Research carried out by Domain has lead to the real estate giant revamping their Employee Assistance Program.
The property platform found that 65% of real estate professionals had experienced problems with their mental health as a result of the stress caused by their work. The industry is now classified as ‘high risk’ after the Victorian Coroner’s office found that the annual suicide rate within the industry was 13 per 100,000 people.
Domain has announced a partnership with the Rise Initiative to invest in its Real Care app – a tool designed to provide real estate workers with free, accessible support for their mental health.
Speaking to our sister publication HRD, Domain CEO Jason Pellegrino spoke of how the pandemic has allowed many within the industry to talk more about their mental health and thus break down barriers that exist within real estate.
“When you operate in an industry where success is so publicly visible and the measure of success is clearly defined, there can be a strong sense of bravado in terms of the selling culture,” he said. “I think the difficulty of making that first phone call for someone to say they need help would be extraordinary.”
“If there’s any point of friction that makes asking for help difficult, then it just won't happen. We've been really focused on not only providing our Employee Assistance Program for free to all of our agents and customers, but also figuring out ways that we can make access to resources as seamless and frictionless as possible.”
“Our employees are critically important. They’re the first thing we think about in the morning and the last thing we think about at night because we run a technology business that is all about people.”
“But without our customers and our partners, we don't have a business either. To allow them to have access to the same level of services that our employees have the privilege of using is critically important, particularly when we were really concerned that a lot of them were operating in environments where they may not have the support services and frameworks around them.”
