Retention is one of the hottest subjects in the modern workplace. Today's biggest talents look for organizations that support their ongoing growth. If they don't feel supported, they have one eye on opportunities elsewhere.

Real estate brokerages do have some advantages, though. While employees in other industries often need to switch employers to ensure their compensation continues to beat inflation, real estate agents can accelerate their income from anywhere. The right value proposition keeps them on your team.

It's worth the investment.

While a good agent can succeed just about anywhere with perseverance, developing the right skills is faster and easier at a good brokerage. When you are thoughtful and intentional about creating a strong culture along with avenues for talent development, you get compounding returns as agents' skills expand.

Curbing agent turnover sets the stage for a positive brand and repeat business — when agents don't jump ship, neither do customers. Agent loyalty is an ongoing commitment, but building the foundations is easier than it looks. Let's consider six ways to establish your brokerage as a long-term employer of choice:

1. Create a Positive Company Culture

What counts as a positive company culture? While the definition can vary from one person to another, it's clear agents want to see a brokerage that is serious about their success. Agents thrive when they have opportunities to boost their skills and access to technology that enables them to do more in less time.

It's undeniable that healthy competition and a sense that "the sky's the limit" are motivating factors for many agents. Positive company culture comes into play when everybody feels like they're part of the same team, working toward compatible goals, and part of something bigger: changing their clients' lives.

Whenever a group of people gets together, "culture" is being formed and expressed. It's up to leaders at your brokerage to ensure the process is intentional. In most cases, helping your team flourish means recognizing successes and encouraging individuals to measure results against their past performance, not each other.

2. Craft a Customized CRM Exclusive to Your Brokerage

Customer relationship management is the secret to breakout numbers for sales teams around the world. Using a real estate CRM, each member of your enterprise saves dozens of hours every month that used to be spent keeping up with all the latest from your leads, current customers, and former customers.

The DeltaNET® real estate CRM makes life easier. It only takes one day to learn the basic features. Once you do, it becomes easier than ever to follow up, improve your marketing, and get more repeat business from your contacts.

A "customized" CRM may seem like a tall order, but DeltaNET provides it all, enabling you to customize an interface exclusively for your brokerage that can be fully branded, all the way down to the name. With its innovative role-based system, users can personalize their workflow, taking away the tools they don't need and giving them quicker and easier access to the ones they do.

3. Offer the Training and Support Your Agents Need to be Successful

When it comes to training, there are two valuable planks to consider. The first is mentorship. A one-on-one mentoring relationship gives agents someone to go to as an experienced soundboard for their ideas. As they face challenges, they don't have to reinvent the wheel, but can quickly implement proven strategies instead.

The second key to a strong training approach is "one-to-many" training, using materials such as video. DeltaNET Academy combines multimedia experiences with interactive assessments to make a world-class virtual training platform accessible to brokerages of all sizes, opening the door to success in hundreds of skill areas.

With training technology like this available, many agents will choose to learn independently. Still, it can help to have an in-house talent development coordinator. This is a person who helps agents troubleshoot current areas of concern and come up with a plan to build their strengths with the tools available to them.

4. Recognize the Achievements of Your High-Producing Agents

Employee engagement is the cornerstone of long-term success in virtually any business. An engaged team can reach and sustain productivity highs many times, which size alone would suggest. Leverage technology to meld that motivation with modern capabilities and you'll soar.

But how do you spark engagement? The human touch is indispensable.

Research has shown again and again that, although the importance of compensation and benefits cannot be understated, culture is crucial once those are in place. Near the top of the list of things that help people love the place they work is a sense that their contributions are recognized and appreciated.

That doesn't mean everybody wants to have their achievements shouted from the rooftops. It's a wise idea to learn each person's communication preferences early on. Praise may be preferred in private, in group settings, or even in a written form — but the thought and attention you put into it will make a difference.

5. Give Agents the Ability to Obtain a High-Quality Customized Website

Between 2014 and 2023, Millennials were the top generation in the home-buying market. Older members of Generation Z also made a strong showing during the pandemic. While Baby Boomers have taken the top spot through 2023, the overall trend is that your future business will come from digital natives.

Younger buyers and sellers, especially, go online whenever they need to consult listings or find an agent. They will almost certainly research you online and read your website before meeting you for the first time. As a result, a good real estate website is the hub your entire brand turns on, digitally and otherwise.

Luckily, you don't have to design a website from scratch to be successful. DeltaNET customers can get a fully optimized, modern real estate website running fast. That can save each one of your agents months of time, helping them boost their online visibility much sooner.

6. Value the Feedback of Your Agents

Last, but certainly not least, feeling heard is essential to true identification with a company's brand and mission. All agents exercise their prerogative to develop their own reputation and network, of course, but your handling of their concerns and questions helps determine whether they truly see your brokerage as a home base.

Although real estate attracts some strong personalities, it is not enough to simply let people know you have an "open door policy." Instead, leaders should look for structured and repeatable ways to gather feedback. Ideally, at least some of that feedback would be quantitative (for example, scores of 1-5) so data can be compared.

Collecting feedback is only half the equation. If that feedback is never acted upon, it starts to look like a hollow exercise. Yet, it's easy for even the most conscientious agents to forget what was said a few weeks back. When you take specific action on feedback, be sure to draw attention to it in your regular communications.

Technology has a role to play in making agent retention easier, and Delta Media Group® is your gateway. From the DeltaNET real estate CRM to customized agent websites, training, and one-on-one customer care, we're here every step of the way to help your brokerage and its people exceed expectations.