Laing+Simmons is backing its organisational culture, signing up as Australia’s first real estate company and franchise network to undertake independent scrutiny through the Workability Index. And it plans to use the culture metric to boost franchisee recruitment.
This index, founded by analytics and management company TWI is a public, standardised, quantitative, and research-based measurement of 10 elements in workplace culture. It considers risk culture, trust, engagement, future workforce, advocacy, community, wellbeing, leadership, organisational, and inclusion.
Laing+Simmons rolled out the culture metric out to more than 300 of its team members from 45 offices, and was thrilled with the results.
The real estate agency achieved well above the average score of 643, pulling a total score of 862 out of 1,000.
Laing+Simmons to use culture metric
The agency now plans to use this rating as a brand differentiator to help attract and recruit franchisees.
Laing+Simmons head of network growth, Travis Wentriro, said “We have consistently emphasised the Laing+Simmons culture as our point of difference, so it made sense for us to walk the talk and ensure our people-first focus was resonating.
“Our partnership with TWI formalises our intention to lead on people and culture, and make culture a measurable quality that truly differentiates us. We know in welcoming new offices to the network, and new people to our teams, that culture is a major reason people want to join the Laing+Simmons family.
“Now we have an evidence-based tool to demonstrate its strength and the results are pleasing. Across all dimensions of culture measured by the Workability Index, we’ve outperformed the benchmark and proven our people and our offices are happy members of our family,”said Wentriro.
Roy Morgan research shows just 7 per cent of Australians rated real estate agents as ‘high’ on ethics and honesty highlighting the value of disrupting the traditional way real estate agents market themselves, says TWI co-founder and CEO, Sunil Vohra.
“By applying an independent assessment of culture, scored against a public index, companies like Laing+Simmons are leading their market in new ways to compete. They are publicly stating ‘we’ll prove our people will make the difference when you work with us over other real estate companies’.
“In this way, Laing+Simmons is leading a new generation of service companies able to differentiate in their markets with evidence of culture performance. With potential customers looking for independent validation, we applaud Laing+Simmons for leading in their market with culture transparency.”
