Office Culture Affects Your Success

Whether you’re aware of it or not, your office has a culture that directly affects your success—and the success of your clients.

Culture is basically the personality of your company, and this is determined by various factors. Corporate values, ethics and management style have a major impact. Even office décor and dress code play a role. All of these factors and more combine to create a culture that is unique to your company.

There is no recipe for a “good” or “bad” culture. However, a healthy company culture nurtures agents, fosters trust and builds a sense of camaraderie and team spirit between agents that maximizes productivity.

Is your office culture holding you back?

Here are a few items that contribute to an unhealthy company culture, and suggestions for how to overcome them:

• Lack of Trust: There is a difference between management oversight prevention and risk management and demonstrated lack of trust. The first is good business practice but the second sends a very negative message.
  
• Lack of encouragement: When agents feel their efforts go unnoticed, or if they feel as if they’ve hit a dead end in their career within the company, productivity suffers.
  
• Lack of agent retention: Some agent turnover is expected, but a significant inability to retain agents signifies a problem. 

Why I Like Avalar Austin and the DaSilva Management Group

• I can negotiate commissions: I do not need prior approval to negotiate a commission or referral fee.
  
• I can work out of any office: I have a master key so I can chose to meet a client at any office that is convenient to the client.
  
• Absolute minimum of extra expenses: I pay a minimal fee for color copies and occasional small fees for extras that are totally optional (i.e. Hardbound brag book in color printed from Power Point)
  
• Incoming leads handed out in fair manner: In 17 years of real estate, this is the 1st office where I have felt that incoming office leads were handled fairly.
  
• Management is available for questions: I always seem to have clients that want to do something weird after hours or on weekends. Management has always been available to me.
  
• The support staff goes out of their way to be helpful: There have been a couple of instances where the support staff have gone well beyond the call duty so that things ran smoothly despite the unexpected.
  
• Educational programs worth going to: The office meetings are voluntary but definitely worth going to and they are at 9:30am, which makes traffic much easier to deal with.