What is working hard? What is hard work? What is a normal working week? What is normal?
These are all questions I posed in the past few days as I read the recent poll results from RPM on the average working week of a property manager.
If I consider the normal working week of an average Australian, according to RPM of 39.9 hours, I am quite swiftly met with the wave of awareness that apparently I am not 'normal', but hey, we already knew that! Does that mean my working hours are 'unfair', 'unreasonable', does it mean I am overworked? Or underpaid?
Of course not, and I don’t believe it applies to you, either. Every day we make a choice to go to work in our real estate world. Why a choice? As skilled workers, there are myriad other things anyone in our industry could do besides property management. With skills including administration, communication, service, relationship management, conflict resolution – and the list goes on – you could slip into another role in another industry, with limited fuss.
The reality is, for most of us in the property arena it is in our blood, has become part of who we are, part of our identity and sense of self. With this comes a love and connection with our organisation, our clients and our customers, a pride in our efforts and outcomes – and with all of that comes a vortex of time that extends beyond 9 to 5, even if only for 30 minutes a day.
These are all questions I posed in the past few days as I read the recent poll results from RPM on the average working week of a property manager.
If I consider the normal working week of an average Australian, according to RPM of 39.9 hours, I am quite swiftly met with the wave of awareness that apparently I am not 'normal', but hey, we already knew that! Does that mean my working hours are 'unfair', 'unreasonable', does it mean I am overworked? Or underpaid?
Of course not, and I don’t believe it applies to you, either. Every day we make a choice to go to work in our real estate world. Why a choice? As skilled workers, there are myriad other things anyone in our industry could do besides property management. With skills including administration, communication, service, relationship management, conflict resolution – and the list goes on – you could slip into another role in another industry, with limited fuss.
The reality is, for most of us in the property arena it is in our blood, has become part of who we are, part of our identity and sense of self. With this comes a love and connection with our organisation, our clients and our customers, a pride in our efforts and outcomes – and with all of that comes a vortex of time that extends beyond 9 to 5, even if only for 30 minutes a day.
I’m OK with the 30 minutes ... the personal satisfaction is priceless.
