the developers are yet ready to address what employees really want. Professionals with real estate background (both working as well as those who already quit) maintain that ‘Involvement’ is the key career objective nowadays but real estate companies never provide challenging work that inspires and realises results. What professionals demand is ‘Respect’ but the management hardly acknowledge the talent and contribution of each employee.
Third critical missing link that can retain quality talent is ‘Support’ and but the developers hardly ever bother to provide resources to achieve desired outcomes. Therefore, these employees miss ‘Responsiveness’ and wish had the real estate companies been pro-active in listening and responding to employees’ issues quickly, it would have got the best out of the employees.
Bringing new ideas on the table is never entertained in most of the real estate companies and most of the time the Boardroom meetings are ‘Monologues’ of the employers than actually ‘Dialogues’. Communication is the key missing component of a real estate employer, especially during these challenging times.
Do the real estate professionals get mentored on the job? Hardly anyone would like to vouch for this as cut-throat competition is so severe and mean that the immediate supervisor always wants to take credit for their work and get compensated by the management. The promoters hardly bother to engage themselves beyond the chain of command.
Track2Realty is an independent media group managed by a consortium of journalists. Starting as the first e-newspaper in the Indian real estate sector in 2011, the group has today evolved as a think-tank on the sector with specialized research reports and rating & ranking. We are editorially independent and free from commercial bias and/or influenced by investors or shareholders. Our editorial team has no clash of interest in practicing high quality journalism that is free, frank & fearless.
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