Estate Agent Safety – Feel Safer
A lot of people don’t realise the underlying dangers of being an Estate Agent and put themselves at risk every single day.
Facts
- 30% of Estate Agents have bee the victims of verbal abuse
- Almost a quarter of Estate Agents feel that their safety has been compromised
- 53% don’t have a lone worker policy
- 16% have been intimidated
- More than 1 in 10 have been threatened while conducting viewings
- 58% admitted to never receiving specific lone worker or personal safety training
It’s not considered a dangerous job but uncontrolled situations, such as meeting new clients, holding open houses, showing people around properties alone can leave you vulnerable.
Your marketing may be jeopardising personal safety by highlighting who your staff are, what they look like and direct contact details. Everyday tasks, that may seem harmless at the time, could expose you or other staff to unnecessary risk.
The industry opens its self up to some undesirable people.
Estate agents are professionals but haven’t always had personal safety training.
You might believe “Special” code words solves the problem… But people are busy and not always available, what if you aren’t actually able to make a call?
Even if you can make a call to someone that’s able to answer it, how do they know exactly where you are?
Transporting clients in the car
Trust is a big thing, but can you trust a stranger in your car? Just feeling uncomfortable is bad enough but what about being robbed, attacked or even face a “client” trying to steal your car.
A lot of people don’t pick up hitchhiker these days for that exact reason but people are driven to viewings all the time. So without safety training what could protect our Estate agents against such situations?
Open houses
As Estate agents do so many viewings it’s easy to leave the door open when showing clients around the property or even waiting in the property for the client to eventually turn up. This is, the literally, leaving the door open for members of the public just to walk in which could put you at risk of being attacked and your client’s safety is in danger.
Meeting new people alone
Estate agents meet “strangers” every single day, that’s their job but feeling uncomfortable, vulnerable or even in danger shouldn’t be part of the job. Just because you’re with someone else doesn’t mean you’re not a lone worker, in the eyes of the Law.
To ensure all staff have had personal safety training and the company has a robust, and a fail-to-safe Lone Worker check-in system. Manual systems and code words can work but you have to work hard to ensure they never fail when they really are needed.
Of course, simple cost-effective Lone Worker safety solutions are also available.
MyTeamSafe® is a lone-working app. Making sure your lone workers and employees check in regularly, notifying you as a supervisor that they are safe. MyTeamSafe website – you can try our lone working solution free for 30 days, with text (SMS), email and push notifications. |
Alexander May
Nice article. I really enjoy reading your article about estate agent health safety. Keep on sharing.