Will your employee cheat you (again) in 2014?

Employee fidelity is a serious issue for estate agency firms. Because of the nature of the business it is relatively easy for employees to ‘steal’ clients from their employers. For instance the employee who takes the company’s client to a rival property where he will get a cut from the commission or spends all his time outside the office on his own business.The costs to a firm that does not take this seriously can be very substantial as we will find out. How wide spread is this behavior? How can it be stopped (or at least curbed) in your firm? We asked some Heads of Estate Agency firms to share their experiences and prefer solutions...

 
Orjinta Nkelechi (Keleorjints Consult) believes the ‘cheating’ practice is widespread: Employee fidelity is the norm now and it is unfortunate. I have had several experiences with employee infidelity where my employee works in my firm but has his own personal registered company. He was literally using my firm as a leverage to sell his firm. He uses my company to gain acceptability with my hard earned clients and then receives chequesin his company name. He has separate complimentary card where his company name was written boldly as subsidiary to our firm as such client won’t argue if he instructs them to issue cheque on his company name.

Leke Akinwusi (CEO FavourJerry  Derby) agrees. I had a deal last year, I mean a done deal and can you believe my employee took this man to the owner of the land and they talked and they exchanged numbers? And now what I hear is that ‘I am no more interested’. A 300 million naira done deal, my fellow agents please wise up more.Secondly, my clients came from China to Nigeria for a particular project which I had sealed up before he came and I briefly went to London because I had a quick emergency so I told my employee to take him to my contacts which he did. In 2-3 days my Chinese client stop calling me. These guys have really hurt me so bad. And this deal is a 5000 mass housing estate. Just imagine?  All these things are greed and the good thing is that Karma still works. I haven't done it to any one before so why should someone do it to me?

The boss of AMS Global, another estate firm joins the litany of those whose firms had suffered in the hand of its employees:  An experience we had was with one of our employee, who introduced a property to the company to manage.Eventually she set up her own company and diverted that property to her business as well as most properties in the areas she used to handle for the company was taken over by her.
The CEO of POC Nigeria Limited, has a different take on the issue. I think the situation is misunderstood. Abraham Maslow, in his theory of human motivation described humans to have a hierarchy of needs. The most basic needs of humans are food, water and sleep amongst others. The second level of the hierarchy is security; body, health, family and resources amongst others.

If you can see where I am going with this, you then have an idea of how much Estate Agents are being paid by their employees. A staggering 91% of all estate firms in Nigeria operate as a one-man business. In my experience, most of these organizations really do not treat their employees as they should. Agents should be given a good commission on any transaction completed solely to increase productivity which will help both the agents and the organization as a whole.

Having said all of that, there still exists this problem, of people from different fields applying and getting the roles to be estate agents and most of them usually have no prior experience in the field.
I am not here to justify the actions of some of these lads, because some of them may be doing this purely out of greed and not because they have any obligations that they need to fulfill. The problem here really is not the problem, but the way we look at the problem.
Find the reasons why and then you will be able to create a better work place that everyone can gain something from.
A qualified employee that feels taken care of by his employer will more than not put in the effort to get results.
This however is my point of view. Many will have contrasting arguments. At the end of the day, issues are unique to the environment they were conceived and it is only really solvable by examining that environment and applying the right non-biased solution.

Employers never think they're wrong.