Pros
- Colleagues are amongst the most experienced and qualified in the industry - Training is exceptional - Global brand - Good infrastructure and support teams in place - Focus is on customer service before profits, which is rare for an estate agency firm
Cons
- The partnership is valued above everything else, the people on the ground do not feel valued - Pay is below industry standard - Issue with gender equality- very few woman in senior positions and gender pay gap is huge - Issue with racial equality - Lack of flexible working and employee perks - Each department is run very differently so pay and benefits differ vastly from person to person (even of equal position) - Draconian/old fashioned in general (although they pretend to be current the policies are never put into practice). - Furloughed most staff during lockdown leaving only one or two people in each office to cope with unreasonable pressure. Basic pay was reduced on a tiered system (according to earnings) and commission was frozen. This effectively cut pay by around 60%. Commission has been reinstated after 5 months by 75% only. Meanwhile bosses paid themselves hefty bonuses on the premise that it was based on last years performance. KF’s reason for the pay cuts was to prevent redundancies but they have made several redundancies anyway. Meanwhile companies like Chestertons & Savills have reinstated full pay and never stopped paying commission. - As an industry amongst the first to return to work the official line is that we can stagger working hours and arrival times into office so that we are not travelling during peaks times but the reality is that we are under pressure to maintain usual working hours and there is no flexibility at all. Anyone worried about covid-19 is bullied into silence.
