Employee Safety

There was an unfortunate incident over the weekend in my hometown where an onsite real estate sales agent in a new home community was raped at knifepoint by a prospect she was showing homes to. It got me thinking about my days on site and quite honestly, I think this is a huge problem in our industry that too many companies avoid. I worked for several companies where we did one staff member per weekend. Walkie talkies, taking ID's, carrying pepper spray, leaving doors open, walking behind the prospect, etc. are all good precautions to take, but I don't think they're enough. Anytime an agent is alone with a prospect, there's a risk. Pairing up is obviously a fantastic solution, however, it's not typically feasible, largely because of budget constraints. What are your thoughts? What can we do to keep our on site professionals safe?

Morgan that is such horrible news! There cannot be anything more terrifying than that. If I can add to your questions...Do companies feature this as part of their regular training program. Are employees aware of this possibility and perhaps trained on how to be more aware of a potentially dangerous situation.

Perhaps extra procedures need to be enforced when it comes to those odd situations when there is only one person in the office.

Look forward to other comments from everyone.

Standards are don't show after dark and tell someone where you're going. Code phrases with your coworkers can be great, and you want to learn the basics of the opening the door lock flip as well as keeping a direct clear line between you and your exit. I always trained my folks on one other one as well.

Go with your gut. If it says that this is bad juju, then don't argue with it. It's there and freaking out for a reason.

How awful Give my regards to her and her family.

As for keeping folks safe - the buddy system is definitely the way to go, but I understand that it's not always going to be possible due to budget constraints. I'd second Jonathan and make sure that it's part of the training program, insofar as knowing how to be aware of potentially dangerous situations and having extra precautions in place for lone employees. Heather's also got some great ideas, particularly about going with your gut. Listen to it!

The thing is, though, to be careful about how you create your precautions, because you absolutely never want to include language that may make the survivor feel at fault, or like s/he didn't "do enough" to prevent the assault from occurring. They'll get enough of that from everywhere else. Make sure that you know your local rape crisis centers and have their telephone numbers available. Have a support system in place - external will probably be necessary, but make sure you have access to it and that everyone knows how to make the best use of it.

And just my two cents: you may want to consider keeping the morning-after pill in your office medicine cabinet. We all hope that rape isn't going to be common enough to warrant it, but there's nothing like the terror of having been raped with the nightmare of possibly being impregnated by your rapist, and not every hospital/nurse/local pharmacy will provide it.

Our properties are coached to do several things:
-No Showing after dark (or if you don't feel comfortable, but that can be a grey area with FHA issues)
-code words with staff - when it's during work hours, i would call my maintenance guy to let him know when i was going out with a prospect to show property. If it happens after hours, i would still make the pretend phone call to give the illusion that staff were still there.
-we require ID to be left at the office. the theory being that if i get kidnapped or fail to return, my last kjnown contact's picture is sitting on my desk (we don't copy or scan them)
-Business is done in an open area (i.e. the living room or dining room of a model or office), nothing behind closed doors and i am sitting closest to an exit.)
-most of our managers carry pepper spray
-it's just basics to me to again carry thru with common sense precautions. The unfortunate aspect is that you can't prepare and guard against everything, and crap happens. keep good working relationships with sister and comp properties, police, share info and watch the news.

At my office (and this is not my company's policy, but a policy that I started many, many years ago)...is that I only schedule lease appointments from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday and maintenance staff goes with me. We don't work on the weekends at this time, but I know it will be coming soon. I don't know what I will do then, but I know that my life and the lives of my staff are more important to me than this job and if my company doesn't believe the same, then I need to work for another company...

We also take their id and lock it up, which I don't understand because if they rape or kill me, they will have the keys to get back into my office and get their id...and with so many fake id's out there, I wonder what good getting them really is...

This is a problem that needs to be addressed across the board in all management companies...in today's world we can't be too careful...