We must invest in our employees

For more than six years, we have moved from one market-shaking crisis to the next with an unnerving seamlessness, from neighbour arguing with neighbour over our place in the EU, to the near-rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the actual rise of Donald Trump, to the tragedy now unfolding in Ukraine (which makes everything else pale in comparison).

Among these crises, of course, was the Covid pandemic. With all restrictions lifted, the pandemic has, in essence, been declared over (although the numbers say otherwise). The high hopes last year that this year would see a rocket placed under the market in terms of transactions thankfully turned out to be correct. Our business is seeing a surge of activity across all of the markets we work in: interesting times – but, at last, the right kind of interesting.

But regardless of the glimmer of light on the horizon, the crises around us have resulted in rising costs across every part of our sector, from construction to operation. All property consultancies are facing a big squeeze.

Some costs have arisen as a result of an enhanced focus on compliance issues finally (and rightly) by regulators and governments. We’re seeing tougher anti-money laundering regulation, and with Russian money in the spotlight, this seems likely to increase. When extensive due diligence is required on thousands of deals, this calls for significant investment in both internal and external resource.

As well as tackling dirty money, we have to clean up our own acts. Environmental, social and governance issues are the topic of the day, if not decade. I’ve spelt out the acronym not because I think readers won’t know what ‘ESG’ is, but because it’s important that we treat each word of this triangle as an equally important component.

At Allsop, we’re investing heavily in each element to make sure we are doing the right thing by our employees, stakeholders and clients. It’s simply not enough even to be walking the walk anymore, never mind talking the talk: we have to be doing, promoting and – most importantly – measuring, so we can be held accountable. And the first part of that is making sure we’re putting in the right processes – even if costly – to do so.

Perhaps the greatest increased cost of all is people, which for people-led businesses like most property firms, are our most important asset. The war for talent means teams, not businesses, are being bought. We expect wage bills to rise more than 10% this year due to heightened market competition, and to help tackle the impact of inflation, which is set to hit a 40-year high at 8.7% at the end of the year.

Every day, we see increasingly worrying headlines about the cost of living. We believe we need to talk about our employees’ quality of living. Yes, paying a competitive wage so that our homegrown talent develops with us is important.

But beyond that pull factor, we’re motivated to make sure our teams can maintain a high standard of living, especially given the quality of the work they produce for our clients. That also means ensuring our offices are creative, exciting places to work and encouraging team members back to collaborate.

Is additional investment really the answer to already soaring business cost and the big squeeze? In this case, I believe it is, because our people make us the business we are – and will help us overcome increasing costs. Creating better conditions and investing in people means higher motivation and better performance, increased personal satisfaction, better collaboration, shared vision and, hopefully, a hunger to hit targets and contribute to the business’s growth.

Hopefully, we’ll soon live in less interesting times. But may we never run out of interesting people.

Scott Tyler is senior partner at Allsop