Gone are the days when the office phone was the only vital line of communication for property professionals, with the evolution of smartphone technology meaning they no longer have to be chained to our desks to deal with customer enquiries.
No surprise then, that 78% of property professionals surveyed by YourBusinessNumber say that their smartphone is pivotal when it comes to their day to day job. What’s more, 51% of home buyers and sellers stated they found it very easy to contact their estate agent, with just 10% saying they had struggled to make contact.
The downside to this increased accessibility? The perception that our ability to communicate should be more frequent and extend beyond the boundaries of our official working hours. In fact, YourBusinessNumber found that a quarter of us expect to be able to communicate with our estate agent outside of the traditional nine to five working hours.
As a result, 26% of property professionals told YourBusinessNumber that they regularly deal with work-related communications outside of their official working hours. 47% have also seen their workload increase as a result of the pandemic property market boom, with 34% now dealing with more out of office enquiries as a result.
So what’s the big deal in making ourselves more accessible around the clock?
The research also found that for 56% of property professionals, their personal phone also doubles up as their work phone, meaning they tend to forgo the option to turn it off once they’re done for the day. 34% of those surveyed said that this blurs the lines between their professional and personal lives and prevents them from properly switching off from work. For 53%, it also increases the levels of stress and fatigue that they endure as a result of their job.
George Lineker, Co-founder of YourBusinessNumber, commented: “Smartphone technology has dramatically improved our ability to communicate effectively and efficiently, allowing us to deal with customer enquiries from almost anywhere within reason.
"However, it has also seen many blur the lines between our professional and personal lives and while this above and beyond work ethic is an admirable trait, the inability to properly switch off can be detrimental to our personal wellbeing.
"It certainly doesn’t help that there is a growing expectation amongst consumers that enquiries should be answered around the clock, an expectation that no doubt increases our propensity to respond even when we’re not officially working.
"The fact that over half of those we surveyed use their personal phone as their work phone is probably the biggest factor preventing truly uninterrupted downtime. There’s certainly no shame in switching off and that’s why we wanted to provide a solution that facilitates this without the need to juggle multiple handsets."
