04 Jun The truth hurts

The Wellness and Wellbeing Study carried out by Jet Xavier has unearthed the depth of the industry’s long acknowledged levels of stress, anxiety and burnout.  Hear about the seven themes that emerged from the project and how you can get the report.

Topic – Wellness and Wellbeing Study

Mentor – Jet Xavier

• We make a case for recommendations to help
• This is the first measure
• Get the report here

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Transcript:

Kevin: I’ve been in real estate for quite a few decades, and it just occurs to me that what looks to be a very simple industry certainly is not. That’s highlighted in the Inaugural Study of Wellness and Wellbeing in the real estate industry that was conducted by Jet Xavier. In his foreword, he says, “Whilst the real estate industry is a great opportunity to achieve great things in business and in life, it also carries a unique intensity. Many agents are never able to achieve both a balanced life and a successful career.” Jet will join me all this week to talk about some of the findings that came out of this study.

Kevin: Good morning, Jet!

Jet Xavier: Hi, Kevin. How are you, mate?

Kevin: Well, thanks. Congratulations on this. This is a world-first really, it’s never been done in Australia and to my knowledge never been done anywhere else in the world but probably long overdue.

Kevin: Were there many surprises in this for you, or did you go into it with your eyes open?

Jet Xavier: I had a sneaking suspicion all along that the stats would reflect what they do. It’s a very hard-pressured, stressful industry. So no, I don’t think anything new came out of it in the sense of what we’ve already known. It just confirms it and it gives us good, solid data to be able to make a case now and push forward on creating some recommendations and some practical applications that are gonna help the people in the industry. Which is the most important part.

Kevin: Well, there’s an old saying in the industry: you can’t improve anything that you don’t measure. This is the first measure. While you say there are no surprises in it, the surprise for me was the depth of some of these problems. You make a very good point in your opening where you talk about the two sides: the high gloss and the high pressure. Where some people thrive and others fail in the same office. A lot of it has to do with our Wellbeing.

Jet Xavier: I think everything we do stems from our Wellness and Wellbeing. I think it’s a foundation and the pivotal thing that makes us who we are as people, especially from a behavioral point of view. And yet the industry has got a hard loss outlook or aspect to it, but then there’s this underbelly of the reality of what it means to be dropped in an industry which has high expectations, deadlines, is driven by pressure and KPI’s. Some people thrive in that sort of environment, but most people don’t.

Jet Xavier: The good thing about this report is that it’s not just one segment of the industry, it’s all segments across the board. It’s sales agents, principles, BDMs, PMs, admin, everyone is suffering to some degree from a Wellness and Wellbeing imbalance.

Kevin: There were 11 key findings that came out of that. I’ll share some of them with you in just a moment. As a result of that, you’ve been able to distill it down into seven themes which we are gonna cover off on this week. Let’s deal with some of those key findings, I’m not going to go through all 11 but you’ve helped me pick the four biggest ones Jet. I’ll just quickly read these: 47% of those in the survey felt physical symptoms of anxiety, 65% felt stressed, 46% said that it   impacted upon their personal relationships, and the final one I’d like to point out is that 40% of respondents felt overwhelmed. The other staggering one that I felt was that 26% of people used alcohol to either cope with stress. That’s what they used, it’s –

Jet Xavier: Probably more than that, but even though it was an anonymous survey every time I share that statistic it’s met with a bit of a laugh from the profession itself so it’s probably more than that. They’re alarming statistics and I don’t wanna sensationalise any of this stuff by far, but it really gives us a good insight into what’s actually going on. The alarming part of it is that no one’s talking about it, or hasn’t been up to this point. It’s just been, not intentionally swept under the carpet but it’s just been not looked at. It’s been not on the agenda, there haven’t been conversations about it.

Kevin: The other point that surprised me was, and this problem is quite deep when you talk about 65% of people felt stressed often or always, but only 35% of people have sought any type of medical advice. That in itself is a bit of a scare.

Jet Xavier: Well I think on two fronts: it’s a scare that it’s a third of the industry that has sought medical advice from working in an industry that should be about having the best time of your life in a sense and from a career point of view. But yes, not enough people are accessing external support systems in relation to this either. Both sides of the coin are interesting.

Kevin: As an industry, we probably haven’t helped ourselves much either. I know there are some very successful people in our industry and it’s almost as if you have to be as successful as them to be a success in this industry, Jet.

Jet Xavier: Well like I said there’s no one stereotypical type that these statistics reflect and they’re across the board. So a lot of the people that we find are “successful” in the industry are stressed, are the ones who are turning to alcohol, are the ones having physical symptoms of anxiety. I think we need to demystify it sometimes that just because it might be a financial success or a status success, that doesn’t mean it’s a holistic success.

Kevin: You’ve given us seven themes, which we’re doing to deal with during the week: thrive, act, adapt, lead, include, educate, and nurture. They’re the seven we’ll take you through as we look in a little bit deeper into the results that came out of the Inaugural Study of Wellness and Wellbeing in the Australian Real Estate Industry.

Kevin: Jet, I think you’ve kindly made this available to us as a download. Is that correct?

Jet Xavier: Yeah, you can go to jetxavier.com/wellness-report and you can get it for a free download there.

Kevin: Wonderful. Good on you mate. We’ll talk to you again tomorrow morning.

Jet Xavier: Thanks, Kev. Bye.