How To Build Values To Shape Your Estate Agency Culture

Your company's values are the principles that guide you through all initiatives, ensuring everyone is focused on the bigger picture and working towards the same goal. So, whether you have: recently started a business, are looking to expand into new territories, are planning for the future or looking to rejuvenate things from the ground up, your core values will be the driving force behind it.

Strong company values will help guide decision-making and lead to more effective and efficient work.

To truly gain the benefits, you need your company values ingrained in every activity carried out in your Estate Agency. Without this, you operate individually, and your customers will get a different customer experience every time they interact with you. As a result, you ultimately lead to unsatisfied customers and a poor brand reputation – making it more challenging to reach your company goals.

How To Create Your Company Values

To get started, think back to why the business started or why you joined the company in the first place.

• What were the dreams that got the business off the ground?
• What are the goals that you or they were striving to achieve?
• What does success look like to you?

…The answers to these questions will help refine your values.

If you have employees, another significant step is to enlist their help.

When your employees feel like the company shares their personal values – you will see an increase in satisfaction, motivation and engagement. Overall, helping to drive success since all employees want to reach the same goal as the business.

If you don't have any employees or are just starting, think about your personal values and use those as a guide.

If you need extra inspiration, look at aspirational estate agencies or companies to start. Ones who have achieved the kind of goals you are striving for, but remember: only use these for inspiration.

Your values must be unique and tailored to your company and your people if they're going to be effective.

You can view our core values here if you would like. One of our favourite values is: 'Be an Expert' - 'Through continued learning and self-development, we support and encourage everyone to improve their knowledge and themselves as a person.'

We want to recognise everyone as a reliable source of technique and skill whose ability to judge and make the right decision is a natural desire and supports our vision.

Established estate agents, remember that your values must grow and develop as your company does. Of course, you should always want to remain close to your original values; however, the growth and development of your values are as crucial as your business growth.

Reassess your values frequently and refresh them to react to new goals, market conditions or areas of importance.

Creating A Company Culture Around Your Core Values

It is not just a case of "that's done... what's next?" and never thinking about it again. This exercise aims to create a company culture around your core values. To achieve this, you must put your values at the heart of your or your team's daily actions, helping build a strong company culture based on values.

A common way to do this is to set goals to measure your success.

For example, if 'Be an Expert' is one of your values like ours, you can set a goal of listening to a podcast or reading a book every month. Ensuring this happens reinforces the importance and helps ensure performance is going in the anticipated direction.

Another way would be to conduct customer surveys or read reviews as a team to determine if your agency is sticking to its goals and values. Again, you will learn from the people who matter most by asking customers if they feel like your service reflects a particular value.

Furthermore, this will also increase your customers' experience and, once again, help you reach your goals.

Creating a culture book is a great way to go about this, where all elements of your business, such as working hours, employee benefits, and workspace environment, represent your values. Then, align it with your values to create a culture properly representing your Estate Agency.

An example of this could be 'trust', describing how you manage your employees with policies against micromanagement. As a result, your employees will feel that you trust them and, in return, manifest a culture of trust across all aspects of your Estate Agency.

In Conclusion.

Shout about your value and culture at every opportunity - if you don't, you have wasted your time. Keep reminding yourself, your employees and customers alike. Put them up on your walls if you have a branch, post them on social media, and use them in your communication.

Keeping them fresh in everyone's eyes will help them stick, create a strong culture and showcase your agency in a new light.

We are confident that by following this process, you and every employee, prospect and customer that engages with your brand will clearly understand where you have come from and where you are going.