The Perth agency now offering employees an extra week of paid leave

The workplace environment isn’t the only aspect of “work” that needs an overhaul to better suit employees in a post-pandemic world, according to this executive director.

This article was originally featured in Real Estate Business

Realmark’s Justin Baker has highlighted how a number of recent and significant changes that have taken place in the property industry due to COVID-19 now mean “companies need to adapt and provide support for real estate workers”.

That acknowledgement led to the development of a wellness policy, recently been introduced in Realmark’s Leederville office, which offers employees a myriad of benefits. Most notably, it sees employees given an additional four days of “wellness leave” each year, plus one day of “birthday leave”, in addition to teams’ statutory four weeks annual leave. That’s five extra days per year.

Reflecting on the impacts of the pandemic on the office’s employees – and the motivators behind new leave allowance – Mr Baker said that “last year in particular, due to COVID, you could really sense a lot of fatigue”.

“Even though we didn’t have lockdowns, we just never had a break. It was just hammer and tong – and there was no stopping it,” he said.

“No one would be going on holiday. No one was going overseas. There was no break – and that was the critical message that was coming through from all team members.”

And while he lauds the team’s openness to new technologies, which did enable employees to pivot to remote work practices – he did concede “it means that we can’t switch off”.

Coming to the realisation that Realmark needed to create “circuit breakers”, Mr Baker said network leaders understood they needed to provide better structure to their leave policy – instead of just relying on annual leave – and so the idea for wellness leave was born.

While the leave policy is still in its infancy, the executive director acknowledges that “people will use them [the wellness days] for all different sorts of things”.

It’s already being well received by the Leederville team, with Mr Baker acknowledging that “it really hits home that [employees] just need a day where they can do whatever’s on their mind, so they can come back a bit more refreshed, and ready to do what they love doing”.

Realmark co-founder and director Anita Percudani said that the policy’s reveal was an emotional one.

“There was a group of property managers and strata managers sitting next to me, and as Justin announced it, they all looked at one another and then they looked at me. And they burst into tears.

“It was just so deep – and so confounding to them – that we should offer them this opportunity to take more time,” she professed.

“They kept looking at me all the time as if to say, ‘is this for real? Is this for real?’

“So that was heartwarming, reassuring made us feel like as if we had really given back a gift to all of these people to say, ‘Hey, listen, guys, we support you’.”

Weighing in, Mr Baker added: “We care about our people and want them to be their best at work, home, with our clients and in the broader community.”

And when quizzed on the financials of such a plan and whether costs had come into the picture at all, the executive director told REB: “No.”

He said working in the industry has taught him that “if you empower people, if you give them the tools, they perform. And that’s where you actually get results.

“If you don’t do that and you are pinching, what happens is you stall and you go nowhere.”

Highlighting a big part of Realmark’s business as being their people, and their performance, Mr Baker stated that “if they’re not close to a 100 per cent right then our service levels are going to suffer”.

With both Mr Baker and Ms Percudani seeing the policy as an opportunity for early intervention, Realmark has also engaged MindFit at Work – offering up tools, resources and services to assist employees in managing their physical and mental wellbeing.

Mr Baker said the network “want[s] to provide our team with connection and a safe space”, with the leadership team revealing an ongoing commitment “to understanding the health and wellbeing needs of our team members and focusing on the promotion of physical and mental wellness in our workplace and home”.

“We care about our people and want them to be their best at work, home, with our clients and in the broader community,” he said.