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Content warning: This story contains references to harassment and assault.
Allegations of yet another sexual assault dominated real estate headlines last week. Alarmingly, it’s now rare for a week to pass without allegations arising in our industry at all. Men of real estate, we all have a responsibility – not just to speak up, but to change the culture that allows these offences to continue.
Go to Google. Search “real estate agent charged.” There’s enough there to tell you that real estate is an industry in need of urgent change.
While a number of industries across Australia have acknowledged the blight of harassment in the workplace, real estate has remained quiet.
Take the resources industry. After allegations of workplace assaults, the Western Australian government initiated an inquiry into harassment and assault in the fly-in fly-out (FIFO) sector, resulting in clear, actionable recommendations to improve workplace safety for women.
In fact, a number of Royal Commissions have been called over recent years to protect vulnerable Australians in light of sexual assault allegations, bringing lasting change, dismantling close-ranked boys clubs, and ensuring justice is finally delivered to survivors.
Despite new allegations emerging week by week, month by month, in real estate – there’s silence.
But this silence is not quiet. It’s a deafening reflection of an acute cultural failure within the real estate industry.
Many would be familiar with the bystander effect, but few are familiar with the psychological factors that give life to it. And that, in particular, is an aversion and fear of the social cost of breaking ranks.
Substantial academic research from subject matter experts Geert Hofstede and Erin Meyer highlighted that in organisational cultures, people are restrained from acting by fear of breaking long-held cultural customs and standing out among their peers “for the wrong reasons”.
The silence and inertia go straight to culture. Culture of networks, agencies and offices.
The solution to this is that organisations need to inculcate a culture where speaking up is treated as an obligation for all employees. It isn’t heroic, it isn’t nice-to-have or the responsibility of anyone else – it’s your duty.
Of course, cultural change is easier said than done. After all, many of those who have been charged in recent months have been in positions of power themselves. A challenge that will likely persist, as women only account for slightly more than one-third of key management roles in the industry.
As it is men who set the culture: back women who set boundaries, name behaviour that you see as unacceptable – and on the most basic human level – take professional accountability for your peers.
Standing by is not “staying neutral” or “not getting involved”. It’s permitting this insidiousness to continue.
So while we start the year – and we sit down to make our listing goals or set professional key performance indicators, I ask you to remember the only real New Year’s resolution that matters in the workplace is that we put a stop to this dangerous and out-of-control culture and keep our colleagues safe.
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